Pixel Art Critique

[Music] welcome back so I'm going to pick out something from the Discord Community there's a link in the description check this one out Doug Trio that's pretty funny all right so I could critique something really easy or I could critique something really hard let's get started I always forget to do a before and after so we're going to start that right now I'm going to do duplicate and I'm going to lock that layer all right that's going to be our before I'm not messing that up this time wow wow wow wow this is this is fantastic I just want to point out something super quick I love that the outline here on the tree is brown but on the grass here it's green I think it's a great technique to use the color of the object for the outline but you can use that you can also add extra shading to the outline now I'm not so sure if this is going to be a good idea or not but let's try adding a little bit extra Darkness to some of these some of these uh parts so for example this outlines the same color everywhere however I do think you know you can make it darker in parts that are like um uh in this case uh in the shadows I was going to say something uh more sophisticated than that but um I think you get the point and see what I'm doing here it just makes it uh it makes it actually look like it is darker in this area because the outline here is darker and I'm just going to do it super quickly uh it's not going to be perfect but you'll get the general idea so I don't understand why there's no shading here you know that kind of that kind ofes doesn't make sense this the light is coming from above so I would hold on just real quick I would also probably add a little oops a little bit uh down there but this part should be shaded because you see how you shaded the bottom of the leaves here I I don't need you I don't think you need these little like little areas that have like some brown showing through it's just I know it might be more realistic or whatever but it's not necessary it makes it look it makes it look cleaner makes it look uh uh you know sometimes we don't have to be too realistic but um this little Gap right there you know I don't know some of the stuff is like just aesthetically either I would fill that or I would you know get rid of that it's just sometimes some things you know actually I think this whole thing should be filled I think this whole thing should be filled because if you look at you know right here you have the background there and here so if there was Sky up here it's almost a little bit weird for the sky to be up there I would probably even color that in you know I'll probably just do something like that and uh this trunk is kind of weird it gets it's it seems like it's too thick across here so I would either make it thicker there you see what I'm saying I'd make it thicker either either either thicker there or I'd make it thinner on the other side so the like over here and because you don't want it to be as thick up there as it is over here the tree bark man this is something really interesting and I have I have a a uh so I have another video where I talk about how to do sort of like tree bark and stuff and I do have a pretty cool technique for that there's numerous techniques you can do for tree bark so something that I would not do is have like just a DOT here I think most of the time if you're doing tree bark you you want to kind of have that be a Groove not just a not just like a pinpoint you know what I mean and um oh yeah I was saying that this part needed to be shaded so the the leaves are casting a shadow onto the tree so this whole thing I think needs to be needs to be shaded up here too cuz the light wouldn't light the light's not the light's not coming in from the side I see you added a ton of light here but it's coming in from above and if we look at the shading on these leaves it looks like it's coming in from above so this doesn't this that that doesn't match very well and uh there's two ways to kind of do this one is you could e is I could either add a little bit of shading here on the edge of the tree by the way this is a really good technique to make things look round you see how I add I added that on the edge and now it looks like there's light coming from both sides I like that technique and I think it's pretty good uh or another technique would be to to make this look round another one would be to add shading instead of a highlight it's the opposite you add shading near the edge and when you add shading near the edge that also will make the object look a little bit more round so I wouldn't neglect that with this uh tree you know I think it's a missed opportunity to add these extra little bit a little bit extra shading there uh near the edge to make it look rounder and when you do the Highlight you don't have to do it all the way near the edge if I wanted to have that shading and somewhat of a highlight you could do it like one pixel away from the edge and this will also actually start to look like one of the tree grooves um for with the bark you I mean I don't I don't think I really like how that looks though I'm I'm going to take that back and so I think to make this look a little bit more round these two right here the contrast is too high it's too high between this color and this color and then you have a even darker color separating those two I don't think that's the way to do it keep this color as the shading color keep this as the bark color but I see you have it