Honestly that's the problem with videos like this, saying that some methods are objectively bad. Sure, technicality is objective, but whether art is good or not is subjective.
@@lukealias1uk345 better in what regard, the binding of isaac makes all of these "mistakes" would you consider that game to look bad or cheep or poorly made? the value of the art is not determined by dumb rules set up by other artists. the value of art is set by the full product and it's perception amongst it's consumers. however i understand the need to teach these rules to beginners that are looking to enter the workforce because it is what is expected it will not necessarily make you "better" and no one should be afraid to use these techniques if they believe it would improve the final product.
Same for me with a different game. Pizza Tower has 3 scaling options (1080p, h1080p, q1080p), and if you try to fullscreen it on a 1366x768 monitor, it looks bad-ish. Especially the text in the manual.
In some cases I prefer rotated graphics, like character hand when aiming, or objects with physics. But it's more of a game thing, you absolutely shouldn't rotate in your drawing software
Came here to post this. Related to the size continuity, your pixels should only exist on a pixel grid. Sprite based hardware could rotate, but it looked choppy as hell. Sonic Mania did a good job of recreating this effect.
What about simulated Mode 7 effects? Just be sure to rotate the object BEFORE scaling (I just keep everything at 100%, then scale the framebuffer when rendering).
Er, I think this is debatable. What about games like Towerfall? Rotating arrows is necessary unless you want to create countless variations of arrows at various angles.
They are both valuable tools. While I agree that the lazy method (diagonal/stretched pixels) looks ugly, that doesn't mitigate the fact that pixel rotation is a valid option. Just respect the grid.
Overshading in a way displays the skill of the artist and can make interesting art styles. But usually when begginers do it, they lack the control or restrain to keep it from looking blurry.
@@MarcoValeKaz They look good when using real scale on HD screens, small characters on large play field. the overshaded character will look sharp and shiny 3D-like.
@@MarcoValeKaz A good example of that is Sonic Mania. Where it does look like it was quite a lot of shading, but if you inspect the color palette of the character, it shows that they make sure the color are limited to 24 palettes, for instance for Sonic, the shading of the eyes is actually use the same palette for white object on his glove, but because it's blend with his blue color, it almost like it was overshading even though it was use the same palette as the gloves.
Like other things on the list, this completely depends on the style of the game and the reasoning behind it. I think he got a little too "black and white" in his arguments. Sometimes there are good reasons to shade more, use gradients, etc... The most important thing is to keep the style consistent for each project, so that the art doesn't conflict throughout...
This video is more intended for beginners. The devopers or hyper light drifter are experienced enough that they can both bend the rules and make an art direction out of it. But yes, gradients can be used. Just make sure to steer away from them when you are staring to avoid solving shading with a basic gradient
@@MarcoValeKaz Welp, I really didn't expect you to reply to my honestly tongue-in-cheek joke comment. But it is cool to see a UA-camr staying on top of things like comments, especially if they're assisting in expanding others' knowledge by doing so.
My dad said there was a book where Luke Skywalker became a Sith because he learned everything he could by being a Jedi so that was the only way he could learn more about the force
Point about banding: real life lighting isn't that simple. The type of lighting you described applies mostly to open areas with a single light source. Most of the time real lighting is way more diffuse because it bounces off multiple surfaces, specially indoors, it is not that common to see objects with a well-defined shadow line. I much prefer SNK's sprites as they feel more solid and dynamic, Capcom's look bland and flat. Much more important: If you draw sprites banded like that, you're giving the programmers an amazing tool to create beautiful dynamic lighting effects by manipulating the pallete colors of the character.
Real life is not that simple, but also the academic method is not 100% true to life. Its a gradual process. In my course I teach both the direct light shading, and the adding of bunced light form the scene. But its a complex theme. The biggest issue is the banding, since if people use banding, they usually don't leave room for bounced light
@@GraveUypo the original snk sprites are used as an example of banding done right, and of how they solved it, and the capcom is an example of the core-shadow grouping.
@@MarcoValeKaz Oh, I came away from the video thinking you were using the SNK sprites as an example of what not to do. That surprised me, since I thought they did it much better.
The word is originally French, and has gone through several iterations of meaning. Pronunciation at this point is entirely moot, especially since the way he's pronouncing it still clearly indicates what the word is without confusing it for any other.
This is fantastic! As a pixel artist myself I taught myself all of these when I first began years and years ago and anytime I play a pixelart game these things pop out to me and in most cases are a red flag! Like you said; It's not that the games are necessarily "bad", but rather they could have been rushed, or more likely, they simply don't know any better. If I may point out another mistake: "Overuse of Black Borders". I find too many amateur pixel artists use black borders exclusively rather than an appropriate complimenting color. Black borders are fine in a lot of cases, but after you're done doing the art, take a moment to replace the black with other colors, see how it looks. Take the skin tone color and darken it by 20% and use that, see how it looks. Same with armor tones, etc.
As a side note to do with "defining a light source", historically in classical art training you would set the light source (the sun as default) as if it were coming from the top left unless there was a good reason to do otherwise (probably something to do with where the sun rises and sets or something like that). Similarly, when moving a character you move them from left to right to indicate moving forward in time and travelling to a place over some time (and from bottom to top in the same way), again, unless you have a specific good reason for doing otherwise. This is probably why almost every 2D platform game has you moving left to right--it just feels right. Moving right to left would indicate travelling back to somewhere you came from and/or back in time as it were.
Incidentally, the "natural" direction of progress varies from culture to culture-or more precisely, from writing system to writing system. For instance, Japanese has traditionally been written from right to left (though Western writing direction is also common these decades), so Japanese visual media often treats left as forward instead of right. There are exceptions, of course, but there are also Western games where progress is to the left-they're just less well-known and influential than Super Mario Bros.
