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| Smallhacker's Pixel Matrices |
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Forum Index - Hobbies - Art - Smallhacker's Pixel Matrices |
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| Posted on 2011-10-31 02:08:50 PM |
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Very interesting to see how you made it! 
It looks really great. I love Luigi's pose. >:3
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| Posted on 2011-11-04 06:23:56 AM |
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Good work with Banner,Smallhacker...
You'll make another for christmas??
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| Posted on 2012-02-01 06:48:24 PM |
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Two random drawings uploaded for no real reason.
Derpy Paws
Method: Outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
I got a request to draw a puppy. As I didn't have a real interest in doing so, I decided to skew it slightly. I think it's supposed to be Derpy Hooves reimagined as a puppy. I honestly have no idea.
Oh God
Method: Outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah. Kieran, S.N.N. and me. I have no idea why this image exists. At all. Seriously. "Oh God" is probably the most appropriate title imaginable.
For the sake of maintaining pony canon, S.N.N.'s beer has been retconned into cider. Oh, and everybody knows that Lego and Redstone are already canon in the ponyverse. Totally.
Hopefully, I'll have time to do a deconstruction of the Christmas banner at some point, similar to what I did with the Halloween one.
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| Last edited on 2012-02-02 04:19:26 AM by Smallhacker. |
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| Posted on 2012-02-03 08:52:57 AM |
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Seeing as I did it for the Halloween banner, here's the breakdown of the development of the Christmas banner. I don't recall if I mentioned it last time, but I draw banners in twice their intended resolution to make small mistakes I may make less noticeable. However, it also leads to some detail I've worked hard on being hardly visible in the final image, which is a major source of frustration.
As this banner was a single image (as opposed to several small images drawn largely independently of each other), each step was more complicated than last time.
Original sketch
The original totally-to-scale sketch, made around the same time as the Halloween banner. For Halloween, I had two "meh" ideas before coming up with that idea. This time, I had a single "ugh" idea before this one, which I immediately knew I wanted to do.
Revised sketch 1
The first real sketch of the banner. It's probably visible considering the relative strength of the lines, but a lot of work was put into making Yoshi look as good as possible, seeing as I didn't really have much experience drawing Yoshis. The instruction booklet for SMW was used for reference. Luigi's hand was redrawn countless times and I'm still not happy with how it turned out, but it was the best I could do. (Man, drawing hands is a major pain.)
Revised sketch 2
I got complaints that the room seemed way too large, so I scaled up the background and gave the room a third wall, moving the window in the process. The carpet was also changed.
Inked 1
A door was added behind Mario to add some detail, as was a wreath behind Luigi. The fire poker above the fireplace was replaced with a stocking as it seemed more relevant.
Inked 2
Consistent complaints about the room being too empty resulted in the addition of a drawer and a table in the background. Presents were also added underneath the tree. And yes, the frontmost present has a corner of the wrapping torn off. I guess someone got curious.
Inked 3
Somehow - I don't know how - I suddenly got the idea to put a Tanooki skin rug in front of the fireplace. This was drawn during the height of the PETA-Tanooki "controversy", so it was my own personal mockery of that entire facepalm-worthy deal. The carpet was moved to make room for it. Also note that its head is three-dimensional. This was meant to emulate how a bear skin rug is flat with the exception of its head.
Inked 4
I made several attempts to redraw the Tanooki head, deciding on making it flat instead. Most of the changes involved the shape and positions of the ears. A candle was added to the table to make it less empty (which I got complaints about), a stack of wood was added by the fireplace and one of the Tanooki legs were redrawn to correct the perspective.
Partially colored
Coloring in progress. The tree ornaments use RGB values taken directly from the berries in SMW. I stopped here as I realized that Yoshi's jaw was off. The white area is supposed to go all the way up to the mouth, not end at the chin. Some redrawing had to be done. Also, I swear that the mushroom package having the same colors as the Swedish flag was an accident. I colored all the wrappers first and then colored all the ribbons. The colors I picked were largely random and it wasn't until halfway through making that ribbon yellow that I realized the similarity. I then decided to keep it to tease Kieran.
