I did this shit for 20 years, it ain't that hard bro.

What to use for it:
-GraphicsGale Use this if you want something good and free. been using it since the days it was a paid program.
-Asesprite. desu I don't like this thing the UI is dogshit but everyone swears by it so it's probably fine.
-ProMotion NG. uhh, lmao? I guess if you like photoshop this is cool but it is a gigantic pain in the ass to use for animation.
-Photosh- no, get that shit outta here. garbage.

THINGS TO LEARN WITH:
LOSPEC:
https://lospec.com/pixel-art-tutorials
I don't personally think these are the best tutorials out there but they're good to start out with and it's a bunch of stuff in one place.
The Pixelogic book is actually good atleast.
OLD THINGS:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130501035641/http://pixel-zone.rpgdx.net/shtml/tutorials.shtml
Some of the things I learned from as a teenager are here.
ABOVE ALL YOU NEED TO GRAB THINGS AND STUDY HOW SPRITES ARE DONE.
I cannot stress this enough. go grab screenshots and try to draw on them. use spriter's resource to look at things from the masters. I had to learn that way too, we all tend to reverse-engineer in this field and then build our own from the skills we learn.

Also feel free to ask me questions. Don't be a dipshit.

>pixel art is easy
>want to animate the rotation of a large detailed object without rixels

>You are just lazy
Story of my life, breh
Anyway post some more of your art and maybe share your process

>>7686512
here's a really really old example I did of the very basics of color theory and hue shifting in palettes.

>>7686520
a thing I made to teach how to do sub-pixelling

>>7686521
a small guide I made for a project I was working on. a bunch of the info still makes common sense too.

>>7686521
I should try this. I've never done it despite being into pixel art. brb

>>7686528
*erm I don't know how to apply it. this guy for example, I have 2 frames, if I want a 3rd using some sub pixelling, how do I begin to do that?

>>7686533
build extra in-between colors for the knees so that you can blend them.

You also would likely need to do 4 frames so the arms lag up and down slightly to alot for the extra blend tones to go along the top of the shoulders.

it's worth noting that you don't have to do the subpixelling EVERYWHERE, just on the spots where the movement is most obvious. In this case there's alot, but anything that's NOT changing in the up and down motion can be largely left alone.

How do you think sprites like this one from arcana heart were made? From what I could infer, they were drawn digitally in black and white, although I'm not sure if they are downscaled or they drew them in this resolution. After they applied some shadows they converted it to a 7 color grayscale palette (because each color zone in the final sprite has 7 shades). Then they colorized somehow the different areas and touched it up a bit.
I have no idea what software they used. Asesprite doesn't have a way to colorize it quickly.

>>7686554
Thanks. ok, so here's a rough attempt. I can see some places that are too contrasty that should have less movement(near hands). am I on the right track?

>>7686598
*whoops transparent pixel on his shoulder

>>7686595
If I change the indexes you can see the original lineart better.

Hm, wasn't there another thread just like this? Did it die?

>>7686599
yeah, you more or less got it!

>>7686651
There were two other threads that were just people complaining or saying full-on misinformation, so I decided to make a proper thread because I'd rather be an old fart giving actual advice than see another dumbfuck saying stupid shit.

>>7686595
>>7686616

You're pretty much on point, though I'd say that by this point digital tablets were slowly becoming actually useful, so it's possible they were drawn digitally from the start. given it's from 2006, I wouldn't be suprised if it's that.

Though honestly, if some of the folks who worked on it came from one of the old arcade companies, it is very possible that they even had some funny custom hardware for that purpose. IREM (and later when the teams formed Nazca and merged with SNK) they had a ton of purpose-built drawing devices for pixel art.

I have not done anything with pixel since ehhh 6 months I do believe. And I never touched for more then a dozen of times
Rate my best work

>>7686731
I'm gonna be real, I can't tell if this is a bit or you are a time-travelling teenager from 2004

>>7686491 (OP)
>disliking Aseprites UI
You can download addons that change it but agreed: default sucks. Aseprite only has an edge over GraphicsGale if you're making games from scratch, really. For more general pixel art use I find it kind of overhyped
>>7686595
The JP pixel artists I used to see while browsing in the 2000s rarely bothered drawing something just to downscale it, and as far as I know that was more or less how most pros working under big companies operated: just drawing digitally on top of a digital sketch, in the scale you wanted the final product to be. There's a few known exceptions where they did (like Ace Attorney), but it didnt seem that common until around the nintendo DS era rolled around. and even then many sprite artists continued working as they always had.

