Just adding these here. Made for a WIP section thread but could be useful to others.

I made this little tuto about vanishing point perspective, for a wip thread. Thought it might be useful here with a few explanations. Feel free to edit!



It is important to understand how perspective works in order to obtain satisfying realistic scenes.
Perspective is not arbitrary, it is based on how our eyes actually see.

It's explained in great detail here.

Please note: isometric, oblique and similar so-called perspectives are not discussed here, as they are non-realistic parallel projections and cannot use vanishing points.

To sum up the important points:
All real world parallel lines either appear parallel to the observer when viewed exactly frontally, or appear to converge towards a virtual vanishing point.
This point may be within or without the image frame; when within it can be apparent or hidden behind foreground objects.
Every group of real world parallel lines has its own vanishing point.
In many cases, a scene (a house, a room, a city) will have 3 main groups of parallel lines, derived from a cube: there should be 3 main vanishing points.
However, according to the observer's position and drawing options, it is acceptable to show only one or two of them, the other groups of lines being drawn parallel. Buildings vertical lines will often be drawn parallel, even though this is actually a non-realistic convention.
Looking around you will convince you that the only real perspective is 3-point perspective.

Practical steps:
- Decide horizon height. Even if it is hidden in the image, the vanishing points for all real world horizontal lines must be on the horizon, so it is important to know where it is. The horizon line crosses any object at the observer's height. For instance, in a city view from street level, the horizon line crosses buildings at about 1/3 the height of the first floor (height of a standing observer).
- Decide angle of view: wide, medium, narrow ('telephoto'). This means to decide the observer's distance to the subject: close, medium, distant. Vanishing points will be closer to the image or within it in a wide-angle view. Having 2 or 3 of them within the image means extreme wide-angle, not usually realistic nor very nice (Because the retina is a curved surface, we do not perceive the distortions visible in photographs taken at the same extreme angle of view as our eyes have).
A wide-angle view sharply divides subject planes: the distant background is seen smaller/further than it is, compared to the foreground. Conversely, a 'telephoto' view draws planes nearer, the background is seen larger and nearer than it is.
- Decide number and position of vanishing points. Are objects seen frontally or sideways? Is the view level, from above, from below? Do you want to emphasize depth?
- Remember foreshortening: the closer a vanishing point is to the image center, the shorter the corresponding lines should be; the wider the angle of view, the (reasonably) longer they should be! A common mistake is to make sides lines too long, irrespective of the actual angle of view.
- Draw!

Someone didn't know what blocking was. I made a quick picture with step 5 and step 4 visible. Revised today to include a full explanation and intermediate steps.

This starting image is actually from a noob I'm trying to help.  The last 3 images were done by me.  I'm probably not the best teacher, but I thought this might be helpful to others.

Hey what resolution are people doing pixel art in these days. I currently leave it at the default 72 pixels per inch square but the problem is that it doesn't look like some of the ones done on the site. I guess the edges are less smooth? More jaggeded-ness from the square pixel.

What are standard pixels per inch for pixel art these days?

Could there be some text added to this image that gives a short explanation what exactly it's about and why? Thanks :)

This comes from from snader on some WIP thread:

...For a moment, forget that the hair is made up of many small strands, and try shading it as if it were one big blob, and then later you can add smaller details.


This might be useful.
-shaded eyesockets instantly give more depth
-darker under the cheeks
-hair is just MSpaint SprayPaint tool, so very messy, but it still looks pretty convincing without too much effort (I did this to get the general shapes in place. More detail could be added to it)
-chin/neck shadow
-nose shaded

Scale tut :L


@jal: Should this be stickied? :o

I was told to post this.

Yeah, I know. I was never good at AA, and I made that over an year ago, when I was even worse :P

And you are 100% correct on that MS Paint thing, I'm not sure why I wrote that.

A doppleganger post:



Now, I don't doubt that you pixeled the tiles yourself, I'm simply making the point that the effect you're creating is just random noise. I tried breaking down my grass tile into a WIP for you. The steps are not 100% the way I do things but it's the same principle.

I am aware that your grass is not meant to look anything like my grass but following those simple steps can still help you out. Pixel art is about control and crispness, not randomocity.

From THIS thread

by r1k

by Jeremy
... banding often occurs from bad/non-existent AA. With more obvious colours:


by manxana
I made this tutorial, but is in spanish, althought I think the images can explain them selfs( i hope). LINK


Edited by jalonso - 17 January 2011 at 11:49am

Im new, well not new to pixeling but to this forum

Making iso squares properly according to adarias.
(Zoom and look at the corners.)



Edited by jalonso - 07 July 2011 at 5:54am

Re-posting Ptoing's AA tutorial picture. It is too good to disappear that easily. ;)




Edited by MyO - 12 September 2011 at 3:36am

osnap, nice catch. i'll update the link in the PJ tutorial with this as well.

Edited by cure - 12 September 2011 at 9:02pm

This post is of great help! I am so thankful that you collected all this tutorials! Especially all the stuff about the choise of colors will prooven very helpful! Keep up the awesome work! 

Ello, I made these for a maplestory media forum but I thought I'd just share them with you guys. The hair guide is really more of a process illustration, it was really rushed and the quality of the sprite isn't so good since it was for teaching sake only. The shape picture was rushed as well since I made it for a personal request.




Edited by SwissedToast - 18 April 2012 at 3:33pm

Some useful color link tutorials:

Edited by jalonso - 08 February 2013 at 6:13am

I found this post on Pixelation about subpixeling to be helpful.  My bad if it's already in this thread.

this thread is invaluable! just amazing. thanks to all!