Critiques - Pixel Art

[Mystic Mage]

I am completely new to pixel art, but I'll be making a ton of material for a possible RMXP game. Taking some baby steps into the realm of pixel and spriting I decided to start with icons since they are only 24x24 pixels. They are so small and yet their size gets two opposing reactions from me.

"It's small so it should be easier. It won't be as taxing as a large and elaborate painting or drawing."
"IT'S SOOoo small! I change one pixel in one area and it changes everything! What do I do with this tiny canvas!?"

So... I produced a few icons still very much WIPs since I can tell they need work, but the more I mess with them the worse they look at this point. I need some tips on how to make them better.
Don't tell me a statement without explanation please. I know that the two on the second row need much more contrast to stand out and many need more proper shading, but give me something specific about working with pixels not just the basic art concepts.

Anyway, here they are!


The icons are as follows, left to right, top to bottom:
Lightning Magic
Shark Mask
Lich Mask
Vampire Bat Mask
Chi, a living doll which heals.
Chi (2nd version)

The masks will have usable skill sets for one of the main characters.
These are for my game only.

 

[Gubid]

I like em. All of the top 4 are totally awesome. Maybe I am just not in the mood for pink princess icons today

They give good detail given the area you have to work with. Plus your palette choice seems to match pretty good between them all.

 

[Mystic Mage]

Totally awesome? I wasn't expecting compliments but they are certainly welcome. Thank you Gubid for telling me what is working so far at least. So the detail is not bad and the palette is not bad either...

 

[Perihelion]

I wanted to do an edit of your work to demonstrate the fixes better, but GraphicsGale is being weird. Oh well, maybe later. Hopefully this is helpful anyway, although it's hard to describe how to fix art with words.

You're right about the contrast! The two black ones and the two yellow ones are very hard to read. Your shading is also messy in general. Unless you have a compelling reason (e.g. you're demonstrating a shadow), the outlines should be one pixel thick, and you should anti-alias otherwise. Having the double-thick zigzag line makes it look banded (see the link at the bottom of the post for a better explanation).

Generally what helps pixel art clusters look nice is regularity and smoothness. Try for "ideal" edges on your clusters as much as possible, by which I mean horizontal, vertical, or 45-degree lines. For curves, make sure the curves are smooth. The length of the individual line segments making up a curve should increase or decrease steadily most of the time. Play with the curved line tool in Paint to see what I mean. When you can't have an ideal line, anti-alias. There are tutorials on the Internet about how to do this. As for the shading itself, use solid blocks of color as much as possible.

Almost every single beginner I've ever seen overtextures and overdithers, and the form always suffers as a result. Break yourself of that habit now; I see it in the mask and to a lesser extent the lightning. Always do the lighting BEFORE adding the texture; if it doesn't look good without texture, adding some will just make it look worse. A good piece of advice for depth is keeping in mind that you shouldn't be using your full color ramp in every single spot. Use only the few lightest colors in the light areas and the few darkest colors in the dark areas.

Look at this great piece by Delicious for an example of clean shading:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/60562.htm#

See how clean it is? There's no dithering or noise anywhere on here, and it's much bigger than yours. Also note the boundaries between colors. You see how he tries to make them rectangular or circular or 45-degree as much as possible?

When you're starting out, you should be working with as few colors as possible and working at small sizes, so good for you for picking that up. Focus on doing stuff that's simple and has few colors, and focus on making the form as three-dimensional as possible. You may also want to use other people's palettes for now. Learning color can come after you learn the other basics, but working with a bad palette will make your life more difficult.

This thread by Helm has a lot of excellent advice. Also, look at other people's pixel art. Study their technique and learn from it. I do this all the time, and it's helped me tremendously. My immediate advice for you is to read that thread, think about the things I said here, study high-rated art on Pixel Joint very closely for technique, and come back and try this again. I'd borrow someone else's palette for now if I were you and start over. I can make some recommendations if you want.

 

[Mystic Mage]

Wow, I appreciate the great critique and pointers Perihelion. Now I have some good ideas with which to make a solid start. I learn well from examples, both what to do and what not to do so I'll look around and try to adjust accordingly. As for using someone else's palette, I'll be sure to find some good ones and try them out.

Your assessment and the links to the tutorial and example should be a great help in me avoiding many mistakes I would have made otherwise. Thanks so much! I'll get right on this. :biggrin:

 

[Perihelion]

No problem! I'll keep an eye on this for your next attempts.

Also, check this out. It has a great discussion of color, and his example palettes might be good to borrow.