>>7686769
the problem with Aseprite that I can't really justify retraining myself for is that you cannot move the buttons around, and I also really, really do not like them shoving frames and layers into the same space. It just eats up an entire third of the screen real-estate if you work with more than 3 layers. (HINT: You will nearly always have to work with more than 4 while animating characters.)

At the end of the day, I just really really like the customization of the space Gale allows for. This is what my Gale setup looks like. very pretty and organized!

>>7686823
also here's the thing from the screenshot.

>>7686498
>spending time on things i care about is hard
>I don't want to try new things
>so I have no idea what I actually care about
>why am I so depressed and directionless
>oh well time to go back to wasting time on /x/ and 4ch

>>7686491 (OP)
I still don't understand why you come to this site and put up with these dumbasses
I know socmed is bad and our dead gay comedy forum is quiet but it can't be that bad surely

nobody here is worth your time unless they decide they are worth their own time
being on here is kinda proof they don't think they are worth their own time man

>>7686491 (OP)
anyways idk you're more patient than me
hopefully at least one user here like, idk, is kind enough to themselves to actually try the stuff you're recommending
i'm gonna go fuck around w/ level code and watch more masshole miku
later

>>7686855
>>7686861

Hello rabbit friend!
I'm not here for clout or anything else. I have my funny NASA lady sure, but I'm here because I wanna teach and this place is sorely lacking in this field.

That and the Pixel Art Discord is really just not a fun place to be or to teach in, because it's filled to the brim with blind leading the blind.

>>7686864
Oh hey apple friend
fr if they actually follow your advice and aren't weird bitches about it that would actually be cool as fuck
some of my favourite project participation back in the day was working on flash videos for this community, group-projects on /m/ or fucking with them on /x/ with pranks granted i did tripfag a bit hard back then

actually... what's the median age of a 4chan user now? like are they young-folk or did they go to more extreme sites so only like 30somethings (like us) are left? genuinely curious about the demographics of this place

>>7686872
in every 4chan related art community I've gone to I've almost always been the oldest person in the group. :[
We're probably some of the few oldheads still around at this point.

>>7686835
blog? if that's okay to ask

>>7686752
I don't understand

>>7686875
yeah i'm now realizing like they won't know where a lot of their assumptions come from. descartes, irony, company, etc. its like goodhart's law crossed by way of sturgeon into shitposting.

skimming the board i do like that their opinions are super unfiltered still and that aspect hasn't gone away

>>7686752
lol u tk him 2da bar|?

>>7686876
https://x.com/ApplefatGov
https://bsky.app/profile/appleheck.bsky.social

>>7686878
what I'm saying is it feels like something I would have seen 20 years ago on a sonic the hedgehog fan forum by a teen girl really into Evanescence.
I wasn't really meaning this as a bad thing, it's just what it reminds me of.

Being serious, it's not great, but everyone starts somewhere. my oldest stuff was terrible.

Here, this is my old Sonic sprite edit from when I was like 13 or 14 lmao. We all kinda start simple.

>>7686888
in 1992, you booted up Sails the Fedgehog and was given an adventure in christmas coloring by way of jackson pollock

>>7686888
Nah it's fine you gave me a nice giggle.
also nice trips

>>7686823
wery nice, wery sleek. And yes, I'm not a fan of using Aseprite for animations either, it's a far better time doing it in GraphicsGale. Aseprite wins out for me when doing very small old-school GBA overworld sprite sheets and fonts, but for practically everything else it's Gale. Will say though that the modding and asset community centered around Aseprite is a big plus and can be quite inspiring in its own right.
>>7686835
loving the sheen btw. I want to poke her legs

>>7686864
Basically you got kicked out from the discord and got lonely? This is sad, anon.

>>7687037
Far from it. I just got really bored because there's no other oldheads there. I wanna talk shop and all they talk is beginner stuff. Nobody taking it seriously.

>>7686957
I too would like to know how the cool touch of the funny hover legs feels on my face.

>>7687050
>oldheads
Where did everyone go after B&G shut down their forums? I admit, by that time I was out of the pixel art community and I've only recently gotten back into making pixel art. There seems to have been a long period where no one really cared much about pixel art once sprite comics died.

>>7687619
god, yeah I got my start on the B&G forums too. I went by 'geona' or 'foxalpha' or something like that in those days.

As for where the community went after? no real clue. I drifted over to pixelation.org and polycount where I learned advanced stuff as well as getting good at 3D. eventually all those skills came around to me doing illustration as well, so it's hard for me to say.

A bunch of folks scattered over to pixeljoint, pixelation, joined the sonic fangame community or went to TIGSource forums, or kinda just vanished onto their own thing. A shame really, as I would have loved to keep up with the folks that kept learning around then.

