Ooh! That should be simple and easy! Time to find some more references for the whole character. It's kinda fun to be back in action! Also, I recently took a look at Dragonith's art... My god... Many kudos to him!
You did an excellent job, looks just like the picture (In StarBound pixel form). Personally I would say it looks better then the picture it was based of.
Well that was done fast: I forgot the last time I could do an avatar within an hour. Anyway, off to edit my main post to show that I am taking requests again!
Well, thanks! I hope Prophet of Madness likes it, too! Speaking of which... I need to do a madness combat inspired Starbound avatar. *Writes down*
I use a base avatar from the character creator for the model to build off; so for captain Picard, I used a plain male avatar. For madness' glitch a page back, I used the glitch model she requested in the picture. Basically imagine using a mannequin to clothe. The mannequin is the base image of the character, unclothed, which then the clothes are added to it by coloring it with different shades of pixels. The face or other details are then basically added just by editing the way the base face looks, like how I added eyebrows and a bit of a head wrinkle to Picard, because those are the most pronounced features of his face. Emphasis of features is basically how pixel art works. For me at least, I have to scrunch down the details of a base image onto a character, and the way to do that is to draw the biggest details of the art onto the new avatar. Sometimes I just can't fit everything onto the avatar, but I try to. As long as the avatar looks like the base reference in detail, shape and color, I consider it okay. I also use Photoshop Elements 10, but that's because I'm a Photoshop person ever since I first used it as a kid. Paint works, but you don't have the 'ease of access' tools like transparency, the magic wand, or layering to make it easier to make and manage the picture. This with my experience in pixel art (which came from painting and editing a handful of different pixel characters, which is basically observation), has led me to where I am currently.
Well, you can get transparency pretty easily with Paint.net. You just have to use the eraser. I've never used Photoshop, so I don't know, it might be better.
^ Ah, I didn't remember that. The transparency on Photoshop is a bit different, since it can be applied to the color being used, so you can basically apply a light color change, which becomes more vibrant and opaque per application.
I believe most popular pixel/art programs can do that. (paint.net, gimp, ase, graphicsgale, photoshop) I use paint.net for spriting every once in a while and for editing pictures, and it does everything I could ever need.
I just now opened the Captain Picard Pixel Art guy in Paint.net. I have it set to show individual pixels. So each square that appears to be a pixel is actually a 3 x 3 square of pixels? Also, am I allowed to make another request?
This is making me feel like I wasted money. Well, it would be 1x1 pixel, but for the avatars to be a decent size in the avatar pic on the forum (and around the same size as the character creator avatars), I had to increase the size by three, so 3 x 3 is correct. And yeah, you're fine to request another avatar.
This is totally a quote from the series and not an extremely altered one. Benjamin Sisko: It's really quite simple, Omega. You're going to draw my beard. Omega: But traditional Starbound Characters don't have beards! Benjamin Sisko: Untraditionalize Omega: I don't understand, Sisko. Why would you want me to draw your Beard against something or other? Random Guy: I'm curious myself. The man is a normal artist. Omega: I'm a Starbound avatar artist. Random Guy: You are a normal artist! Omega: If I am not a Starbound avatar artist, you haven't been able to prove it for four seconds.
Whoops! But in all seriousness, you probably didn't, since photoshop does many things many other programs can't. Unless you're only ever gonna make simple sprites. Then you might have wasted your money...
For sure. If you're going to learn one photo program in your life, have it be photoshop. It's the only one you'll ever need.
Hello. I would like to make a request if I could. Could you make my Avatar out of pixels. I dont have a photo of it with a boddy, but it is pretty mutch just a walrus in a suit, tophat and a pipe. If you are unable to do this/ don't have time or dont want to, it's okey.
Naw, I totally use photoshop for RAW photos from my Panasonic Lumix camera. They look amazing. I can totally do that, adding it to my list. I may take a while since I have to get ready for college; books, loans, all that fun stuff. Though I'm ALMOST done with my generals!
I'll see what I can do. Also, I'll probably get all these sprites posted at once. I would say watch for them past Wednesday.
Okay. I want that facial hair. Its not Benjamin Sisko without it. Or at least, not the awesome Benjamin Sisko.