Colored
Base coloring completed. Yoshi's jaw was redrawn and his left leg was made thicker.
Shading
Lighting and shading added. I imagined a light source slightly to the left of the camera as well as the fireplace. A wick was added to the candle. Texture was also added to the tree and the table. I tried to make the Tanooki tail look as 3D as possible to make sure the entire thing wasn't completely flat and boring.
Details
Now we're in Photoshop. I still drew in 1024x360 but I began making the WIP images (which I'm reusing for this thread) the final 512x180 to give a better glimpse of what the final product would be like. A background was added behind the window, meant to be a blurry forest in the distance, snow covered ground, pointless multi-colored Christmas lights around the window, snow falling and some frost on the glass. The picture above the table is the ending photo from SMA2 (I guess they had it enlarged and framed). The candle lighting was redone to be more yellowish. The photo on top of the fireplace was... eh, let's give it its own section.
Babies
Mario and Luigi as babies. Uh, yeah... I spent way too much time and effort on this, especially considering the fact that it takes up like five pixels in the final image. Cutting Mario and Luigi out from the background was a pain. Also, the grass brush in Photoshop is great if you don't mind it looking like crap.
Filters en masse
One of the last things I normally do is play around with various filters to alter the saturation, contrasts, levels and stuff like that as the images tend to look sort of grayish and bland after all the shading and stuff have been added. It's largely a trial-and-error process. This one attempt got complaints about being too oversaturated. Also, SMWC logo behind Luigi's head. I had painted myself into a corner and didn't know where to place it. Placing it anywhere but the upper left corner looked wrong, but I didn't want to cover Luigi's head with it. I tried placing it outside the window, looking in, but it didn't work out. In the end, I simply decided to sacrifice parts of the logo and place it behind Luigi instead of the other way around.
Final
The final image (except for the white border and the text). Less saturated and slightly brighter. In the end, this image had 170 layers in Photoshop. Something tells me I'm a bit too OCD about separating everything into layers, folders and stuff. Main regret is forgetting to give Luigi's oven mitt some texture. Yep.
So yeah. Sketching, inking, coloring and most of the shading done in Sketchbook. Some additional shading, pictures and color adjustments made in Photoshop. Uh. That's about it.
Phew, it feels like writing this post was more exhausting than the banner itself.
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| Posted on 2012-02-04 01:23:01 PM |
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I really liked the work that went into the banner. It is also nice seeing the process that it took you to get to that point and the response to the feedback given.
I remember once attempting something like that and keeping track of all the versions. However, I can't seem to find the first few drafts.
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| Posted on 2012-03-07 09:17:59 PM |
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Earth
A 1920x1080 desktop background I threw together using my own experimental ray tracer. As such, it's more of a tech demo than actual art.
Main downsides:
* God-awful star background resolution, forcing me to blur it like crazy to prevent pixelization. I couldn't find any good high-res ones.
* Even higher earth/cloud texture resolution would have been nice. However, those two are already 8192x4096 each, something my program already whines about.
* It's slow as heeeeeeell. Rendering this image, which literally has only 5 components - took like 2 minutes at twice this resolution.
So yeah. ...enjoy?
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| Posted on 2012-03-24 09:29:11 PM |
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I've been more productive than usual when it comes to drawing during these last few days.
Kuribo Launch
Method: Outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
Someone in a staff thread demanded that we should "launch Kuribo". This was my response, based on a suggestion by Kieran who told me to shoot Chester from a catapult or something.
Nothing of interest to mention with the making of this. I think I made the slingshot too small to actually be able to fire something that big, though.
Yoshi Pie
Method: Outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
A suggestion on IRC was to draw a pony as a Yoshi. It was weird enough to actually do. I originally planned on doing a picture with the mane six together as Yoshis, but scaled it down to one because I got lazy. I should have gone with Rainbow Dash instead; she would have been about 20% cooler.
I created my own brush in SketchBook for the outlines and it worked better than any of the built-in ones for this purpose. I really should get into non-Flash vectoring for this kind of stuff, though.
Derpy Hooves
Method: Sketching, inking and coloring on paper.
