Art to earn badges...

[Valzed]

Lately on DeviantArt there were two tutorials that you could earn badges by trying. The first one was how to draw a cat & the most recent one was how to draw a Jack-O-Lantern. I'm not that great of an artist but I decided to do the cat in honor of our foster kitty & I decided to the Jack-O-Lantern because I love, love, love Halloween. Anyone who submitted a drawing earned the badges so I felt pretty safe giving the tutorials a try since actual talent wasn't a necessity. I surprised myself by actually liking how they both turned out so I thought I'd share them on here. Thanks for looking!

I wanted to give this some color but all I had nearby was crayons. Unfortunately some of the black smudged into the orange.
(It's probably because I was also fending off a certain kitteh who wanted to walk across the paper.)

(BTW, if anyone knows of any really good, step-by-step, "explain it to me like I'm 5" pixel art/chibi tutorials for either GIMP or paint.net please let me know.
I've been wanting to learn pixel art for some time but can't quite find a tutorial I fully understand or can use. Thank you!)​

 

[shellbell]

yooo these are super great! You've really captured depth especially with the colouring you did!

I don't know any pixel art tutorials but I think @droqen does exclusively pixel stuff... imma give a ping here, maybe droq's got something to say

 

[Rowbowkid800]

Wow you did really great it’s good to see another paper artist

 

[droqen]

Hello I have been summoned. I love low-res pixel art, hello.
The dead-simple GIMP tutorial is "use the Pencil Tool at Size 1", haha.
Ok, you can also use the Pencil Tool at Size 2-3, I really like that look.
But it would help if I knew whether you're interested in pixel art that looks more

Spoiler: oops i read better

- like this (I'm more familiar with this)

(source)


- or like this (I don't know anything about this, but I have seen a few tutorials I can share)

(source)

Post your own pixel art inspiration/goals and I can try to help?

EDIT!!! I re-read your post and I think I can take a guess... I'll post again! I have a habit of posting too fast without reading, RIP.
But do post some pixel art in the style you like? O: I'll have a look around for you!

 

[Valzed]

yooo these are super great! You've really captured depth especially with the colouring you did!

I don't know any pixel art tutorials but I think @droqen does exclusively pixel stuff... imma give a ping here, maybe droq's got something to say

Thank you for your kind words! Thank you also for pinging droqen!

Post automatically merged: Nov 3, 2021

Wow you did really great it’s good to see another paper artist

Thank you! You're very kind. I do dabble in digital but I love the feel of the paper and pencil. I've been using them for so long I don't think I could stop if I wanted to. lol!

Post automatically merged: Nov 3, 2021

Hello I have been summoned. I love low-res pixel art, hello.
The dead-simple GIMP tutorial is "use the Pencil Tool at Size 1", haha.
Ok, you can also use the Pencil Tool at Size 2-3, I really like that look.
But it would help if I knew whether you're interested in pixel art that looks more

Spoiler: oops i read better

- like this (I'm more familiar with this)

View attachment 409439
(source)


- or like this (I don't know anything about this, but I have seen a few tutorials I can share)

View attachment 409440
(source)

Post your own pixel art inspiration/goals and I can try to help?

EDIT!!! I re-read your post and I think I can take a guess... I'll post again! I have a habit of posting too fast without reading, RIP.
But do post some pixel art in the style you like? O: I'll have a look around for you!

Thank you so much for replying! I'm definitely more into pixel art like your first example. That's what I grew up with and what really resonates with me. (Yes, I am old. Like pushing 50 old.) I can't even draw traditional art that looks like the second example and doubt I'll ever master pixel art in that style. Tbh, I hadn't really considered what my pixel art goals are as I'm so clueless as to how to create pixel art that I don't even know the first step. I think that's part of why I'm having a hard time grasping the tutorials. Plus a lot of them are based on the premise that everyone has some sort of way to draw digitally (drawing pad or app) where as I don't and (as you can see) still work mostly off of paper. I can try to find some examples of pixel art I like if that might help.

