Lavinian art resizing

[Jetrel]

Oh, they're not pixel art...

Huh? What are they then?

Resizes...?

Pixel art drawn with the paintbrush tool, rather than the pencil tool.

Some people consider that cheating, others consider said people to be silly.


I seem to remember an old jazz musician saying something to the effect of "If it sounds good, it is good." That applies, here - if neo is impressed with it at first glance, who cares what style of pixeling it was made with.

I should mention that the arbitrary rules defining what is and what is not "pixel art" are something that was just created by the general community of early internet users, and just grew as a viral meme until now, when it has effectively become intractable. These were inherited from days when they actually had technical significance, and were inherited from the style that people, who made imagery for rather weak hardware, had to follow. This style was imitated by later sprite artists who found the style of these early games nostalgic; in a fashion typical of fan imitation, they copied things without really thinking about why things were done in one way or another, and ended up copying mistakes just as well as successes. Chiefly, there is no reason for us to imitate their limitations. These include:

• Attempting to minimize the color count
• No use of anything other than binary transparency

These rules only existed because the hardware absolutely needed these to be in place. Computers/Nintendos back in the 80s and early 90s could only display about 256 unique colors; it thus followed that an entire game had to use the same color-set. Transparency features were also not in hardware, and were too slow to do in software, at the time.

But there is no longer any reason to follow these rules, unless you count the approval of certain online communities as a reason; anyone else will neither be able to tell the difference, nor will care.

[Sapient]

Yeah, I'm not sure what Noerice means. Those are some nice-looking hippos.

[Darth Fool]

• Attempting to minimize the color count

Well, there is a good reason to minimize the color count for particular parts of particular units, such as the hair of the thief and so forth. Using a limited palette of colors is not necessary any more from hardware constraints, but in general we don't need the huge range that is available. I mean, how many people can tell the distance between a red made with 254 and one with 255? On the other hand, if you use a limited enough palette for specific elements within a unit for all images of that unit, then it makes it much easier to recolor that element in game. At some point, I would like to make (or have somebody else make) a nice little script to extract color palettes from images and make both a text file for use in WML and a nice image for use in art programs to actually be a palette. So I guess what I am saying is, sure go ahead and use as many colors as you need, but if a color you already have used is close enough, use it.

[Ranger M]

• Attempting to minimize the color count

It also has the benefit of being much easier to animate when you are first starting out, although it is possible to animate using loads of colours on a sprite, it is hard (at least for me)

[wayfarer]

Oh, they're not pixel art, I was about to cry.

Not everbody likes to work with MS Paint.
I also don't eat uncooked meat just because I can.

[Neoriceisgood]

I'm not saying it's worse because it's not pixel art; I was talking that if he managed to make the hippo look like -that- with pixel pushing, I would have to bow my head down to his über skills,

however this whole thing is off-topic, this is a thread about lavinian art.

[Oreb]

Looks at hippo...

Stares...

*5 Hours Later*

Coooooool...



Very good, and I have one comment, on the Centurion (or for everyone else the L3 spearman), I believe that the spear is a bit to crooked, and yes the arm seems a bit off.

[Ryorin]

Lookin good turin.

[irrevenant]

The Lavinians were starting to look like dwarves next to the new mainline units. So, I've begun resizing them.
Comments?

If the Lavinians are based on the ancient Romans, the ancient Romans were a comparatively short people ; over a foot shorter than the germanic tribes, according to one documentary I saw. It makes sense to have them shorter. The marauders make sense larger, though.