Personally though if I could find a place where folks ACTUALLY talk shop and don't just share around the same awful Saint11 tutorials like they're gospel, I'd be way more interested in getting back into it all.

Speaking of, anyone got some techniques they'd like to ask about? I'm all ears!

(same anon as >>7686957)
>>7687050
>I wanna talk shop and all they talk is beginner stuff.
Havent bothered going to discords yet but I feel like sometime around 2013 things started to change and more and more oekaki styled art with non-pixel overlay effects began filling up websites and tags. That, and indie games using the same overlay technique on extremely simple beg tier sprites.
With how popular it got it led to an influx of beg tutorials from "big names", with people copying it over and over, and now it feels like it's a seperate "style" of pixel art that has become synonymous with what beginners hope to create, because that is what they've seen doing well online. Theres very little incentive for them to learn more.
also the lack of hardware restrictions probably doesn't help.

>>7687728
It's not really a commonality anymore but I often attributed this to Cave Story initially and called it Cave Story Dilemma, where a ton of newbies started out BECAUSE of that game and never really understood WHY it's aesthetic decisions exist.
It's obviously different things now, but you don't see anyone really saying their inspiration is something really complex like OwlBoy or whatever, it's always something far simpler.

I wonder what ways there might be to get people interested in getting more ambitious with work? It would be really interesting to find ways to get folks to be more ambitious.

>>7686491 (OP)
Does GraphicsGale allow for layer-specific indexed pallets? I have an entire canvas I use for pixel art but I can't use index in aseprite to stay system-legal because it applies to the entire thing instead of individual layers

>>7686888
thanks!

>>7687825
>Cave Story Dilemma
Thats actually a pretty good observation desu
These days I guess Undertale and Deltarune have taken up its spot, but the effect remains the same: people going for a simple style with little to no awareness of the methods and self-imposed restrictions behind. Kinda like skipping foundational training for traditional art I suppose.
>I wonder what ways there might be to get people interested in getting more ambitious with work?
I think if it goes the way of low-poly 3D it might be possible as the result of developers wanting to make games and mods for retro consoles again. That, or some sort of rise of a new piece of hardware with very limited specs or screen size (neo smartwatch gaming? programmable customisable tamagotchis? i dont know, but something like that)

>>7687846
okay that's a particularly weird thing. I know that Gale supports per frame palettes, but I don't think it supports per layer. it DOES however count the colors per frame as well as total, so you could in theory use that as a way to check it.
>>7688061
I don't wanna get started about the current lowpoly craze but that has seen so much progress and evolution that I'm honestly super impressed with what folks are making now. Pixel art though? not so much.

>>7688240
colors per layer, I meant to say.

>>7687728
>I feel like sometime around 2013 things started to change and more and more oekaki styled art with non-pixel overlay effects began filling up websites and tags.
That sounds like it might have been the after effects Super Brothers Sword & Sorcery EP more than cave story, if we're talking about the mixing of pixel art and none pixel art - It was definitely influential (and beautiful, mind you) visually, I think many people cribbed its unique character art visual style, which were very simple human figures, but didn't crab the very complex background art that contrasted that.

I recently made a pixel art game and got really burnt out near the end. I have trouble getting traction on any social media posts I made but I'm confident my work was pretty good, especially for a solo project.

I definitely empathize with some anons here who think that pixel art recently has lost its purity. I very quickly went to the dark side when using 360p canvases and started to downscale linedrawings and use halftone effects in CSP to save time. Towards the end I was using glow dodge effects too.

That being said, Aesprite changing common shortcut keys across painting software was a tragedy and if it wasn't for the onion skinning. I would have stuck to CSP

I've only very recently gotten interested in trying pixel art and I've been having issues finding answers to certain questions and I'm left having to analyze the sprite work I want to emulate and maybe guessing what their workflow was
For example, two things I'm looking at are 1.) the comic panels from EBA/ Ouendan and 2.) character sprites from AA. I can kind of tell the EBA comics are just downscaled from full-res art but I can't tell for sure if that's what they did for AA as well. It feels more likely for AA4, since that was the only one fully built from the ground up for the DS

>>7688477
AA is downscaled but I suspect the pixels are cleaned up manually a little

ProMotion NG is great, non destructive dithering for control. I can move palettes easily and make my own dithering patterns.

Also Grafx2 if you are a hobbyist and need a free lightweight program

>>7688240
yeah it hasnt hit pixel art at all, just tossing my guess at what it would take to make it happen
>>7688296
There were a lot of indie games doing it at the time, so I can't say I'd confidently pin the blame down on one or two. The Cave Story thing other anon mentioned kind of seemed to exist in tandem with it, I feel.
Theres also just a bunch of not so beautiful yet very popular indie games that may have inspired it
>>7688477
yes, AA is downscaled. The concept artist almost exclusively did traditional pencil sketches and ink at the time afaik, so it was likely done more out of necessity than anything else. AA4 just let them do it with more colours and space

Finally a thread.

