2nd link (piece in question) doesn't lead to anything.

to be honest it looks pretty nice, but i'd ditch the lines where you don't need 'em. Would give it more of a background-y painterly feel I think.

Fool's landscape pieces are always great to study. His use of atmospheric perspective in pixel art and his palette choices are incredible.
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/84128.htm
Beyond that studying landscape painting, composition, and atmospheric perspective in general can help.
I found this version of Amano's piece. Colors are less saturated but the other design difference is the inclusion of more ships to show progression of scale.

Sorry for the delay - busy week. In reverse order:

@Snader: Yeah, that's the one. Bloody link has repeatedly given me trouble, should've just uploaded it myself or something

You're very correct about its suitability as a cover, especially to a set of tutorials. Unfortunately, I'd been scribbling in canvases for days trying to get something I even felt comfortable with as an image idea - I just jumped in because I've had a problem coming up with a better idea.

Some of my intention in using a detailed image is in establishing my own credibility as an artist. Very little of my own art is contained in the tutorials, so I don't have much to show people that I even know what I'm talking about. Maybe this is just me, but I'm more comfortable picking up an art book when I feel the art presented on the cover is strong enough to trust what the artist is going to say, especially in a market where merely getting a book out there is easy.

I'm gonna keep working on this one for now, if for no other reason than that I think it's got some promise as a piece of its own, but I'm definitely gonna pick up the idea board again and see if I can either modify the image structure or come up with another image that can also communicate 'tutorial'.

Also, I probably am going back to that blue/beige dynamic rather than hitting so hard with the brown. That was something I'd been considering even before I read your post :3

@jtfjtfjtf: Thank you for reminding me of Fool's landscape work! I'm not sure why but I always mentally associate fool with character art, but you're right that his landscapes are truly inspiring.

@jalonso (and DatMuffinMan): You're both very right about the linearts! At that stage the lines had mostly been guides to separate areas that I had colorblocked in similar ways, but I've reached the point where removing them is fine and you're right, it looks way better.
Doing exactly what you said, about using various regions to highlight techniques and the pixels themselves, was my plan :)

I'll have an update on the image up soon-ish. Thanks for the ideas and support guys!

The figure blends into the mountain too much. Perhaps brightening the lighter red colour would work? You could also add more gold details and use detail concentration to make the figure stand out more. There's also still some noise in the shadows.

The AA on the text is great, but the inconsistent widths and letter heights just look bad. Nothing about the font face reads as "art! pixels!" either. I think this is one situation where an AA-free, "pixelated" font might actually make the most sense. Maybe something a bit more script-esque, so it's less at odds with the organic shapes of the cover image?
Also, I think as-is, all the text is too close to the edges of the image. It already looks a bit uncomfortable on the screen, but in print the edges will get even smaller because they'll have to be trimmed to create the full bleed effect.

The cover feels rather unfinished to me because of how flat the foreground-ground is compared to the detailed mountains. I don't think it should be as detailed, but some more indication of texture and volume to it would help unify the two planes as part of the same scene.

And this is definitely a personal preference: I think the dithering in the sky looks lame compared to the rest of it. I think instead of having a linear gradient, you should have it more as an arc to further frame the image, and maybe have some faintly dithered suggestions of clouds in there just so it looks less plain without creating too much focus.

@eishiya: Agreed on the blending, and the noise. I could add a little more gold and see how it looks - I wanted to keep it pretty sparse, but it's worth a shot. And it does seem that brightening the lighter red (and increasing its saturation) makes it pop out more, but I'll be reworking a little more than that.

On the text you're dead on. Frankly it's largely placeholder - I just wanted to have something in the spaces so I could comfortably call it a complete draft. The nearness to the edges is a good catch though, I'll move it in some.

Good point, I'll see if I can add a little more substance to the foreground!

Oh, an arc is a good idea, I hadn't thought of that! One thing the linear gradient did for me was provide a clear dithering presence in the piece to show how it works in the piece itself, but doing it as an arc can accomplish some of that and also fit better.

@jtfjtfjtf: Oh, yup, that's an even better copy of the image. Even that one is a little more saturated than the original copy I was looking at, but yeah, thanks.

Aye, the narrative aspect is something I'm not particularly skilled at. Everything you're saying makes a lot of sense, but I'm not exactly sure how to make that better. I'll try a couple things, but I'd love some guidance on that subject if you have any ideas.

And as for a step-by-step, the idea was something I'd been considering during this set of revisions. I have a fairly extensive log of WIP stages, so that is absolutely something I'm considering and feeling pretty confident that I'm going to include. If I can make a proper narrative out of it too, that'd be even better.
Thanks for the help!

That's an interesting idea! Gonna jump to my sketchpad and hash out some ideas

I'd been thinking about the straight edge. While adding whatever this goal idea is might be able to clear that up some, I was also thinking that even without it it acts as a bit of bridge between the TWO focal points of the image - the one in the actual scene, and the title itself, which are the two elements that should draw the attention. Of course, this will likely be a moot point after adding something near the peak.

I love the lettering - except the awkward bump in the e, right where the horizontal bar meets the curve.

You're not explicitly stating it here, but I'm inferring you use other people's art? Have you got a written licence agreement for all those pieces?