here right so just super quick what I'm getting at is if you let me find a section if you used that there and this here you see what I'm doing there that to me I think looks more consistent I I know that you were trying to that you were wait what oh contiguous you got to have contiguous checked I know you were trying to shade it like that but there's um there's a couple ways that we could do this we could either make we can either make the edges uh darker and have a highlight in the middle to make it look a little bit more round or um man uh let's see yeah I really I really don't think you should just shade like half of it for this object I think you do need to have I think you should have this color um on the tree here cuz there's lighting coming from above so you you you want to have the the highlights here cuz the lights coming from above and now this shading color looks too dark and so I would go back to using this as the color in the middle and just use this extra dark color for the creases to add that uh to add to add some texture to to this so for example um you know like right here you you you were kind of doing that technique but I would just just have it in a few I just have it in a few locations to make it look like there's a little bit more little bit more uh texture there you see what I mean and so this whole chunk right here this is too much of a chunk of of uh like shading I I would break this up a l a little bit it's a it's a bit of a too much of a chunk I I just did that really quick there's there's a lot more sophistication you could add to that kind of shading but you see how now it just looks like a crease here so before it was like this big chunk that honestly doesn't really make sense but now it's it's that dark color is used for the creases in the tree so this looks great and to make it look a little bit more like tree bark instead of these giant chunks of um kind it kind of just looks like giant chunks put together you know I mean to make it look a oh wow the lighting is really harsh I need to get a little I need to get a curtain um hold on I just noticed the grass here my ADHD kicked in I'll probably do something a little bit like that I don't think it needs to bend so much cuz you don't have it really Bend too much in other spots but anyway so wow the shading on these rocks fantastic I have a rock shading tutorial as well and uh you can also do the darker outlines for the Rocks here and you see how I'm adding it kind of uh near the bottom and not going all the way it just adds a little bit more form down here you could you should probably shade it a little bit darker too and then with this color this is um not exactly anti-aliasing but if you put it just in the corners there you see how that made it look a little bit rounder so I would add that in in the just in the corners a little bit here and there um let me uh shade this a little bit make it make it a little darker all right I think we're doing good this part's a little bit weird I would just um get rid of the grass there um probably just do that I'm just I'm just simplifying a little bit because started to get a little bit too messy even stuff like this grass blade is a little too tall um you know you you want to avoid some of the some of the messiness so the grass has an outline here and the grass has an outline here let me do that the little mini window sorry I forgot about forgot about that let's put that here something like that there we go but your grass doesn't have an outline here which is kind of funny or this part right here these two colors are very similar so there's a couple ways to do it one is you could use the color of the house to kind of like add a little bit of um shadow where the like next to the grass and this will drastically make the grass uh stand out more there as you see or you can use this darker green to um give the grass a bit of an outline doesn't have to go completely around it like that but um it's up to you and I I I'll I'll do it just just for now and then I think I'm going to actually shade it near the bottom here because it'd be harder for light to get here if there was grass blocking some of the light there if you know what I mean and look at that so now it's a lot more obvious there's a much better differentiation between those two uh pieces of grass and then for the corner here of the house you could you can just put a straight line like that and that makes it a lot more obvious that the corner is there but a more um I don't know more intricate kind of way to do that is to is what you were doing here which is to kind of have it be where the cracks are however I think it's okay to um see if there's a crack here or whatever a crevice I would I would actually use the color to uh go in there even more and then since we already have this color for shading I would I would go even darker near these edges and right here you have the shading on the wood but you didn't you didn't have the shading on the on the brick so I would add I would add a little bit of shading there with the brick and with this darker color a lot of the stuff in your art has somewhat of an outline so you might as well give this roof an outline uh over here as well see that cuz it already had an outline near the top so it kind of looked like it was missing an outline oh my God look at that it's such little changes but they made a they made a difference okay so um next Let's uh check out the the background so here I love this background and