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fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 11th, 2011, 2:58 am
by fragmer
Many people hold pixel art in low regard because they think it's either all:
  1. Just a pixel-by-pixel copy of some image found on the internet, or
  2. 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...

Image(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.
Image

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.
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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! :D

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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.

Now then, how 'bout them pixels?

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 15th, 2011, 2:13 am
by fragmer

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 15th, 2011, 5:59 am
by Shintengin
fragmer wrote:
Awww..That one's adorable.!
P.S You watch DeStorm on youtube? =P "Another day, another challenge"

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 15th, 2011, 7:57 pm
by PyroPyro
Oh god love the last one! Whats her name?
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Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 17th, 2011, 1:52 pm
by fragmer
Another one. Had to use 3 layers in places (white/black + water + shadow) to get that mane color.

Original. Initial conversion (didn't work so well). Finished reference (lots of manual work this time).

Final result (click for full size):
Image

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 17th, 2011, 2:14 pm
by fragmer
Another little one. Simpler than others, but still pretty fun to make. And yes, she's wearing full zipline gear.

Original. Initial conversion. Final reference image. Building process.

Aaaaand the result (click for full size):
Image

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 17th, 2011, 6:02 pm
by KingCrab
Are you taking requests for ponies we made? :D

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 17th, 2011, 6:24 pm
by fragmer
After I run out of main characters, sure :P

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 17th, 2011, 7:07 pm
by KingCrab
You should do Flint and Hitpony :D

Found Here: http://forum.fcraft.net/viewtopic.php?f ... 5&start=60

I can see a youtube video advertising fCraft with every person personified with a pony :D

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 19th, 2011, 9:25 pm
by fragmer
Next one, part 1: pixelating. Took about an hour. Original. Pixelated image.



Now, to actually build the thing...

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: September 20th, 2011, 7:37 pm
by fragmer
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)

Image

Image

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: October 20th, 2011, 10:48 am
by fragmer
Finished another one!

Original (huge image warning). Converted for pixelart (video of the process above). Building process.

Image

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: October 21st, 2011, 7:15 am
by Mozilra
Looks epic, and it's pretty big so 10/10

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: February 12th, 2012, 11:24 am
by fragmer
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.
ImageImage

3)
Manual palette conversion, basic cleanup, dithering. 4) Final cleanup done.
ImageImage

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 10:58 am
by fragmer
Image
Finished!


Next, the last of the CMC, Sweetie Belle. Work in progress.
Image

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: June 30th, 2012, 6:17 am
by fragmer
Image

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.

Re: fragmer's adventures in pixelart

Posted: June 30th, 2012, 7:09 am
by JustOnePanda
Very nice frag! :D