Many people hold pixel art in low regard because they think it's either all:
Just a pixel-by-pixel copy of some image found on the internet, or
Done by a bot and/or automated tool
Well, I thought that there is still room for creativity and skill in pixel art. So I decided to challenge the stereotype by creating my pixelart from a vector reference, manually pixelating it, and building it all by hand. Pixelating ended up taking about 3 hours...
(click for full size).
First I created a Minecraft block-color palette for Photoshop to simplify conversion a bit. Simple conversion produced pitiful results. I tried gamma correction (matching Minecraft's white block to image's white), and it was a bit better. The dither gave it that ugly botted look though. Removing the dither, it looked better. But all the outlines were still crooked, and colors were dulled. So I ended up manually merging three palette conversions, done at different gammas, and spent another hour editing it by hand.
After that, it was just a lot of patient block clicking, with only slight changes to the reference. The whole project took about 8 hours. And I think it's totally worth it.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 11th, 2011, 11:38 am
by Shintengin
Amazing.!, pixelart takes alot of patience, and creativity,
15/10 on a 10 scale.!
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 11th, 2011, 8:11 pm
by Fehzor
Nice! I never have the patience to follow a template, or do anything before hand... my 1 (good) pixel art is the eyes on my world, and I just halfway made that up as I went along.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 12th, 2011, 8:30 pm
by PyroPyro
Great work as always and thanks for the Photoshop palette i was looking for that.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 13th, 2011, 8:11 am
by Intertoothh
Pyro, why does your avatar reminds me of tankgirl
Good movie tho.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 13th, 2011, 9:14 pm
by PyroPyro
Intertoothh wrote:Pyro, why does your avatar reminds me of tankgirl
Good movie tho.
Well it looks kinda like her, but i just found this randomy on the net... But i love Tank girl! <3
> Good movie tho.
No, a bad movie... you need to see the comic!
also sorry for the offtopic talk fragmer ._.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 15th, 2011, 12:33 am
by lucky_pierre
Going right back off topic;
Never read Tank Girl, but now I'm going to because of that "Charlie don't surf" on her helmet.
That is pretty excellent.
The last 3 pieces mentioned in this thread have now been lost due to Lim's backup fuckup.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 20th, 2011, 9:31 pm
by Lim-Dul
Hey, the Backup system didn't work at the time of the Plesk update due to our guest system being moved to a new host machine.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 20th, 2011, 10:18 pm
by KingCrab
fragmer wrote:The last 3 pieces mentioned in this thread have now been lost due to Lim's backup fuckup.
Most everyone lost something. My pixelart was lost, Ollie and others lost Imperial City. Almost every personal world was lost.
Ah well, Shit happens sometimes
P.S.: If you have a world in which you wanna save and use WOM, from this day forth I suggest using the "Dump Level" feature for WOM.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: September 26th, 2011, 1:00 pm
by fragmer
I'll be remaking the pieces I lost. One out of three done already.
Edit: 2 out of 3 redone
Edit: all redone!
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: October 18th, 2011, 11:45 pm
by VocalizedBoar
I stalked fragmer for a few hours and made this sub-par time lapse of him building. Feel free to criticize my screenshot-taking skills. http://youtu.be/J0pwGCb-37I
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: October 19th, 2011, 4:52 pm
by fragmer
Thanks, VocalizedBoar, that was neat!
Meanwhile, I made another quick one. Colors didn't map to Minecraft's palette very well, but I did my best. (click images for full size)
Resurrecting the old thread. I'm finally getting around to finish the remaining two ponies (Rarity and Sweetie Bell). Rarity pixelation work in progress:
1) Original image. 2) Initial resizing / automated color matching.
3) Manual palette conversion, basic cleanup, dithering. 4) Final cleanup done.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: February 13th, 2012, 10:58 am
by fragmer
Finished!
Next, the last of the CMC, Sweetie Belle. Work in progress.
Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart
Posted: June 30th, 2012, 6:17 am
by fragmer
To give this thread some closure, I should probably say that I finished the mane six, the Crusaders, and Princess Celestia. You can check it out by joining "PixelPonies" map, or see final screenshots here.