we're going to uh use the magic wand tool to select that I think I'm going to do a new layer here um I wonder if this will work and then there's a gradient tool somewhere uh I think it's over here by the Paint Bucket yeah gradient tool and what and we could do dither here and look at this aprite has built in dither if that's how you want to do a gradient there's a link in the description to the software if you're interested okay I fixed the lighting I should have done that sooner uh but I'm not going to use dither for this gradient because it's not really in other parts of the composition you know what I mean so it' be kind of weird to just have it in one part and then let's um let's uh see how oh wow you see that you can no you can barely tell uh let me go even lighter I'm going to go white all right here we go so I would do something like wait wait we should make it lighter near the bottom right which way do you go do you go this way where it gets darker near the top or do you go this way or gets lighter near the top which way looks better I actually I would need to look at some references to decide but I think lighter near the top and um let me try actually some yellow what if I did some yellow um actually it's maybe purple would be even better because it's like a um it's like a night sky up there you know so maybe maybe something like this all right enter control D for for D select and wow check that out that looks pretty pretty magical but um let me see the before and after dude that made such such a difference the moon color would need to change now to match better but the reason why I did this on another layer is because I think now we can mess with the opacity so this is kind of a lot but if I just go like here here you see how subtle that is and sometimes subtle looks more realistic and even though it's barely noticeable um I wow that you know it's barely noticeable but the subconscious will pick up on it so I'm going to call this sky and now let's go back here and make the moon look like it fits in with with this background better something that I would maybe even do is um I'm going to control C control V um why is it why is it that's actually a really great color to use yeah I think that's a great color to use but why was it even oh cuz the sky is over it I see oh I need to merge that down I think so I'm going to get rid of that and I'm going to merge down and the reason why I merged is just so that um I don't know whatever I merged cuz I like to so I think I would finish this off but let's pick a uh I'm going to pick the moon color lower the opacity and then now I I can finish the the moon some something like that fill that in and now I'm going to put the opacity to 100% and pick the this color and so now it's not transparent it's at that you I think you know what I mean so oops all right and so I think we got I think we got the moon there and it be in a circle like that I don't know maybe that's better maybe that's worse what do you think I I think I think that's worse I should not have done that control Z control Z control Z there's so much in art that you do and then you remove that people don't see in the final thing it's pretty crazy okay so overall this is looking pretty good the technique that I did with the tree being shaded on both sides you can also do that with this house I think I'm going to do this on a new layer because it might not look good but let's try it really quickly where we have a highlight in a few spots near the edge and it it'll make it look a it'll it'll make it look rounder you know what I mean I think I think it's I think it's it's going to look good maybe maybe maybe you know you can even you can even make it thicker and pull it out a little bit like you can have Parts like here and here like if you want to add like some texture you can even use that highlight around some of the bricks to add a bit more texture it looks a little bit maybe too reflective right now so I would probably I don't think they're really that necessary this is bulging out quite a bit I'm going to remove this just cuz I don't know it does it looks a little a little too unnatural maybe the stones were all sorts of crazy shapes but I don't know it it does look like it was bulging a bit much I like this roof here you have this color which is I think would be pretty useful for adding an outline down here oh that was the outline on this side so I actually think we should go darker so you see how this color and this color they're the same but it's no longer an outline on this side because of the shading this is the part where I would go a little bit darker and actually create a new color so that way we can have an outline on on uh on both sides here uh and look that makes the roof look like it's protruding a little bit more I think this shading needs to continue just so that makes the roof look like just so it makes the roof look like it's sticking out a bit you know kind of like how we added the Shadee here on the edge of the roof cuz it's not perfectly touching the edge of the bricks it's it's sticking out the stones here um I like the shading on them I would I would probably go a add a little bit more detail to the shape of these uh of these Stones you know what I mean like these bricks here I think they could they could use a little bit more uh a little bit more um like uh shape like that because um the details you had are were very minimal in some spots like here it's great you can see this rock and this rock