For a variety of reasons I wasn't practicing any drawing. I'd pop into the Lospec Discord and see what others were doing occassionally. Sometimes I'd just look through the site since there tends to be a lot more uploads to the site than people just participating in the daily challenges. For the last few weeks I've done pretty well with participating in the dailies or at least finding something to draw that interested me. I've been finding myself getting a little more particular if I don't like the pallete, but it does help to keep a routine.

Here's the dump of things I've drawn for the last few weeks. I'd like to get back to updating this more consistently because it helps to see progress and review the things I liked about my practice. I'll start with the stuff that was an effort to shake off the rust.

Brace your eyeballs. There's going to be a lot going on below. The subtext isn't really my own title, but likely the prompt for the day.

Crystal

Soul

Bat

Defense

Haunted

Candle

Cute

Goblin

Fort

Adventure

Owl

Extra practice - Sakura

More practice - Japanese Maple

Clue

Picnic

Small

Strength

Shake

Rebel

Evil

Water

River

Arena

Shoe

Scavenger

Musician

Obviously I'm happier with some more than others. I made the comment to someone else the other day how I might tend to attempt to capture reality before just using my imagination. That probably comes from the ease of finding a reference for what I'd like to do.

I've also gone on for far too long without making use of the dithering features available from the gradient tool in Aseprite. The gradient tool is available on the paint bucket and when you select it there's a drop down that will allow you to apply the gradient as dithering. Check out this video for a tutorial.

I've been feeling like I'm getting too rusty with my pixel art practice that I can't draw the assets I want for unity projects. I like to lurk around the Lospec Discord and I like the color pallette for the city daily challenge.

First effort

Trying to simplify

Trying some clouds again

Playing with something in the foreground

I've been piddling with this attempt to draw some classic marble sculpture. Decided to call it done enough today. I hope the shapes in the pixel art are visible enough to make out like the are in the sculpture. I was finding it difficult to ever be content with what I was drawing.

Here are some great tutorials from one of the artists that worked on Celeste: https://saint11.org/blog/pixel-art-tutorials/

I've slowed on following the daily prompts since I've been working more in Unity lately, and I need to create some art assets for the game jam.

Referenced from Japan

evil

night

ancient

Looking back at the last few things I worked on, I'm remembering my indecision when it comes to coming up with something subtle for the background that doesn't detract from the target of the drawing. Sometimes if I'm sticking with the theme, the color pallete makes it difficult to come up with a background. Sometimes when I'm feeling a little burnt out on one drawing, I might also get real lazy with the background.

I'm also considering increase the size of the canvas to try to draw some more with a higher resolution.

I've missed practicing more animation, but it's a lot more work and I ought to be putting that time towards the game jam.

Between practicing some more this weekend with the synths and spending more time during the week working in Unity, I didn't make much time for practicing pixel art. I still like checking in with the community to see what other people make, but I'm finding myself getting a lot pickier when I'm busy about whether or not to participate based on the day's color pallette and topic. Here's what I worked on this week.

simulation

statue

For the adventure game jam happening at the end of the month, they ask people to not work on assets prior to the jam, but you can reuse what you've made in the past. I suppose I shouldn't make something that specifically applies. I'm also not quite sure on the dimensions of what I'll have to work with to display some images in the text based adventure game, so I haven't tried to wrap my head around what I'll try to draw.

I'd like to practice more on character design, but it's nice having some of the thought process provided for you with a daily prompt and color pallette.

This week was a poor display of creativity, but here it is.

lake

river

egg

abstract

hack the planet

The abstract challenge is one of the worst things that I've ever had loop through in a GIF. This whole week I wasn't feeling terribly creative, but I just ran with that to finish something with the color pallete that was available for the day.

I've always wanted to create the glitch sort of effect that is so prominent in anything that revolves around hacking. I've also never been too happy with any attempt to recreate the biohazard symbol. A simple design that I seem to struggle to recreate. I was pretty happy with this random attempt to create something outside of the daily prompts that I've been following.

If the reference is lost on you and you have an hour and forty five minutes to spare, check out Hackers.

Something about this past week seemed busier than usual. No GIFs this week, although I do really enjoy working on them. Maybe I ought to incorporate a slight amount of movement. I was pretty happy with what I worked on this week, although I took a couple days off. I often found myself trying to wrap up what I was working on, so I'm not sure it would have left much time to animate. Seems like on each of these, they were taking an hour or longer before I was happy with them. I'm definitely finding the daily practice to make it a lot easier working with Aseprite. I've dialed in a lot of my core shortcuts and working with the stylus is feeling almost as comfortable as a mouse as a pointing device.

occult

dragon

steampunk

head

trail

I don't suppose I had more distractions than usual, but we're still catching up a bit from the vacation. This week was another lesson in calling something "done enough." Some challenges I do just want to crank out in 30 minutes, and others have an awesome topic that I'd like to devote more time towards, but I still haven't worked on much for game ideas. I think I'm still waiting to get better so I can be happy with the art assets I create, but I might just have to accept that they aren't going to be perfect and if continue learning, everything I do in the past is going to not be as good.