Common voice recording mistakes: 1) Too much low-end that muddies up the speech 2) Not enough sibilance frequencies which impedes clarity 3) No compression, making low dynamics difficult to hear
@@ChrisHanline Sorry for the spam, the websited kept saying my comment was not submitted due to an error! I'm saddened you would not like the idea of a tutorial :( I'll search some online
Another thing to add in: Try and make both a monochrome and a colored version of your sprite. Look at them both and say "does my sprite show what it is just through black and white", if yes, look at your colors and make sure that they compliment the sprites general form and read-ability. If no, adjust the shape to be easier to read and then repeat the process.
Nomuber 2: Atari 2600 wants to know your location. Lack of size continuity was baked in to it's hardware, the background layer pixels were different sizes to the sprite pixels.
“Mistake“ one is wierd. There's nothing wrong with good filters that aim for the crtv look. old school games never looked that pixely on their hardware to begin with.
I have to agree, I look at a lot of pixel art games, and they never looked like that in the old school days, so it's one thing to want to have that pixel art look of the past but at least they should give it the kind of look for how we remembered them on crt screens but on lcd screen and to me, a lot of pixal art games look even worse then what I remember many games of the past looking like.
Most of the filters aren't good though, and cause clipping along the edges of the sprite. Old CRTs may have added a bit of subtle blur, but the blur is more akin to FXAA than texture filtering (and I'd highly recommend checking out this difference, in fact - if you play an old sprite-heavy game like Doom, for example, with texture filtering? Looks awful, like everything is plastic... but with an overall screen softening effect from FXAA or the like, it looks softer without looking necessarily blurry)
@@NicholasBrakespear True there are some bad attempts out there to recreate the crtv -look. But also some very good yet rather hardware hungry solutions. When I play old arcade games on mame I always use some crtv-filters. My eyes just can't watch them pixelated. It simply feels wrong. Some new filters really look astonishingly correct. At least when I compare it with my memories. You even get a headache from watching it like in the good old days ;) There are many new great looking clean pixel art games around. One contemporary example is Blasphemous or Blazing Chrome. But those games were usually designed with superior modern hardware power in mind and make up with effects that wouldn't have been possible on real 16-Bit machines. With this kind of artwork I don't miss any filter at all. It is good as it is. To make a long thing short: It can go both ways and look cool. By the way guys! Check out The Last Door. It is such a great example of what you can do with minimalistic pixel graphics and good sound design.
@@NicholasBrakespear This is the right answer. It's texture filtering that is the mistake, not "filtering" in general. The fact that texture filtering is on by default in Gzdoom is maddening. Even if you are using RGB cables with professional quality CRT monitors, old games don't have that sharp and starkly colored look that many indie games have today. That's not to say its a bad look, and you could argue its more fitting for modern LCD displays. However, it is less truly retro than many people think.
I agree with most of these, but a few of these seem more like stylistic choices that you just don't like rather than things that actually look bad or amateurish.
No, these are all well established rules and best practices for doing sprite art correctly. Only truly great pixel artists should be ignoring/breaking these rules.
So... I'm a amateur... and I'm really thankfull to you for this video, not only because I as an amateur found that other people has the same problem as me with pillowshading and with the shading and lights definition, but also because this is a help to someone like me, color blind
Gradients very rarely can look good, usually on barrel shaped objects. You still need to apply shading for it to fit in. Conclusion: Gradients are not a form of shading, but instead a way of displaying the shape of an object if needed.
The picture you clicked on to get to this video is a good example of someone saving the model as a jpeg, which is a lossy format that approximates certain colors, instead of a lossless format like gif. In the past, saving a picture for a game that ran on older hardware or on mobile would have been preferred since the resulting file sizes would be smaller, and there was only so much storage on certain devices to work with. Just my thoughts when I initially saw it. Great tips in the video!
The "banding" example... they were not really about banding at all but rather a particular style of Shading. Both spheres where showing banding, but one with a way softer ambient light, the other with a single directional light. Gradients: There are many good uscases for gradients, but that normally requires some in-depth knowledge and mostly used in conjunction with pallet-swaps. They can for example be used for very nice dynamic lighting or for simple texture-animations. Dithering... No, simply no. That was not about excessive dithering but just using a poor procedural dithering without giving the tool the necessary information. One of my favourite example of dithering: Final Fantasy 9 - it is used to simulate transparency and gives a really nice effect.
In the first sphere, it honestly looked less like a sphere and more like four discs strung together. Arguably using a 1px-thick line for *both* transitional colours in the second sphere looked odd din its own right, but it was more obviously a sphere than the first example.
I feel like gradients work nicely for background layers, giving a sort of smoothness to the sky, or allowing a really pretty marbling for sunsets But for individual sprites, gradients just don't have enough _room_ most of the time
Cara, só notei que você era português na hora de você mostrar os sprites dos jogadores de futebol e falar os nomes dos criadores. Seu inglês é ESPETACULAR parabéns mesmo pela sua arte incrível e ótimas dicas. Abraços brasileiros
Me before clicking on video: I'm just gonna skip throughout the video to see what the mistakes are then click a different video Me after clicking video: becomes invested in the video and actually watches the whole thing and pays attention to it
A comment I would like to add on this when it comes to people saying but you can do these things. It reminds me a lot of what I learned at my school which was mainly the basics of all media production and rights (well almost). They taught us to not just learn the basic rules but to breathe them. When the understadning of basic rules becomes second nature, only then you'll understand when and how to break them to your own benefit. It's not 100% how it always is and should be, but is solid thing to follow if you're new to something
Interesting fact, pixel art was originally designed to not be viewed as harsh pixels or even square pixels since CRT TVs color traids the 90s were not square and often had scanlines between them. Many old games like Golden Axe actually look *worse* in today's pixel style than they did in the 90s because of our transition to LEDs.That's why many emulators have filters available and some of those attempt to replicate the quirks of CRT TVs. Modern pixel art is an adaptation to our new displays.
