A Bit Dramatic

I was asked by a friend yesterday if I could offer basic tips about comic paneling. As it turns out, I have a lot to say on the matter! I tried breaking down the art of paneling using the principles of art and design, and I hope it helps you out!

EDIT: uh uh there are a lot of people reblogging this, so i figure i may as well append this now while i can lol

This whole thing was very much cranked out in a few hours so I had a visual to talk about with a friend! If this gives you a base understanding of paneling, that's awesome! Continue to pull in studies from the comics you see and what other artists do well and don't do well! You can tell paneling is doing well when the action is flowing around in its intended reading format.

Here's the link to the globalcomix article from which I pulled the images about panel staggering! Someone sent in a reblog that it wasn't totally clear that the 7th slide mostly covers what NOT to do in regards to staggering, and that is my mistake!

I saw in a tag that someone was surprised I used MamaYuyu too, and I don't blame them lol. If I had given myself more than a couple hours maybe I would have added something else on, I just really admire MamaYuyu's paneling personally.

uh uh, final append: I am by no means a renowned master of paneling, so if you find anything off base here, by all means, counter it with your own knowledge and ways you can build upon from here! Art is always a sum knowledge of everything we find. 💪

My entry to Pixel Dailies with today's theme: #MiniatureGarden 💡🌵

Tried to improve my skills of painting clouds and learn a bit more about color theory!

I'm damn happyy with it!

(` ^ .^)_•🤍

Hi, I'm starting to look into making my own video game and I'm debating between 8 bit and 16 bit pixel graphics. I was wondering, if you knew of a good place I could go for examples of the difference between the two? I've looked on tumblr but most of the pixel art here either doesn't say which one it is or it's tagged with both

when people talk about 8bit or 16bit they are usually talking about the era of graphics. so 8bit might look like a game that came out on the NES (an 8 bit console), shovel knight is a famous example of an 8bit styled game.

while 16bit could be SNES graphics, something like breath of fire or super metroid

your best bet would be to look up the catalog on those consoles

Bunch of pixel sketches and ideas from 2021.

Hey Tofu, for a long time I'm wondering if is okay to share two mediums (traditional ink&gouach and pixels) under one account/brand or if is better to split my art in two different online personas and places. Because I'm affraid that if I going to share everything under only one blog that for example people loving just pixel art will not be interested in me because of my other mediums.

Can you help me please with this uncertain decision? What do you think is better?

Thank you so much!

PS: I really love your art and you are one of my the most favorite artists. 💚

i post both though not that often. some people don’t like it but i don’t really care, my blog is mine for my art, no matter what kind. tag it accordingly and if people want they can block those tags

i do think 2 blogs is better from an impressions efficiency standpoint ? but i already do so much drawing and emails and invoices and boring admin stuff i dont want to create even more accounts im tired lol

i tag it #not pixel art

its basically about if you want to put in the effort to seperate them or not. and its fine to feel like it all falls under your own same brand. i keep pixel art only on my portfolio where it matters

(thank you btw <3)

Dragonologist, 2021

'The Spark Caster'

This dragon draws its spirit from the chaotic beauty of sparks — from cozy sparklers to the fierce showers of molten light when cutting metal. ✨

Maybe its attacks are just little stings, like sparks that bite and vanish.

Who knows! ^ ^

210x297px, 6 colors, Aseprite x XP Pen Deco Pro

More old pixel art studies from 2021

I recently started learning to use rpg maker (vx ace!) and as a result have become increasingly interested in pixel art. I hadn't really done pixel work since my teens - I do more digital painting and vector art - so while I'm a little familiar and can do passable editing, there's a lot I don't know.

One thing that's kind of perplexing for me is understanding the differences in style between two creators of pixel art. I studied art history and I'm used to the differences being things like brush stroke length or degree of realism... I feel like I'm lacking in lexicon in this new frontier lol

What nuances of an artist do you think are most important to style in pixel art?

This kind of stuff is not really officially studied (yet) so it's all a bit of opinion from me.

Usually in pixel art the biggest differences in styles are which limitations the artists choose to impose on themselves; colour count, resolution, palette... Or more stylistic choices like hue shifting, anti-aliasing style or no, dithering or no, etc.

I personally think there are a huge variety of styles in pixel art, as it's literally just a medium, and I hope you'll agree by the end 8)

Also (imo) there is some seperation between the styles of art for art's sake, and art for videogames, where things have to be clear and readable to be actually playable.

🎮 Old school games:

Sometimes referred to as something like '8-bit' or '16-bit' (relating to the NES era / SNES era consoles), these artstyles usually follow the rules and limitations of the hardware at the time.

This all falls under retro art, most popular styles include: NES, SNES, GB, GBC, C64

Notable artists: Nickwoz, Sandy Gordon, Franken, Cisco

📚 Old school art:

There were also events called Demoscene (still are), where developers would go to a big convention and share their demos. A lot of pixel art competitions were held here, where artists would draw live.

Generally they used to favour a high realism/semirealism style, with lots of texture/dithering, fairly high resolution (if the hardware allowed for it), and adjacent pixels mostly being different from one another.

There are even older styles than this but they are fairly niche and I'm not that well educated. If interested look into some of the old PCs/consoles.

⭐ Modern pixel art:

Usually using more colours and higher resolution, larger clusters of pixels instead of individual ones. Strong use of art fundamentals.

Artists to look at: Adam Ferguson (yes it is pixel art), Snake, Slym, 6VCR, Yes I do Pixels, Gijotto, SovanJedi, JoeCreates, Franek, @8pxl

the rest below are "modern" pixel artists too but I think they have other things in their style that are a bit different!

🎨 Painterly:

Some artists choose to emulate the natural brushstrokes digitally, and keep their clusters large and loose. Usually don't focus on the minute details as much.

@makrustic, @hexh-pixel, Umbohr, Gawrone

🟦 Dithering

These artists all use dithering / texture in ways that make their styles totally unique.

Deceiver, Night, Reo,

💥 Experimental

These artists are always trying new things and honing in on their unique style.

AJ, hby, @ilta222, Alphons

I could really go on for ever, there are so many different styles, cute pixel art, horror pixel art, 1bit (2 colours only), and then adding animation takes it even further, but I think you get the idea

If you want to learn more, the Masters of Pixel Art books have works /interviews from pixel artists of different eras, including demoscene and contemporary.

😊👍