This week I didn't practice every day. I had some gaps where I'd try to revisit some of the prompts a few days later. I also didn't spend as much time on some of these, even though I really liked the topic.

I was pretty tickled with my take on the castle because I just rushed through it and wanted to accept the haphazard look of it. The egg challenge was tricky trying to animate something flipping towards the viewer. And the mushroom took more effort to think about the lightning than I typically do.

alchemy

egg

letter

castle

adventure

cozy

mushroom

I didn't get to do any drawing like I'd hoped while I was on vacation. I took some paper and pencils, and when the opportunity came up, I had forgotten to bring anything to the remote hotel. I didn't feel too rusty when I got home, and the last few days I've felt more willing to try things that extend beyond an immediate reference.

I was happy how the electronics challenge turned out even though I wasn't feeling motivated to work on anything when we first got back.

For the animated TV challenge I was feeling too lazy to do much more with the text, so that one was a little rushed. I really struggled with the jewel challenge even though I got up early to work on it. After seeing some other takes on the Jewel, I wanted to do a little more than just capture a jewel, even though I'd tried a few times prior with no success using the pallete and a reference. It was nice to practice some more simple particles, but it always takes me a whlie.

For the cloud, I wanted to try a gloomier take than just doing something similar to the last one. I would have been kinda happy to just do another bright sunny day, but that's one of the nice things about practicing and sharing in a public forum, sometimes you want to show other people that you've got more ideas.

TV

Fly

Cloud

Jewel

Another Idea for the TV challenge

Electronics

This week I spent a little more time exploring some techniques with GIFs. I wanted to apply some rain to the crime challenge, but ran out of time. I revisited the sculpture to add some fade in and fade out animations, just to see how tricky it was. Surprisingly easy if you just take time to think about patterns, and I'm sure you could get a lot more creative.

I was tickled to practice some clouds, since it's not the first time I've approached the subject and I cranked it out before work, so I was in a good mood with that. Could use some more detail, but it was fun.

I was a little more rushed and not terribly creative with the alien and letter. I often find that I'm not feeling creative enough to come up with an original idea and often have to lean on a reference. I still enjoy the pixel art practice, because I like considering color options and lighting.

The crime challenge was pretty fun since I looked at multiple references, although, I wish I could have added more detail. Maybe on the next scene that calls for rain, I'll try to add some animation. I saw in one of the Discord challenges mention of PureRef. It's a nice little lightweight tool that makes it real easy to consolidate references. I'm sure it has more utility to it that I'm not aware of, but it's worth checking out.

Sculpture

Letter

Crime

Alien

Clouds

This week turned out to be busier than I'd like and also included the Diablo IV open beta distraction. I'm finding that making time for pixel art is a lot easier than working in Unity after work. It's nice having a beginning and an end within an hour.

I'm still struggling with finding a good stopping point where I can call something done in a state where I'm happy with it, rather than erasing everything and starting over. The nice thing about having a daily limit on the subject is I'm forced to submit something rather than saving it for another day, which tends to be how my other projects go.

Every week I'm finding it a little easier to create something that I enjoy sharing.

Sand

Tree

Knight

Fossil

Tundra

I'm happy with my progress this week. I'm getting in the habit of taking time in the evenings to work on the dailies. Usually I'll look at the topic and the pallete for the day and then think about it throughout the day.

The statue pallete had a good range of colors to find an image at sunset and practice some more dithering. Before I joined some of the pixel art discord channels and started practicing on a regular basis, I really didn't care for dithering. After looking at other images and practicing more, I'm finding I appreciate it more, but it's the type of thing that looks nice when you don't notice it.

I'm definitely finding myself much more interested each day in practicing pixel art than grinding away in Unity. I realized this in past attempts, but attempting to practice every day only leaves room for so many topics.

Mistake

Statue

Villain

Crime

Glass

Skyline

I've been trying to practice a little every day. Sometimes I fall behind or don't get to work on something until late and my motivation is low. If I'm working on something late I might rush, but the point is to do something consistently. The limited color palettes might get me to try something new, which is nice, even if it's a little uncomfortable being bad at something until I get more practice.

This wasn't my first attempt to create some GIFs, but it is the first time I bothered to really share them with anyone. Dithering is new to me. I've never really appreciated it because sometimes I find it distracting, but maybe it's just distracting when it isn't done well or if it's overused. I've got a long ways to go before I'll feel comfortable using it.

I was struggling with one of the challenges that only had four colors in the Garden challenge this week. This prompted me to try to find some examples of dithering to try to provide some additional options. Since I've been participating in the Lospec community, I thought it was fun that I ended up at the Lospec site for inspiration and information. After some searching through the site I ended up at this book: Pixel Logic by Michael Azzi. I'm not usually too quick to purchase the first digital book I come across, but I figured I'd check it out for $10. It has turned out to be a fantastic resource. It has been a lot of fun looking through the examples on each topic from games over the last several decades.