It really depended on the system. Various systems had different monitors (compare TVs to computer monitors) and graphics output, with some having really "blurry" graphics while other had quite sharp pixels.
Great video for people getting into it. I find this fascinating because whilst all of these are great starting points all of these rules can be broken if you know what you are doing. And yes I mean all. I feel like often newcomers really want to write a novel but don't realise that they need to be able to write a sentence first.
When I was in middle school and first starting highschool I loved drawing pixel art on ms paint or gimp. I like this video and found out now I really didn't many of these mistakes so I must not have done half bad lol
Yeah some of this is very subjective. There was an era where even 32bit pixel art was used. It doesn't mean bad, just a stylistic choice. Not everything needs to look like 8bit or 16bit art.
Tip regarding Mistake Number 3: consider having your game setup around a 360x640 resolution (that is, the game screen is 360 pixels tall, 640 pixels wide). That gives a Widescreen setup that also cleanly scales into most modern screens: 720p is 2x, 1080p is 3x, 1440p is 4x, and 2160 is 6x This also gives you a lot more room onscreen than the older SNES and Genesis games (224px tall), but is still much less than Standard Definition on things like Playstation 2 (480px tall)
Watched this on a whim thinking I wouldn’t learn anything new but I did. Thank you for posting this, I will be using this as reference material for myself and friends seeking advice.
Thanks for this! I honestly didn't even know that you could mess up with dithering that bad, and now I'm seeing quite a lot of flaws in my work which I feel like I should've noticed sooner
I realized I kept squinting my eyes nearly shut while watching this and it took me a second to understand why... seeing pixel art scaled up to such a huge size in youtube (while fullscreen especially) makes it hard to see the characters, it looks like a collection of squares. So I was kind of blurring my vision to give 'fake shading'. A nicer solution is to ctrl+mousewheel down a few times, shrink the YT video to a small size within the browser, and suddenly all the artwork makes sense.
Because you're not understanding the actual way it will look once you zoom out the characters to normal scale. The second one will read much better at actual scale.
The fighter at 8:20, you praise "capcom" the middle one, for its "correct" lighting, pointing out specifically how you think the pants are better. The pants on that frame are the worst of the three though. The problem with the one on the left is the contrast is too high. Capcoms has very little contrast, and very little shading. The left one show far more detail and is well done. It's just out of place in any outdoor naturally lit scene.
first of all, I was caught off guard by that "palette" second, gradients can look good on certain stuff, just it's got very few uses, like for example if you're going for something like a string ir something but you don't wanna make it flat and broing you can add a little bit of a gradient at the ends, I find that makes it look more visually interesting
What annoys me with "today's" pixel art is the lack of antialiasing. That's something that you were rarely encountering in arcade games for several reasons (crap CRT's + the fact you weren't paying as much attention), but that was *key* on computers. To me, the masters of pixel art are/were the Bitmap Brothers. Of course at that time everyone was dreaming of a higher res & more colors, hence hand-drawn antialiasing, and what you would call excessive use of dithering. Yet, it is still the best pixel art in my book, and I prefer it over self-satisfied artwork where pixels are too visible. Of course, one might argue that what the Bitmap Brothers were doing, today they would go for high-res cartoonish style, a bit like the visual remake of Spelunky. Still, when you take a look at games of the Amiga era, you'll see quality & detail that you rarely see today. Today's pixel art is certainly more artsy & original, but it's too self-satisfied, IMHO pixel art is about handcrafted art using pixels, it's not about *seeing* the pixels. Yeah it has its charm, a bit like Sierra's old AGI style has its charm, but it's pompous when seeing the pixels is seen as the form of art, where it's just a way to to speed up the workload.
I do a lot of hand-drawn antialiasing. The main challenge is finding a balance between too little and too much, especially if you're shooting for a true retro (no alpha transparency) look, in which case antialiasing between objects and what falls behind them is a no-go, since it would require semi-transparent pixels to achieve that... This is why too much can look bad, as it will create a strange look - lots of blending on the inside of the stroke and none on the outside. Very unpleasant to look at - so this should not be overdone.
@@Tim.Hammer But I don't think that sprites with an alpha channel go against pixel art. Even technically, color-keying is a thing of the past, so even just for efficiency most likely an engine would better use an alpha channel anyway. But in the past, artists generally had an idea of the darkness of backgrounds and generally it was fine, only sometimes passing a sprite looked bad passing over a bright sky. There are also other reasons to do every sprite with an alpha channel, and transparency was sometimes used in old games.
@@anothergol Of course. Not denying any of that. In fact, I've used mostly dark backgrounds myself as a way around that. I prefer to avoid transparency also for optimization purposes.
Not an artist myself. I think the last one was the most eye-opening for me: The fact that that guy with the shotgun at 13:12 is just 110 pixels tall is really a bit mind-boggling to me.
I think a far better tip is awareness and consistency of techniques. Don't be afraid of certain versions but, whatever route you take be consistent with it. Unless the point is to be inconsistent.... Don't be afraid to try things, experiment with creating rulesets to follow. If you find something you like, go for it.
and even then, artists should take into consideration the surface normals much like in this awesome example from pixeljoint's tutorial i.imgur.com/PbL6ZBg.png
You: "Cartoonish pixel art is the only correct pixel art". Bruh, back off the gatekeeping. There's plenty of visually great games that make some of these "mistakes".