and then if you want to make it look even more detailed go in and into the cracks like this one and this one or whatever and this one here I would even add some of that some of the shading and you see how that's looking it's looking like it's getting a little extra details then pull this out on the edges it's fine to pull uh some of that shading out and here I think you can do a little bit and here kind of like in those in those cracks and I I would add a couple more cracks for the um for the [Music] stones this one can get extended and you can even have a little gap between some of the parts that you shade and it it makes it actually look more uh Stone likee it makes it look more natural like they're not perfect uh bricks and they have chips in them and stuff like that you know like boom do something like this here it looks like there could be some shading here um but um I'm not really a fan of how you have the grass up here under the roof and over here looks good because it has like structure but Parts like this I don't think it matches and if it doesn't match I think you have to draw it very differently what I mean by that is I would either have like some kind of you know uh Vine looking thing you know maybe like that growing growing on the side of the building but if you're going to have a giant chunk like this I think it needs to match um I think it needs to match the style so this part right here should probably have that outline like you know some some kind of uh uh outline like this actually let me shade these shade parts of it uh kind of like this part here and I would add more highlights to this just because it it doesn't really look like a different type of uh uh growth than that so I think you need to keep the style a little bit more consistent and then this one right here looks a little bit odd too but um up here I don't think we even oh that was a separate layer let me merge that down up here I think we can just oh it touches the tree that's why here we can just color this and this you know it's it's a weird this is a bad spot to add that green stuff because it's right next to the tree so people could confuse it as part of the tree and it's even the same color as the tree so if you made this green maybe a tint of blue or a tint of yellow it would differentiate it from the tree but since you had it up here and it was the same colors as the tree it it kind of um that's not a good spot to to put it because the it's similar objects similar colors right next to each other you know what I [Music] mean okay so let's do a bit of a roof highlight here as well because I think the type of shading you do is good it is a good type of shading but for objects that are like at the total top facing the facing the sun I think it looks a little bit more natural if you have uh this kind of uh um uh light or highlight on the edges it'll look a little bit more realistic I think let's see we're about I'm about to zoom out yeah see that looks a little bit more realistic oh dude wa oh man it's it's awesome to see the before and after I wasn't doing that in the other videos I'm so sorry it took it took like five of you to tell me repeatedly to make sure that I make a copy of the that I do this for the for the leaves on the tree I I would never do uh squares rectangles like this I just always like um you know just make it look a little bit more natural so I it is a cool style but the rest of the art isn't that blocky so I wouldn't um use blocks this right here is the shape you want to go for so a really you know that right there a little that little zigzaggy kind of thing that's what looks like leaves when you're doing pixel art not squares don't do squares it's not Minecraft you know I mean like this doesn't look like a leaf just add a add a little make make it a little diagonal like that that looks like leaves a little bit more um and the square style is really easy to do but I don't know man it's not I'm not a fan of it and I do since this is these are leaves and there's going to be a ton of little ones I would add a lot more just like single Pixel uh like uh pixel spots all over this because there would be a bunch of tiny reflections of tiny leaves and it will make it look like this is a lot more detailed and has a lot more texture so just go around and add a add a lot more of these uh of these tiny little one pixel highlights let's see what that looks like yeah see it looks a little looks a little bit more detailed and that was so easy to do I'm a struggling Indie Game Dev I'm doing a Kickstarter soon there's a link in the description please support the Indie dream I hope those critiques helped there's a bunch of other pixel art tutorials on my channel let's do one final before and after before and after ooh yeah baby let's see your art in the next episode come join Discord Dev live please subscribe

Channel: Pixel Pete (Peter Milko)

Views: 4,146

Keywords: petermilko, peter milko, pixelpete, pixel pete, pixel art tutorial, how to draw pixel art, game maker game, indie game, indie game dev, dev life, game developer, indie game developer, pixel art, pixel art game, new pixel art game, pixel art lesson, learn pixel art, learn pixelart, pixelart tutorial, pixel art weapons, godot pixel art, pixel art lessons, pixelart, Nintendo Switch, pixel art shading, how to draw, pixel art 101, 16x16, 32x32, 8bit, 16bit, NES, SNES, retro game

Id: 5T_D4DezFaw

Length: 24min 43sec (1483 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2024