 

[droqen]

Thank you so much for replying! I'm definitely more into pixel art like your first example. That's what I grew up with and what really resonates with me.

!!! I suppose I'm in the same boat, I never really let go of my love for this kind of art.

You might be interested in this program called Bitsy (link) that allows you to make small pixel art scenes that look like this quite easily I'd recommend giving it a try if you like this look!

^ from the last days of our castle by mark wonnacott​

Personally, I find Bitsy a bit restrictive, so stepping it up a little, the program that I use myself is Pyxel Edit. Works better than GIMP for me (it's $9 tho) because it has a tiling feature that lets you draw pixel art tiles, and then easily design scenes from those tiles. Depends if you like the 'tiled' look!

e.g.

----->

(Oh it also lets you make animations!)



If you're interested in making pixel art fonts at all, BitFontMaker2 is incredible: https://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/bitfontmaker2/



Umm okay that is just a whole mess of tools and not even what you were asking about, lol. I guess most of the tutorials I'm aware of are more technical game-specific art theory things, like: how to make sprites that tile seamlessly, how to make a good animation, etc. I follow some pixel artists whose work I like to stare at and admire... Some pixel artists I like on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/__SolS/media

https://twitter.com/LOOTBNDT/media

https://twitter.com/MrmoTarius/media

Hmm. This tutorial looks really good actually! He's using Aseprite, which is another pixel art tool that I know a lot of people like. (It's better than Pyxel Edit for animations, I think.)

Post automatically merged: Nov 3, 2021

Umm you should be able to do most of this stuff in GIMP as well ofc! Just use the Pencil tool set to 'Pixel' and 1px size, and set up a grid! I don't think there's too much else you need to know technically for using GIMP for pixel art.

Found this tutorial, which describes the process visually and in more detail, and with some stuff I never thought to do like multiple views!

 

[Valzed]

!!! I suppose I'm in the same boat, I never really let go of my love for this kind of art.

You might be interested in this program called Bitsy (link) that allows you to make small narrative walk-around pixel art games that look like this quite easily I'd recommend giving it a try if you like this look!

View attachment 409811
^ from the last days of our castle by mark wonnacott​

Personally, I find Bitsy a bit restrictive (mostly in the gameplay department), so stepping it up a little, the program that I use myself is Pyxel Edit. Works better than GIMP for me (it's $9 tho) because it has a tiling feature that lets you draw pixel art tiles, and then easily design scenes from those tiles. Depends if you like the 'tiled' look!

e.g.
View attachment 409813 -----> View attachment 409814

(Oh it also lets you make animations!)



If you're interested in making pixel art fonts at all, BitFontMaker2 is incredible: https://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/bitfontmaker2/



Umm okay that is just a whole mess of tools and not even what you were asking about, lol. I guess most of the tutorials I'm aware of are more technical game-specific art theory things, like: how to make sprites that tile seamlessly, how to make a good animation, etc. I follow some pixel artists whose work I like to stare at and admire... Some pixel artists I like on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/__SolS/media

https://twitter.com/LOOTBNDT/media

https://twitter.com/MrmoTarius/media

Hmm. This tutorial looks really good actually! He's using Aseprite, which is another pixel art tool that I know a lot of people like. (It's better than Pyxel Edit for animations, I think.)

Post automatically merged: Nov 3, 2021

Umm you should be able to do most of this stuff in GIMP as well ofc! Just use the Pencil tool set to 'Pixel' and 1px size, and set up a grid! I don't think there's too much else you need to know technically for using GIMP for pixel art.

Found this tutorial, which describes the process visually and in more detail, and with some stuff I never thought to do like multiple views!

Wowsers! Thank you so much for all of the links! I may start off with just trying my hand a creating really basic characters before moving on to trying to create scenes. I'll check out these links and even if I never get good enough or confident enough to try them I'll look into them just to try to learn. Thank you again!