@@PatrickKellyLoneCoder pixelart is a popular entry point for digital artists, some of which walk into it without art fundamentals. Keeping these pitfalls at bay is a way to help artists learn about the fundamentals without creating a cripling muscle memory. And while all techniques are valid, some are very hard to implement correctly like pillow shading, for example, or gradients.
Awesome video! I knew about most of these to varying degrees subconsciously, or some I never attempted. Having the examples really helped it all sink in! Thanks
video: *shows some pixel art as an example*
me: "wow that looks cool"
video: *this is an example of what NOT to do*
me: "oh"
me to banding and shading lmao
Honestly that's the problem with videos like this, saying that some methods are objectively bad. Sure, technicality is objective, but whether art is good or not is subjective.
I think doing mistakes like those don't prevent you from being good, but from being better
yea lol
@@lukealias1uk345 better in what regard, the binding of isaac makes all of these "mistakes" would you consider that game to look bad or cheep or poorly made? the value of the art is not determined by dumb rules set up by other artists. the value of art is set by the full product and it's perception amongst it's consumers. however i understand the need to teach these rules to beginners that are looking to enter the workforce because it is what is expected it will not necessarily make you "better" and no one should be afraid to use these techniques if they believe it would improve the final product.
"Gradients . . . no . . . just don't." Haha I love it!
specifically smooth ones
Though correctly and rarely used they can be used for some quite interesting, eye catching effects.
Gradients can look good too! But it really depends on the style of the game, it just shouldn't look out of placd
Hyper light drifter Joins the chat
Don't know what I would have done in Flash circa. 2003 without using gradients.
Why did it took me so many years to realise why mari0 has so few scaling options and why you can't correctly fullscreen it on a 1080p monitor
Same for me with a different game.
Pizza Tower has 3 scaling options (1080p, h1080p, q1080p), and if you try to fullscreen it on a 1366x768 monitor, it looks bad-ish. Especially the text in the manual.
I think that was the fist thing I noticed after 3 seconds when activating the first emulator of my life.
The fake Metroid game am2r can't be properly scaled to 1080p
Same with the first Risk of Rain game, some resolutions look awful or it just doesn't scale
@@bland9876 "fake Metroid" ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
I feel like one more should be added: dont "rotate" pixel art graphics.
Yes, one of the seven deadly sins
In some cases I prefer rotated graphics, like character hand when aiming, or objects with physics. But it's more of a game thing, you absolutely shouldn't rotate in your drawing software
Came here to post this. Related to the size continuity, your pixels should only exist on a pixel grid. Sprite based hardware could rotate, but it looked choppy as hell. Sonic Mania did a good job of recreating this effect.
What about simulated Mode 7 effects?
Just be sure to rotate the object BEFORE scaling (I just keep everything at 100%, then scale the framebuffer when rendering).
Er, I think this is debatable. What about games like Towerfall? Rotating arrows is necessary unless you want to create countless variations of arrows at various angles.
"Stretching and rotating sprites isnt sprite animation, its flash that looks uncomfortable"
Starfy!!!
@@sansaraee :3
The only time that has ever looked good was when it was done in Mode 7 or the Sega equivalent.
@@Dargonhuman Hhhhhhh
They are both valuable tools. While I agree that the lazy method (diagonal/stretched pixels) looks ugly, that doesn't mitigate the fact that pixel rotation is a valid option. Just respect the grid.
While I agree with the overshading argument, I think it can look kinda interesting in some cases.
Overshading in a way displays the skill of the artist and can make interesting art styles. But usually when begginers do it, they lack the control or restrain to keep it from looking blurry.
@@MarcoValeKaz They look good when using real scale on HD screens, small characters on large play field.
the overshaded character will look sharp and shiny 3D-like.
@@MarcoValeKaz A good example of that is Sonic Mania. Where it does look like it was quite a lot of shading, but if you inspect the color palette of the character, it shows that they make sure the color are limited to 24 palettes, for instance for Sonic, the shading of the eyes is actually use the same palette for white object on his glove, but because it's blend with his blue color, it almost like it was overshading even though it was use the same palette as the gloves.
Like other things on the list, this completely depends on the style of the game and the reasoning behind it. I think he got a little too "black and white" in his arguments. Sometimes there are good reasons to shade more, use gradients, etc... The most important thing is to keep the style consistent for each project, so that the art doesn't conflict throughout...
The new Minecraft textures are overshaded.
The heart at 4:30 annoyed me so much by just looking at it
Triggered and angry rn
and 1:08 ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
@@t4ky0n Yeah same
Same
also the pun at 4:50 "really close to my heart"
Oh, cool, I don't make any of those mistakes
I still draw like shit though
Yes, this is me
Same
its ok to draw in any quality
@@morgankasper5227 Inspirational
Neither do I. Well, I actually don't even do pixel art but that's another point.
I think overshadobg is just people trying to add in as much detail as possible in too little of a space
Yep, that was what I was thinking when I overshaded...
@@sansaraee overshading can look very good with experience to make it properly, so its not strictly bad
Yeah, no shit
@@lethauntic ? Someone’s got a stick up their ass...
@@lebendigesgespenst7669 a very sharp stick
literally everybody:
Minecraft skin makers: 9:52
Yeah. Ive noticed nowadays that these new bedrock skins its like 128x128 now or something. And the creators really overused it.
I really dislike those generic faces skins
I fucking hate overshaded minecraft skins and texture packs. Fucking keep it simple
@@raxo4009 They are just 64×64
oop
"Don't use gradients in pixel art."
Hyper Light Drifter would like to have a word with you.