>>7688842

>>7688847

>>7686491 (OP)
Do you draw? As in, do you draw normally and then use that to overlay with your pixel art, or do you directly start with pixel art?

>>7688853

>>7688857
whatever I feel like really. sometimes I just start, sometimes I sketch out first, sometimes I do a 3D layout to get the composition right. It really depends on how simple or complex something is.
In the case of the banner image for the thread, I did that entirely pixels from the get go. but in the case of this rainy cafe, I used a ton of different tools. Mainly designdoll for layout and SpriteMancer for the rain effect and the steam off the coffee (which was SUPPOSED to be transparent but the deadline meant I couldn't fix it.) I then composited everything together in Davinci Resolve while mnanually adjusting the animation of the guy drinking the coffee for proper timing, then exported as a GIF.

There are a ton of things I wanted to do with this piece, like add extra characters waitress bobbing to some music, a car driving by, all sorts of things. The boss man was obsessed with me adding a laptop and asking for a dozen small changes, so by the time I got it this far I just wanted it done.

Maybe someday I'll come back to it and finish it proper for myself though.

>>7689014
reference collage for this piece

>>7689021
early starts scribbling the characters in on the designdoll layout I built.

>>7689024
Oh, huh. I have an early test of the rain effect in Pixel Composer that I recorded a gif from! didn't even realize that this existed.

>>7688857
For a different example, I worked with someone on a character mod of Lina Inverse for Rivals of Aether, as there was a anime jam going on with a cash prize. So to do the win/splash screen I started drawing the character in CSP over a designdoll pose (again to make sure composition would work) and then pixelled over that.

>>7689038
and the final sprite

>>7688842
>>7688847
>>7688853
btw these rock.

>>7688841
>>7688484
I see, I'll have to experiment with a workflow that works for me
Thank you

>>7688328
Picrel screenshot.
I will say I don't think I'll ever be able to drop my boomer perspective grids. I think the original size of the line drawing for this was over 6000 pixels before I shrunk it and began painting.
UI and stuff were made by me too but they're part of the game itself. You can definitely see where I got lazy on dithering.

>>7689038
This absolutely slaps. God damn you're good.

>>7689284
First test using this method, lineart and color was in Procreate and I added shading after plus clean-up (missed a few places but oh well, next time)
Next test is doing all the shading before importing.

>>7686491 (OP)
I've been getting into making pixel stuff, it's fun. The downside is that I fucking suck at coding and even the simple stuff is tripping me up, there always seems to be something these video tutorials say to do and then GML Code says "nah something's missing from the create event" and then I don't know whether to cuntpaste the code or what. If I could just fucking HELP someone else that's good with programming but sucks at sprites, man.

>>7689014
Cozy! You've convinced me to try DesignDoll

>>7689394
That's really impressive regardless! the scanlined dithering appraoch always looks particularly stylish anytime I see it. I hope you weren't doing all of those by hand, you can use a pixel brush/pattern to do that stuff really quick.

>>7689441
Good first try! I'm assuming you already draw your lines pretty thick, so this method can work well for artists with heavy line weights.

>>7689522
I know a couple people that do gamedev butI myself am not that smart. I'm pretty much the guy that handles art direction, QA, and making pretty things as a whole.
Quick question though, what is the right most sprite supposed to be? I'm having a bit of trouble reading the... head?

Felt like sharing another fun thing today cuz I'm getting ready for a trip and the laundry is gonna be anotther couple of hours.

A rather large amount of the time you can get away with basically not animating pixel art by just having tons of rotatable chunks. While this is pretty "duh of course you can" sort of thing, the levels of tomfoolery you can get away with doing this are really fun!

So for this boss, I wanted to give it an interesting death animation and intro, but doing all of that would be a pain if I actually hand-animated given how big the sprite is. So, the entire top-half is a bunch of separated chunks parented to the body.

>>7690448
by separating everything out, it can allow for some really impressive looking animation without needing to do the harder parts. The final chunks were then pieced together using Spine and animated with bones. (You can probably use a different program for this though!)

>>7690459
the final death animation is one of my favorite things I've ever done. I really wish I could have seen it with proper explosions over it, but that was something the programmer would handle.

another thing you can do with this is change the palette of a section to fake motions, such as this with the 'leg lift'. there is no extra animation, just changing the colors to make it look like it is!