My attempt to practice some dithering demonstrated that reading a book is not enough and it will take practice. Here are my pieces this week.

Amphibian

Upgrade

Garden

Rodent

Wires

Monster

Crispy

I want to begin working more with the game dev projects rather than having all of my art practice soaked up by daily pixel art challenges. I may begin to implement a time contraint each day on these challenges. I'm envious of the guys who can create some high resolution images, so maybe as my skill improves I'll put my time towards a single topic.

This week's challenges:

Soul

Kitchen

Rodent

Occult

Puppet

Mammal

A couple had massive palettes, but I've been trying to keep things simple. Small palette and 64x64px. Except for Soul this week. I do want to branch out to higher pixel counts to get away from the deliberate pixel approach and begin with more sweeping strokes of the wacom pen.

I'm beginning to feel the value when using a tablet for drawing. Feels more natural, but strange that using a pen is a learned skill and I suppose we could learn to use a mouse and feel more comfortable with it. When going through and trying to clean up pixels, and fixing jaggies, a mouse feels a little faster. I also haven't figured out a good way to use the shading tool in Aseprite that feels real good with the wacom pen. I have to hold a button that is set to right-click and hover over the tablet, because if I press, I essentially get a left click so it cancels out. This is possible, but feels weird waving the pen over the tablet without touching. Until I find a better solution, it may just take some practice. The benefit of practicing with the tablet is being able to translate the feel to pencil and paper. I've always admired artists and their ability to sketch something quickly with pen or pencil, and paper.

This week was crazy, so I tried to address some of the daily challenges for myself Saturday morning. I wanted to stick to 30 minutes or less, so some were a little rushed. I may try to stick with this in an effort to iterate quickly.

One thing I've paid closer attention to this week was the division between color. In the mammal challenge, I needed to add some additional depth to the silhouette of the panther, but I was limited on my dark colors to use, so I tried using the same color as the dark tree in the backgorund. It's interesting the that eye doesn't tell the brain, hey those two colors are the same, at least not at first. The first impression is, there's division between those two colors. This concept must have been at the forefront of art design in the early days like the Atari or Gameboy when color palettes were heavily limited.

Here are this week's little challenges from the Lospec Discord channel. I like that it's a smaller community with some frequent members.

Planet

Merchant

Trash

Support

Evil

I like the Merchant and Evil pieces I did because I delved into the fantastical rather than reality. I'm finding when I try to represent reality in pixel art, I get frustrated because it highlights my inability to capture reality. Although, I was pretty happy with the bridge because of the shading options I had in the color pallette provided. I wish I had done a better job with the octopus in the trash can, but it was late and I was getting impatient.

On the pixel art front, this week was pretty good. I did help me balance out my work in Unity that was soul-crushing.

This week I set out to find some Discord channels to find a community of people who like pixel art. I browse through the pixel art sub reddit from time to time, but the things shared are usually so impressive it's not typically an encouraging space. I also wanted something that was a little more live than a post/comment environment. I landed in the Pixel Art Discord channel, and by proxy Lospec. Both of these have active members and try to do daily challenges. I thought this might be a good way practice and gauge improvement.

Wannabe Hero

SNES Cart - It's FF3, and I couldn't decide how to organize the few pixels for the front

It's supposed to be an exploding star...

The thing I like about the daily challenges is the supplied content prompt and pallete. Choosing colors and deciding on a pallete seems like such a daunting task setting out. I'm beginning to appreciate the pallete decision being made for me.

I'm also not giving much thought to the canvas size and I've been trying just go with 64x64. I learned very quickly that you may be able to zoom in while you're working in Aseprite, but save a 64x64px image is still tiny. I'm enjoying choosing a small canvas size and then choosing to export the image to a .png and resizing to 800%. I think not worrying about the details will help me practice without worrying about perfection.

I think I was asleep for at least some of those hours... yeah that's my excuse

Aseprite is easily the best software I've ever purchased. I always launch it from Steam, and that's maybe a little annoying, but I usually have Steam running. If you want to take a stab at pixel art, go out and get Aseprite. There are tons of creators on Youtube making use of it and providing tutorials. I'd like to share some of my own where I feel like there are blindspots.

Here, I'll even make it easier for you: Steam page.

It's so stupid good for $20 and I got my copy on sale, so if you don't want to splurge the $20, just wait for the next holiday. Maybe if you're feeling brave you can try to make GIMP work for you. It's probably not terrible, but the tools built into Aseprite make it so easy to jump right in and start slapping down some pixels.

Until I feel brave enough to take on another art style or I find a tool I like, it's pixel art for me. Having grown up in the NES and SNES era, pixel art was just what games looked like. The other perk is it feels obtainable. I also really like the way it looks when it's done well. Doing it well is going to be the hard part. Stay tuned!