This video is more intended for beginners. The devopers or hyper light drifter are experienced enough that they can both bend the rules and make an art direction out of it. But yes, gradients can be used. Just make sure to steer away from them when you are staring to avoid solving shading with a basic gradient
@@MarcoValeKaz Welp, I really didn't expect you to reply to my honestly tongue-in-cheek joke comment. But it is cool to see a UA-camr staying on top of things like comments, especially if they're assisting in expanding others' knowledge by doing so.
@@ZarHakkar you make a valid point
Nice profile pic!
@@curse7469
Hell yeah boyee!
"The transition from the light side to the dark side is a little harsher."
I mean, the high ground scene was somewhat harsh tho...
@@asmylia9880 I have a timelapse of a "Force awakens" mockup in my channel!
My dad said there was a book where Luke Skywalker became a Sith because he learned everything he could by being a Jedi so that was the only way he could learn more about the force
Read this exactly as he said that XD
@@bland9876 Could you get a title? I'd like to see if my local library has it.
Point about banding: real life lighting isn't that simple. The type of lighting you described applies mostly to open areas with a single light source. Most of the time real lighting is way more diffuse because it bounces off multiple surfaces, specially indoors, it is not that common to see objects with a well-defined shadow line. I much prefer SNK's sprites as they feel more solid and dynamic, Capcom's look bland and flat.
Much more important: If you draw sprites banded like that, you're giving the programmers an amazing tool to create beautiful dynamic lighting effects by manipulating the pallete colors of the character.
Real life is not that simple, but also the academic method is not 100% true to life. Its a gradual process. In my course I teach both the direct light shading, and the adding of bunced light form the scene. But its a complex theme. The biggest issue is the banding, since if people use banding, they usually don't leave room for bounced light
yeah i was surprised at how he used snk's sprites as an example of "wrong". wtf? They're just less cartoony than capcom's.
@@GraveUypo the original snk sprites are used as an example of banding done right, and of how they solved it, and the capcom is an example of the core-shadow grouping.
@@MarcoValeKaz ok, then
@@MarcoValeKaz Oh, I came away from the video thinking you were using the SNK sprites as an example of what not to do. That surprised me, since I thought they did it much better.
Overshading...
Mario Kart pixel fanartists: *chuckles* I’m in trouble.
zippee playZ danger*
@@QS1597 chaos*
In which a professional pixel artist doesn't know how to pronounce "Palette"
(All in good fun. Very good tips.)
pAlette or palEtte ?
PaLETTE... Makes me cringe.
@@pgtd
I always said it as PAL-IT. I've never heard PUH-LET until this video.
*Accent and how pronounce it doesn't really matter. But for professional you should try to pronounce it correctly*
The word is originally French, and has gone through several iterations of meaning. Pronunciation at this point is entirely moot, especially since the way he's pronouncing it still clearly indicates what the word is without confusing it for any other.
saving the image as a jpeg
So png is better?
Tahm Kench On Top yes
@@shagarakar I always confuse the two lol. Thx
@@mattontop Yes. Png supports transparency and jpeg doesnt. And sometimes jpeg has bad compresion.
@@oscwavcommentaccount oh k. I knew one of them supported transparent backround and the other didnt. Thx for the help
the 150% scale mario looks like he's seen some shit
I don't even do pixel art but felt like this grilled me.
12:53 "You did not get the point of pixel art."
Pun intended? Haha
A lot of these came naturally to me over time but I still learned a lot. The excessive shading one especially used to be a pitfall I would fall into.
Honestly, one of the best videos about pixel art that I have ever seen. A real eye opener.
This is fantastic! As a pixel artist myself I taught myself all of these when I first began years and years ago and anytime I play a pixelart game these things pop out to me and in most cases are a red flag! Like you said; It's not that the games are necessarily "bad", but rather they could have been rushed, or more likely, they simply don't know any better.
If I may point out another mistake: "Overuse of Black Borders". I find too many amateur pixel artists use black borders exclusively rather than an appropriate complimenting color. Black borders are fine in a lot of cases, but after you're done doing the art, take a moment to replace the black with other colors, see how it looks. Take the skin tone color and darken it by 20% and use that, see how it looks. Same with armor tones, etc.
Fun fact: the rules change if you are making a different kind of game
Mfw I used to pillow shade
Mfw I now use banding
I wish that every 10-yo on Scratch could see this video.
Same with most Minecraft skin makers.
Most of them are overdetailed to all hell.
Do you know how the editor on Scratch works? Some of these can’t be fixed on Scratch.
RandomRows
They can
I import sprites and they're fine.
The fact that i gave up on scratch to do pixel arts is awkward af
As a side note to do with "defining a light source", historically in classical art training you would set the light source (the sun as default) as if it were coming from the top left unless there was a good reason to do otherwise (probably something to do with where the sun rises and sets or something like that). Similarly, when moving a character you move them from left to right to indicate moving forward in time and travelling to a place over some time (and from bottom to top in the same way), again, unless you have a specific good reason for doing otherwise. This is probably why almost every 2D platform game has you moving left to right--it just feels right. Moving right to left would indicate travelling back to somewhere you came from and/or back in time as it were.
Incidentally, the "natural" direction of progress varies from culture to culture-or more precisely, from writing system to writing system. For instance, Japanese has traditionally been written from right to left (though Western writing direction is also common these decades), so Japanese visual media often treats left as forward instead of right. There are exceptions, of course, but there are also Western games where progress is to the left-they're just less well-known and influential than Super Mario Bros.
@@timothymclean Yeah, I imagine that's the case in some examples. I haven't actually seen many games where going left is the norm personally.
Did this video got recommended just for that minute about terry?
Yes
IMFERMO yes...