Despite begging for suggestions on IRC, I didn't get any and defaulted to drawing Derpy from memory (hence why her mane is a bit off, etc.)
I drew her on paper for a change. The downside with doing that is that it normally looks way worse after being scanned in than it does on paper. For some reasons, the imperfections become way more obvious.
Some post-processing, mostly contrast adjustment, was done in Photoshop to counteract scanner inaccuracies, i.e. to make the black parts completely black and the white parts completely white, instead of slightly grayish on both ends. However, this tends to make the image more jagged as details are lost. Shrinking the image down normally makes it look better again, though.
The wings are off because it wasn't until after inking them that I finally realized what was wrong with them. Unfortunately, I couldn't erase what was already there, but I added some additional feathers to at least partially salvage them.
Staff Bar & Grill
Method: Sketching and inking on paper, coloring and shading in SketchBook.
Staff members have their own office in the SMWC Bar & Grill. This picture - loosely based on a suggestion by Ersanio - is a slice of life of an imagined physical counterpart.
This is sort of a re-imagining of the "drunkard SNN" from back in the "SNN's 5000th post" animation a few years ago. While he's normally portrayed as a stick man, it felt like a cop-out, so I imagined a slightly more realistic appearance for him (which SNN commented on as being fat by comparison).
While I have no idea about whether or not Chester drinks beer, having him only drink Generic Cola seemed like a good counterpoint.
Rarity Sewing
Method: Sketching and inking on paper, coloring in SketchBook.
The request was simply "a Rarity". It turned out to be the single most elaborate picture I've ever drawn by hand. From the request to it being completely done (including the digital portions), 9 hours of largely uninterrupted work passed.
During sketching, a lot of time was spent on Rarity's mane and tail, redrawing them numerous times to be somewhat proportional. Order of sketching was Rarity, clothing, tea cup, mannequin, Spike with the latter two being last-minute ideas. While sketching, I had serious doubts about what to do with it. Due to it being, by my measures, incredibly elaborate, I at first didn't even dare to think about inking it by hand, seeing as a single mistake would ruin the sketch (which looked awesome on its own).
So, I scanned the sketch in and began inking it digitally (with colored outlines). However, the difficulty of making clean outlines (as shown in the Yoshi Pie image) made me quickly give up on that idea. So, instead I risked it all and began inking it by hand. I'm glad I did because it turned out great. (At least on paper.) So, the fully inked image was scanned and post-processed, then colored in SketchBook.
I have no idea why exactly, but I don't trust flood fill. At all. I probably should start experimenting with it in Photoshop to save the huge task of coloring the entire thing manually. While coloring this image manually may not seem like a big deal, it is. Mostly because the image is actually 3507x2480. It was shrunk down to its current size in an effort to hide the somewhat jagged lines caused by a combination of amateur tools, a slightly unsteady hand, scanning and contrast adjustments.
So yeah. Overall, I'm extremely happy with the result, even if it's not perfect.
So yeah, seeing as the Art forum is largely dead, I'm considering moving back to deviantART in an attempt to potentially reach a broader audience. Not sure what to do about the SMWC injoke images, though. 
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| Last edited on 2012-03-24 09:32:14 PM by Smallhacker. |
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| Posted on 2012-03-26 04:46:14 AM |
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Those drawings have a good change to be good, if they are adapted. I'm pretty surprised on how polished are the lines despite you scanned them. Also, since when you don't use your own DeviantART account?
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| Posted on 2012-03-26 07:04:10 PM |
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Originally posted by DinomarThose drawings have a good change to be good, if they are adapted.
Yeah, uh, I don't know what that means.
Originally posted by DinomarI'm pretty surprised on how polished are the lines despite you scanned them.
They really aren't, and that's why I make them smaller. For comparasion, here's the Rarity image in higher resultion:
Color
Also, just for fun, here's the sketch and inked versions without any adjustments made to them:
Sketch
Inked
I tried uploading these in their full resolution (3507x2480), but Photobucket complained about them being too large, so these'll have to do.
Originally posted by DinomarAlso, since when you don't use your own DeviantART account?