Also, yeah the lettering isn't too great. A lot of wobbly/illogical width variation in the strokes. Have a look at some of the fonts from BitFontMaker 2, such as (plug alert!) SnaPix Slate. I feel you're overly anti-aliasing things, and it's only hampering legibility. And it still feels very automated; for example the dots on the "i" of the title. Why is the bottomright done with 3 pixels?

And look at the / of your capital A. 12223222222 The 1 is a serif, so okay, but the 3 has no reason for being there. Especially not since it makes the A 1 pixel taller than the L,P and l.

But beyond that... why even use pixel art lettering? You're not going to be limited by DPI on the book, and a traditional serif doesn't work well as pixel art, nor do bitmap fonts read particularly well at large sizes, so why even use pixel art there? Why not make it just an illustration and use regular printing methods for the text? If you're not going to integrate the text in to the medium of pixels well, don't do it at all.

Ain't nothing wrong with normal text, you're using it for the block text inside anyway. At least, I hope you are.

Compare these two eboy covers



One uses text as a book title. One makes it part of the medium and incorporates it into the illustration. Both are equally valid, but you need to choose.

Edited by PixelSnader - 01 December 2014 at 9:03am

Ugggggggh this project ain't dead, it's been two weeks of nonstop schoolwork. I'm not quite through those woods yet, but I had some time to do a little modification here and there.



The three images are identical, with different palettes. The middle one is the same palette as the previous draft - I've included it mostly as reference, and because it's easily the bluest of the ones I've made. There might have been six or seven full palette revisions between these ones and the previous, but I eventually landed on the one on the left. That one has the most thought put into it. The one on the right had the saturation mechanically adjusted up, though it's still pretty close. My palette concerns: The neutral green I'm using bugs me some - I don't like the look of green in the image. I could probably try to transition from orange to blue on the other side of the color wheel, using a neutral purple or magenta, but I dunno, that seems like it'd make the palette TOO homogenized.
This totally might be my monitor, but the darkest purple and the second-darkest purple. Does it seem like there's a weird thing going on between the two colors, like at the boundary? I can't fix it regardless of what I do, and I've seen in this in some of my other pieces, so I think it's my monitor.
I noticed I had a clone color hiding after I saved this display image - it's been fixed, so I'm down to 12. That includes true white now, as well as a  very lightly used AA color around the edge of the background circle (and the white on the spirit creature). That color isn't used much, but I felt I needed it to blunt the edge of the background arc.
Speaking of which, there is a background arc! I vaguely thought about dithering a transition, but I actually feel pretty good about leaving it as a stark contrast.

I dropped a couple colors from the mountain ramp. Additionally, I'm hoping to at least fake depth by dropping colors as I moved deeper, hoping to capture a little bit of that multi-planar thing. That works a little better with different content types on each layer, but for a first attempt it seems better at least.
The main mountain spire, as well as the gate and glow at its peak, are in a heavy WIP state. I haven't really decided how I'm going to do them yet, but didn't want to leave this progress report waiting just for that. Feedback on potential ideas would be good, but the individual pixels aren't there to give feedback on yet. If you have what you think is a great idea for breaking up that solid vertical plane, I'm open to suggestions, but am also comfortable leaving it straight - I don't think it's actually that problematic as a composition element, but as I've said that's not exactly my strong suit.

The figure got bolder, and a bit more detail into the robes courtesy of some highlighting that may not strictly follow the light source but looks pretty sharp.
In the dunes, I've tried to just fill some space for now. I might end up leaving it in that style, or I might use that space for something more interesting.

Text is absent for now. It will return later.

Thanks for the help folks!

It's a shame that the text isn't pixel too. There must be a decent serif pixel font out there, or at least a font you could set to no AA and clean up. Probably something more up-and-down than Trajan would be better for that.

You've done a beautiful job.
Because of the subject matter I've zoomed and reviewed every pixel as it would seem important to nitpick a lot on the pixel level.
The sun has a jaggy on 4 sides where the pixels do a 2:1:2 line.
Also review all the white areas on the bottom ground where it meets yellow.
That's all I could find.

I don't hate the NPA font but if you feel adventurous http://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/bitfontmaker2/

Hey, this is shaping up nicely!

A little thing that seems a bit weird, is that the viewer is taking the mountain head on, but the character is being viewed from the side. I think the composition could play out nicer if you showed the characters back only and move him to the center of the canvas imho

Another option would be to move the mountain to the right of the canvas so it would line up with the robed persons vision, atm it doesn't look like he's looking at the mountain or the red gate at the top which looks to be one of the centers of attention.

Not completely sure if doing that would improve this in anyway though. Keep at it!

Edited by ADrawingMan - 06 January 2015 at 8:14am

Your text is scaled sloppily. Some of the title 'pixels' are 4x4, some are 3x4, some 4x3 and some 3x3. A similar thing is going on with your name. Always make sure your scaled pixels are in neat 100% increments.

Its beautiful.
When you're all done send in as news and a link too.

Will there be any section on composition?

Thanks, yeah I am in grade 12 and high school composition courses are quite basic, and I prefer in person teaching as it is a lot more direct and accessible.

For now. The internet should do me fine.

Edited by Limes - 17 January 2015 at 10:19pm