Scott Pilgrim-
VS ZA WARUDO!
I like Super Mario World’s pixel art. It doesn’t have any specific lighting but the style of game makes it work.
Common voice recording mistakes:
1) Too much low-end that muddies up the speech
2) Not enough sibilance frequencies which impedes clarity
3) No compression, making low dynamics difficult to hear
Thats actually very helpful! Ill be mindful of that in the next video. Thank you
Chris you should do a video about them! please!
@@ShinyShilla There are hundreds already. Do a quick search and you'll find just so, so many.
@@ChrisHanline Sorry for the spam, the websited kept saying my comment was not submitted due to an error! I'm saddened you would not like the idea of a tutorial :( I'll search some online
4) Saying Pa-let
I like your style in explaining. Other youtubers and people just do a bad job and talk about of topic things.
I can’t be the only one who thought the overshaded Knight dude looked way better than the less-shaded one, right?
you are
no I think so too
🍿🥤
You are
yes
a lot of these are "here's one style of pixel art" but sometimes people want filtered styles, for example
I Learned a Lot like 8/10 of these are new ground to me. THANK YO
The pillow shading bit definitely explained why some of my pixel art is trash
Another thing to add in:
Try and make both a monochrome and a colored version of your sprite. Look at them both and say "does my sprite show what it is just through black and white", if yes, look at your colors and make sure that they compliment the sprites general form and read-ability. If no, adjust the shape to be easier to read and then repeat the process.
I like banding more than clumping them together
Nomuber 2: Atari 2600 wants to know your location.
Lack of size continuity was baked in to it's hardware, the background layer pixels were different sizes to the sprite pixels.
I like how he pronounces palette like paulet. Like, "My name was Paul. But now I'm Paulette."
Just got started w/Aseprite a few weeks ago, thanks so much for this stuff it's really helpful when you're a total beginner.
“Mistake“ one is wierd. There's nothing wrong with good filters that aim for the crtv look. old school games never looked that pixely on their hardware to begin with.
I have to agree, I look at a lot of pixel art games, and they never looked like that in the old school days, so it's one thing to want to have that pixel art look of the past but at least they should give it the kind of look for how we remembered them on crt screens but on lcd screen and to me, a lot of pixal art games look even worse then what I remember many games of the past looking like.
Most of the filters aren't good though, and cause clipping along the edges of the sprite. Old CRTs may have added a bit of subtle blur, but the blur is more akin to FXAA than texture filtering (and I'd highly recommend checking out this difference, in fact - if you play an old sprite-heavy game like Doom, for example, with texture filtering? Looks awful, like everything is plastic... but with an overall screen softening effect from FXAA or the like, it looks softer without looking necessarily blurry)
@@NicholasBrakespear True there are some bad attempts out there to recreate the crtv -look. But also some very good yet rather hardware hungry solutions. When I play old arcade games on mame I always use some crtv-filters. My eyes just can't watch them pixelated. It simply feels wrong. Some new filters really look astonishingly correct. At least when I compare it with my memories. You even get a headache from watching it like in the good old days ;) There are many new great looking clean pixel art games around. One contemporary example is Blasphemous or Blazing Chrome. But those games were usually designed with superior modern hardware power in mind and make up with effects that wouldn't have been possible on real 16-Bit machines. With this kind of artwork I don't miss any filter at all. It is good as it is. To make a long thing short: It can go both ways and look cool. By the way guys! Check out The Last Door. It is such a great example of what you can do with minimalistic pixel graphics and good sound design.
@@NicholasBrakespear This is the right answer. It's texture filtering that is the mistake, not "filtering" in general.
The fact that texture filtering is on by default in Gzdoom is maddening.
Even if you are using RGB cables with professional quality CRT monitors, old games don't have that sharp and starkly colored look that many indie games have today. That's not to say its a bad look, and you could argue its more fitting for modern LCD displays. However, it is less truly retro than many people think.
In the case of modern pixel art, games tend to look sharper without any additional filters applied.
I agree with most of these, but a few of these seem more like stylistic choices that you just don't like rather than things that actually look bad or amateurish.
No, these are all well established rules and best practices for doing sprite art correctly. Only truly great pixel artists should be ignoring/breaking these rules.
Almost threw up at that gradient art lol
So... I'm a amateur... and I'm really thankfull to you for this video, not only because I as an amateur found that other people has the same problem as me with pillowshading and with the shading and lights definition, but also because this is a help to someone like me, color blind
Gradients very rarely can look good, usually on barrel shaped objects. You still need to apply shading for it to fit in. Conclusion: Gradients are not a form of shading, but instead a way of displaying the shape of an object if needed.
3:00
150% Mario is mood
9:28 That voice change tho... xD was awasome!
The picture you clicked on to get to this video is a good example of someone saving the model as a jpeg, which is a lossy format that approximates certain colors, instead of a lossless format like gif. In the past, saving a picture for a game that ran on older hardware or on mobile would have been preferred since the resulting file sizes would be smaller, and there was only so much storage on certain devices to work with. Just my thoughts when I initially saw it. Great tips in the video!
The "banding" example... they were not really about banding at all but rather a particular style of Shading.
Both spheres where showing banding, but one with a way softer ambient light, the other with a single directional light.
Gradients:
There are many good uscases for gradients, but that normally requires some in-depth knowledge and mostly used in conjunction with pallet-swaps. They can for example be used for very nice dynamic lighting or for simple texture-animations.
Dithering... No, simply no.
That was not about excessive dithering but just using a poor procedural dithering without giving the tool the necessary information.
One of my favourite example of dithering: Final Fantasy 9 - it is used to simulate transparency and gives a really nice effect.
