[R] How to become a good artist?

ID:181287
 
Jan 11 2011, 12:22 pm
Howdy, guys.

This is a rather simple request/thread:

I want to become a pixel artist. Sure, I know it's not like, "Do a) b) and c), and you're done!", but I'm really interested in exploring my digital artistic abilities.

I can work on textures (turfs) fairly well because they're more like, procedurally generated in comparison to say, objects. I just grab a color, add some filters, change the hue, add lighting, and I'm done.

Objects drive me nuts. I don't know how people do them. The details that make objects look amazing make no sense to me.
For instance, let's look at this beautiful barrel icon:


If you analyze the barrel's lighting, you'll notice that its dark area is 'shaped' like this:
_\
_\
_\

Why is it that the barrel's shadow is 'inclined'? Is it really just because the author put the light source at the top left? Or is it because it makes the barrel look better?
What about the usage of red/brown tones on the shading? Why? What for? Why using only gray makes it look bad?

What makes that barrel look good, and why?

I tried working on a barrel of my own, but it looked absolutely horrid.

I can't work on objects. I really don't know how to do decent-looking 'objects'; I can only do textures.

Are there any graphics communities/tutorials/whatever I could look at?

Thanks for reading!
Jan 11 2011, 1:16 pm
The barrel looks good because it has shading to show a light source and a brown tint in places to suggest to the viewer it's dirty. The shading also suggests the curved nature of it's 3 visible sections.

I'm not the best pixel artist or anything but I don't think there is any straight forward way to get better at pixel art other than practicing.

Here's a guy who makes great tutorials : http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html
Jan 15 2011, 10:40 am
You can look and post here http://www.byond.com/members/PixelArt
Its BYOND's Pixel Art Society, should fit exactly what you're asking for.
Jan 23 2011, 5:41 am
It's not "good" it just has a lot of unecessary colors.

Well, I guess it is good, depends on the style you're going for.

To be honest, you can't say something looks good until you've made a complete set of icons. Icons must compliment each other. You can make that barrel with 3 colors, and if you use that same rule, three colors per base color (i.e: If you have a red and white object, you have 6 colors) and stay consistent, the whole game looks fine.

Consistency is probably more important than the quality of an individual icon. That would probably explain why NBOTLS ripped icons suck, because the base, grass, houses, and brick-wall icons are of completely different qualities (And ontop of that it's a game about ninjas however speed is not emphasized, it's like having a kids game about learning with hard core rock music and a metal/steampunk artwork)
Jan 23 2011, 5:45 am
In response to Kyle_ZX
The brown tint doesn't have anything to do with it looking dirty. I thought it was all monotonous when it came to Hue, and Shade.; if he wanted it to look dirty, then the brown wouldn't be apparent.

And ontop of that looking dirty has nothing to do with how good it looks, even if it did look dirty. The brown tint is just him using hue-shifting in a pattern; darkest color: bluish, mid-tone darkness: brownish; lightest-dark: brownish grey.

If I wanted I could make a blue orb with a brown shade and it will still look like a blue orb.