The Drawing Tips Thread

The Drawing Tips Thread


So, its been awhile since I've really done a topic worth paying attention to. I was drawing a bit the other day, and although I'm not that good at the moment, I'm always finding new tricks to make my art better and better. So what is this thread you may ask? well for those of you talented in art, may or may not want to share some of your tips. Your ideas, the best ways that fits you, to help those along on the art side. I would base this around sonic/genesis art but people can say art in general, drawing by hand etc. I believe no art is perfect, it could be exellent, fantastic or spetacular. But I think there is always a way to improve it, but thats one of the reason why I enjoy art because you can keep making it better and better, and wowing people as you improve. (Actually come to think of it, it may go in the level design thread or whatever.)


So, shall I start off?


One of the most obvious ones is give it some colour variety. If you put a block with one shade of blue, trying blending more shades of blue maybe darker as you work your way down.


Another one is dithering which alot of people will know also. Its away to give it pattern and a good way to blend colours together and give a nice retro design. If this topic stands, i'll provide examples.


Also an obvious.... be original! there is nothing better than coming up with an original design and concept and then delivering fantastic art for people to see.

 

A trick taught by estlib: Take the palettes you have and put them on MS Paint, then start making something in paint, and port them to your hack. You can convert to PCX and put in SonED, or just copy pixel after pixel.

 

Ah yes, I know that one well =P. This is good, anyone else got a tip feel free.

 

For small changes of your level's art, rather than modifying pixels in sonED, or importing updated art into sonED, you can open the level's art file (8x8) in sonmaped, create sprites from those tiles, save your mapping, and export / import the sprites directly in sonmaped. This will update the art for your level, you may have to fix the palette line number in soned though.

 

Colouring and Dithering


So today i'm gonna talk about colouring your art and dithering it to make it look even better.


So here is an example will start off with.





So here we just have a yellow star, nothing else, nothing less. Lets zoom in and have a closer look.(note proberly best to save the images if you can and zoom them in on your computer)





We have but just a yellow star, its nothing fancy, we need to make it stand out more.... so lets add some more colour.





So here we blend more shades of yellow getting darker into more orange as we go down. This is starting to look much better don't you think?.





This is the result of our new edited star when zoomed out. Looking good? but we want to make it look better? Why don't you try your hand at dithering.





Lets zoom in again. So we have our not so yellow star anymore, with bright colours. But now look here, we can add some extra pixels as an extra line for each part.





Might not look like much now... but lets zoom out and have a look at it. Looks nice so far! but we can even now still improve by adding extra pixels.





Here is an example I've done, starting to look more complete now?





And my final star example. You can try lots of patterns and blend colours with different dithering styles. Experiment, see what you can come up with!


This was a fairly mini/quick tutorial on how I do colouring and dithering, and of course other members may do it different ways. I hope you understood these tips, and hoped that it may help someone who needs to improve their skill. Have fun making new art!

 

If your struggling for ideas, look at other work to help you along. Get a sprite sheet of a level, and have a look at it for inspiration, it can sometimes give you great ideas. Also, people sometimes find it easier to draw their ideas by hand first on paper before attempting to do it in sonED 2 etc.

 

Something that always works in Paint is putting it on correct sizes, remembering every tile is in the size of 8x8. If we put 15x15, that wouldn't work. Why? Because 8 x 2 = 16 and 8 x 8 = 8. But if I put like... 32x64, that actually WORKS, because 8 x 4 = 32/ 8 x 8 = 64. Got it? And drawing the main figures first, like (circles, squares, triangles) could work too. It's not only possible to draw it on SonED2, but you can also draw it via Paint, Photoshop and other graphic software. I hope this helped.

 

When drawing ramps and loops etc, have a look at how one is done using an example and go from there. There is also a guide I believe on sonicretro about drawing loops as well. When you belived you'ue finished something worth showing, make sure its the right time to show your art. Make sure it is good enough to be shown or has been changed enough for people to notice. If you have friends online then send them the image(s) first, to see what they think and if its worth posting it here on the forum at that time.

 

.. but, DO NOT SUBCONSCIOUSLY COPY THEIR DESIGN IDEAS TO THE MAX of 90% LIKE EVERYONE DOES...


I can't stress that enough, it's gets boring and annoying.

Spoiler

I'll know when I start seeing Starry Night Zone look-a-likes.

 

Of course, I hope know one does that. I agree with you on that, thanks for the add markey may edit my post with this info.

 

When choosing colours, don't have incredible bright colours, ones that are quite sharp are hard on the eyes. If you want to use a light colour, make it a pit paler. It doesn't have to be a dull grey, just say a light pale plue thats easy on the eyes. Have a look at the colours you choose, are they a bit harsh on the eyes? or are they nice and easy to look at?

 

try getting more colors out of less shades of colors so that your level could look more colorful with more colors. example. instead of using 8 shades of gray, use 4 and dither the other 4 shades. this will make room for 4 more shades of other color. like green. just dont get too cheap and cut too many shades