In the first sphere, it honestly looked less like a sphere and more like four discs strung together. Arguably using a 1px-thick line for *both* transitional colours in the second sphere looked odd din its own right, but it was more obviously a sphere than the first example.
I feel like gradients work nicely for background layers, giving a sort of smoothness to the sky, or allowing a really pretty marbling for sunsets
But for individual sprites, gradients just don't have enough _room_ most of the time
our computer sciences teacher didn't actually know how to filter sprites. I had to figure it out myself.
Cara, só notei que você era português na hora de você mostrar os sprites dos jogadores de futebol e falar os nomes dos criadores. Seu inglês é ESPETACULAR parabéns mesmo pela sua arte incrível e ótimas dicas. Abraços brasileiros
PERAI ELE É BRASILEIRO?!
Me before clicking on video: I'm just gonna skip throughout the video to see what the mistakes are then click a different video
Me after clicking video: becomes invested in the video and actually watches the whole thing and pays attention to it
Pillow shading, aaaaah. Pretty much the only time it ever makes sense is in flames or the sun that are light sources themselves.
A comment I would like to add on this when it comes to people saying but you can do these things. It reminds me a lot of what I learned at my school which was mainly the basics of all media production and rights (well almost). They taught us to not just learn the basic rules but to breathe them. When the understadning of basic rules becomes second nature, only then you'll understand when and how to break them to your own benefit. It's not 100% how it always is and should be, but is solid thing to follow if you're new to something
I love how u present mistake number 7 ^^
Interesting fact, pixel art was originally designed to not be viewed as harsh pixels or even square pixels since CRT TVs color traids the 90s were not square and often had scanlines between them. Many old games like Golden Axe actually look *worse* in today's pixel style than they did in the 90s because of our transition to LEDs.That's why many emulators have filters available and some of those attempt to replicate the quirks of CRT TVs. Modern pixel art is an adaptation to our new displays.
It really depended on the system. Various systems had different monitors (compare TVs to computer monitors) and graphics output, with some having really "blurry" graphics while other had quite sharp pixels.
I quite like the way pixel art characters seem to pull faces when you scale them 😋😝😲😆
I liked that you gave a practical solution for point #1 - nice
there are no mistakes. just happy accidents.
Great video for people getting into it. I find this fascinating because whilst all of these are great starting points all of these rules can be broken if you know what you are doing. And yes I mean all. I feel like often newcomers really want to write a novel but don't realise that they need to be able to write a sentence first.
I'll keep this in mind when I don't do any pixel art soon
When I was in middle school and first starting highschool I loved drawing pixel art on ms paint or gimp.
I like this video and found out now I really didn't many of these mistakes so I must not have done half bad lol
"It's not like you can just pull dithering out of your - you know, out of your pocket"
7:50
The "mistake" looks better than the "solution"
no
it does though
@@aliasmcgames in cartoons light doesn't need to be perfect
true
That ship is exceptional.
Why am I watching this - I dont even make pixel art lmao
Same
The Eye of the Critic has been bestowed upon you. You won't be able to play your next pixel art game normally
@@PabbyPabbles oh no
I like pixel art with shading. But I also like pixelart without shading.
Sometimes basic looks awesome.
I actually prefer the 'overshaded' one to the 'fixed' version. I don't know, there's just something about it that appeals to me.
because that's how 16 bit games used to be shaded like. it does look better.
Same, It's the only rule I don't agree with, and his reasons against it are quite subjective.
Yeah some of this is very subjective. There was an era where even 32bit pixel art was used. It doesn't mean bad, just a stylistic choice. Not everything needs to look like 8bit or 16bit art.
It looks like a gba game
Tip regarding Mistake Number 3: consider having your game setup around a 360x640 resolution (that is, the game screen is 360 pixels tall, 640 pixels wide). That gives a Widescreen setup that also cleanly scales into most modern screens: 720p is 2x, 1080p is 3x, 1440p is 4x, and 2160 is 6x
This also gives you a lot more room onscreen than the older SNES and Genesis games (224px tall), but is still much less than Standard Definition on things like Playstation 2 (480px tall)
"Palette" is pronounced like "pallet". Short A, not short U
The "Paulette"
I personally spell it "palette" and not pallet
It. Depends. On. Where. You. Live.
People can pronounce things differently.
@@RyanTosh nope
@@kaizobit-gaming8485 You do realize I was using "pallet" as a pronunciation example, yes?
Watched this on a whim thinking I wouldn’t learn anything new but I did. Thank you for posting this, I will be using this as reference material for myself and friends seeking advice.
Hey, really like you content! Where are you from?
I'm from Portugal
Thanks for this! I honestly didn't even know that you could mess up with dithering that bad, and now I'm seeing quite a lot of flaws in my work which I feel like I should've noticed sooner
I realized I kept squinting my eyes nearly shut while watching this and it took me a second to understand why... seeing pixel art scaled up to such a huge size in youtube (while fullscreen especially) makes it hard to see the characters, it looks like a collection of squares. So I was kind of blurring my vision to give 'fake shading'. A nicer solution is to ctrl+mousewheel down a few times, shrink the YT video to a small size within the browser, and suddenly all the artwork makes sense.
Didn't expect to see Terry in a 2018 video
10:07 i like the overshading more then the smooth one...
idk his face kinda looks like porridge
@@tomh2572 indeed
Because you're not understanding the actual way it will look once you zoom out the characters to normal scale. The second one will read much better at actual scale.
thank you for #10, that has always been a point of contention with me, its not pixel art if all you did was turn AA off
Even though shading using "banding" is technically less accurate, it still looks really good as an aesthetic
The fighter at 8:20, you praise "capcom" the middle one, for its "correct" lighting, pointing out specifically how you think the pants are better. The pants on that frame are the worst of the three though. The problem with the one on the left is the contrast is too high. Capcoms has very little contrast, and very little shading. The left one show far more detail and is well done. It's just out of place in any outdoor naturally lit scene.
