Might I ask a question? It's about coloring...

[jwburks]

I used to be more into the RPG Maker scene, but it's been a long time ago. I've done some music and some art work for some projects that have vanished, probably forever. But this was way back when the only way to get RPG Maker (unless you were Japanese) was through... Don Miguel. Remember those days? Maybe not... suffice to say, even though I used to be able to do it, now I have all but completely forgotten. I can still draw, but I always found coloring to be the biggest... pain.

There was a better method I found, but lost. You draw your little sprites or whatever, completely in greyscale. Then there was a way to take a color and "saturate" (maybe not even the right name of the tool?) the pixels. This way, your shades of dark and light would remain the same. This, to me, was way better than setting the RBG then trying to get the right color. I can't remember crap. I really can't. Maybe it was "hue"... bah. Does anybody have a clue what I'm talking about here? It's been a while since I've used a paint program and all the terminology is lost to me. I can't even remember what program I was using at the time, but it allowed you to view your walking animations. Now I have Gimp, and am learning (slowly) how to use it.

But the real gist of the question is... how would one draw in shades of grey, then fill in those pixels with color while maintaining the lightness and darkness? Seems like it should be simple, but nothing ever is. Hence, why I come crawling on my knees like the noob I am...

 

[Ulqiorra]

Try selecting the area to color(GIMP) and go up to Color, and then Colorizer...

It can only do one color at a time, so you have to select(lasso tool, maybe?)the area to color in.

 

[coyotecraft]

I've seen methods for doing this. But it's not really something you'd use for pixel art but rather a digital painting.

Gimp has a "colorize" tool, but I think it messes with the brightness and contrast so you'd loose your values.
What I do is paint my colors on a separate layer and set the layer mode to "screen" or something else.

Gimp doesn't have this but other programs have a gradient map tool. It's hard to explain. It takes the dark and light values and convert them to a matching value on the gradient of your choice. It's a cool way to get a nice skin tone if you pick the colors for your gradient properly. You;d be better off looking up a tutorial then listen to me explain it.

 

[jwburks]

Hm... yeah I remember a tutorial for exactly this, but it was a long time ago. The tutorial was for making facesets for RPG Maker 2000, I believe. I've been searching for the past 4 hours with no luck. I think that one and only tutorial is long gone.

 

[Ulqiorra]

Actually, as long as you only have one area selected, the Colorize tool works very well. I tested it will 4 circles of different colors(red, green, blue, pink) all with shadows and highlights.

 

[jwburks]

Hm... well, from looking at this place, I am not the only one who draws sprites naked and hairless before adding clothing. So at the very least I would get that part right... I am not used to using layers but I'm guessing you could add clothes in the same fashion this way. Doesn't sound too bad, after all...

 

[coyotecraft]

Once your pixels have color you can use hue/saturation to change it into any color or even take color away. But once it's greyscale value you'll have to use colorize again.

Pro tip: next to the "magic wand" tool in GIMP there's a color selection tool which makes a selection around any pixel of the same color that you picked. Say you had white pixels that you wanted to change into something else or remove, you don't have to zoom in and search for each one. You can just select them all at once. Holding shift; you can add more to the selection which makes for speedy changes.

 

[jwburks]

That's pretty cool, thanks! I still have much to learn but this gives me hope. Thank you all.

 

[boon]

you can try using photoshops 'color replacement tool' on the smallest dot and doing it pixel-by-pixel from there.

Otherwise, I honestly don't know.

 

[Mr_Smith]

For the programm, did you use GraphicsGale? I remember there was a box to place animations in, or am I completely wrong?

 

[jwburks]

I keep wanting to think it was "idraw", but that seems to be a Mac-only program, and I have a PC... but then, it was on that kid Don Miguel's site at the time, and I later found out he had not simply "translated" RPG Maker 95 and RPG Maker 2000... well that's all he claimed to have done, but it was illegal in the end. Hell if I knew... he seems to have disappeared. Anyways, he bundled the program with his translated RPG Maker. Wish I had kept it. It would be old by today's standards but it was very convenient. It's almost as if it were made just to create sprites. All the tutorials for chipsets at the time centered around this program. You could set the grid and arrange it so you could see were every image should go, then you could re-size a box and click on the images and click "play" to see it in action. It was also good for making tilesets.

 

[PirateFaafy]

Another thing you can do in GIMP is the curves tool, which lets you set trends for colour. So, for example, you could make something reddish with bluish shadows by making it in greyscale, but then pulling the green curve down a bit, pulling the red one up, and making the blue one more accentuated in the lower levels. You can also accomplish tasks like this with the channel mixer, as well, which is under Colours > Components > Channel Mixer. It lets you set different output percentages for varying inputs - so something which started out grey can end up with higher or lower RGB values.

 

[Gulch666]

i used to use idraw for pixel art on a pc back in the rm 2000 days, so you are probably correct in thinking you used to use that.

also you can (in photoshop, not sure what its called in gimp):

make each color you want to have in its own layer and group, then use a gradient map, take for example the pants.

1. go to layer > new >group > make sure its set to normal

2. make a new layer inside the group

3. shade your pants in greyscale tones

4. make a new gradient map inside that group one layer above the pants layer

5. set up the gradient to the color you want

i wouldnt really reccoment doing this for pixel art tho as it seems like more trouble than its worth for pixel art, what you would be best off doing is get some good palettes (just search the forum) and use them and just draw it in color