You mentioned the left the capcom one, and the other left
This is great advice not only for beginners but it’s good to be reminded about these things even as a professional
I dont even do pixel art so why did I watch the whole vid
procastination
HempLemming I feel personally attacked
Maybe try it and you might like it bro
I'm just starting pixel art as a hobby, and this video will really help me a lot! Tnx!
Had a suspicion from your name that you were Portuguese, the "pixeis" at 4:56 confirmed it hahah. Great video!
first of all, I was caught off guard by that "palette"
second, gradients can look good on certain stuff, just it's got very few uses, like for example if you're going for something like a string ir something but you don't wanna make it flat and broing you can add a little bit of a gradient at the ends, I find that makes it look more visually interesting
What annoys me with "today's" pixel art is the lack of antialiasing. That's something that you were rarely encountering in arcade games for several reasons (crap CRT's + the fact you weren't paying as much attention), but that was *key* on computers. To me, the masters of pixel art are/were the Bitmap Brothers. Of course at that time everyone was dreaming of a higher res & more colors, hence hand-drawn antialiasing, and what you would call excessive use of dithering. Yet, it is still the best pixel art in my book, and I prefer it over self-satisfied artwork where pixels are too visible.
Of course, one might argue that what the Bitmap Brothers were doing, today they would go for high-res cartoonish style, a bit like the visual remake of Spelunky. Still, when you take a look at games of the Amiga era, you'll see quality & detail that you rarely see today. Today's pixel art is certainly more artsy & original, but it's too self-satisfied, IMHO pixel art is about handcrafted art using pixels, it's not about *seeing* the pixels. Yeah it has its charm, a bit like Sierra's old AGI style has its charm, but it's pompous when seeing the pixels is seen as the form of art, where it's just a way to to speed up the workload.
I do a lot of hand-drawn antialiasing. The main challenge is finding a balance between too little and too much, especially if you're shooting for a true retro (no alpha transparency) look, in which case antialiasing between objects and what falls behind them is a no-go, since it would require semi-transparent pixels to achieve that... This is why too much can look bad, as it will create a strange look - lots of blending on the inside of the stroke and none on the outside. Very unpleasant to look at - so this should not be overdone.
@@Tim.Hammer But I don't think that sprites with an alpha channel go against pixel art. Even technically, color-keying is a thing of the past, so even just for efficiency most likely an engine would better use an alpha channel anyway.
But in the past, artists generally had an idea of the darkness of backgrounds and generally it was fine, only sometimes passing a sprite looked bad passing over a bright sky.
There are also other reasons to do every sprite with an alpha channel, and transparency was sometimes used in old games.
@@anothergol Of course. Not denying any of that. In fact, I've used mostly dark backgrounds myself as a way around that. I prefer to avoid transparency also for optimization purposes.
Ok boomer
Not an artist myself. I think the last one was the most eye-opening for me: The fact that that guy with the shotgun at 13:12 is just 110 pixels tall is really a bit mind-boggling to me.
_nobody_ pronounces "palette" like that...
He's Portuguese, so, he probably just mispronounced it unknowingly.
@@GumSkyloard good to know, thank you
I mean he does...
@@aubreyh1930 Idiolects notwithstanding
@@error.418 part of it might be his accent which he can’t exactly help
I think a far better tip is awareness and consistency of techniques. Don't be afraid of certain versions but, whatever route you take be consistent with it. Unless the point is to be inconsistent.... Don't be afraid to try things, experiment with creating rulesets to follow. If you find something you like, go for it.
Just dropping my comment before this hits the algorithm hard
It is midnight for me, I have a test tomorrow and I have nothing to do with pixelart, why I watch this? No fucking clue, but great video mate
Every time he say puh-let instead of palette it makes me die a little inside
As someone who loves making pixel art, this was very informative. Thank you
I don't do any kind of pixel art, but I'm still glad to be watching this.
Marco: Hope you all learned something. Take care. Have fun!
Me: Alright! Let's go make some mistakes!
Your audio has too much bass, lower it down, please.
So funny, I'm friends with Mark and didn't expect the name drop. I'm going to link this to him.
I have had the privilege to have Mark like two of my tweets and that just made me hugely happy
Have you never heard the word "palette" out loud before?
Different accents exist
pillow shading should only be used if the light source is actually where the camera is
and even then, artists should take into consideration the surface normals much like in this awesome example from pixeljoint's tutorial
i.imgur.com/PbL6ZBg.png
You: "Cartoonish pixel art is the only correct pixel art". Bruh, back off the gatekeeping. There's plenty of visually great games that make some of these "mistakes".
The video focuses on begginer mistakes. More experienced pixel artist are able to avoid or even bend these 10 concepts in their favor
@@MarcoValeKaz but then the concept in general isn't a mistake, rather there's a mistake in it's implementation, which is the real issue.
@@PatrickKellyLoneCoder pixelart is a popular entry point for digital artists, some of which walk into it without art fundamentals. Keeping these pitfalls at bay is a way to help artists learn about the fundamentals without creating a cripling muscle memory. And while all techniques are valid, some are very hard to implement correctly like pillow shading, for example, or gradients.
Awesome video! I knew about most of these to varying degrees subconsciously, or some I never attempted.
Having the examples really helped it all sink in! Thanks
I'm a fresh beginner in pixelart and I learned a lot by this ^^ Thank you
Cool! Im also a quite fresh but i just paint for fun. Tho im planning to make games with my pixel art.
its okay to give things shadeing