I haven't used it for a few years. Maybe it's time to make a return.
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| Posted on 2012-03-27 05:18:11 AM |
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Originally posted by SmallhackerOriginally posted by DinomarThose drawings have a good change to be good, if they are adapted.
Yeah, uh, I don't know what that means.
Well, it's a bit long to explain: to be a very great artist (which i am not, actually, since i'm in a learning phase) you need to train yourself a lot, and even draw from life. But, i suppose you are drawing just for fun, since you're more a "programmer", a "mathematican" than an artist (thinking it in my ignorance). Why? Why some are better to drawing and other are better to math? That depends from right side and left side of our mind. For example, while everyone dreams and process images (especially when dreaming), everyone has a different mind development. But what are those right and left side? As everyone knows, the mind is divided in two sides: right and left. The right side involves imagination and development of "data" trough images. The left side, instead, is a little the opposite: it involves rationality and thinking. And people should know that the left side of the mind is connected to the right side of the body, and viceversa. for example, i think you have the left side more developed than the right one. while i have the right side more deveolped. If you are left-handed, be sure the right side of your mind is the most developed. This is the reason many left-handed are creative people. I don't know about you. I'm right-handed, but i use the kitchen knife with the left hand, and, sometimes, i do things better with the left hand rather than the right one. Not sure why. I learnt all this (even if i need to study more in deep) by reading "Drawing with the right side of the brain", an interesting book by this author.
So is this: you need to train your right side.
I don't know what you will do, but improve must be a great satisfation. Seein your drawings, actually, you're even in a high place compared to most drawers that you even find on DeviantART: your ponies from MLP really seem to come from MLP.
QuoteOriginally posted by DinomarI'm pretty surprised on how polished are the lines despite you scanned them.
They really aren't, and that's why I make them smaller. For comparasion, here's the Rarity image in higher resultion:
Color
Also, just for fun, here's the sketch and inked versions without any adjustments made to them:
Sketch
Inked
I tried uploading these in their full resolution (3507x2480), but Photobucket complained about them being too large, so these'll have to do.
Ah, i see: even when i scan frames for the short i am working on i need to adapt those drawings. But i thought the line was pretty polished.
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| Posted on 2012-03-27 02:02:14 PM |
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First of all, I'm pretty sure that the "left-handed people are more creative" idea is a myth with little to no scientific evidence.
Anyway. I'm not sure if I can be categorized as either left or right hemispheric (the oversimplification of which is another myth). On one hand, I have a great sense of reasoning and logic, which explains my interest in mathematics, programming and science. On the other hand, I also have a lot of creativity, think of a lot of jokes and far-fetched references (YMMV on the quality, though), I have a great sense of direction and memory of what places look like as well as a good memory for songs (which is useless as I can't sing). I enjoy drawing, writing lyrics (but don't understand enough about music to compose melodies themselves), thinking of stories and various other traditionally left-hemispheric things. Then again, I have deficient social abilities as well as face blindness which I assume are very left-hemispheric too.
So yeah, I don't know where I fit on the spectrum. My guess is somewhere in the middle, possibly leaning slightly right.
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| Posted on 2012-04-12 11:10:26 AM |
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Time for another small picture dump.
Kirby Cyclops
Method: Sketching, outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
Standard situation. I want do draw something. I have no ideas of my own. Someone on IRC says "Kirby". I combined that suggestion with X-Men as I was watching an LP of X-Men Destiny. This is the result. Not too bad, I suppose.
I'm still very unsure about outlines. The perfectionist inside me wants vector-precision perfection. However, as I have yet to find a vector tool that's both easy to use and yet powerful enough to easily do what I want it to, that's not really happening. Flash is the best one I have experience with, but it feels limited in places. So, I'm stuck with regular brushes and stuff.
Where possible, I used SketchBook's ellipse and line drawing features to try to reduce the imperfections. Since then, I've realized that I worry way too much about clean outlines.
Coloring was quicker than normal since I finally decided to start using the flood fill bucket, despite it being quite poor in SketchBook. I'm still required to manually color the edges afterwards as it still doesn't quite understand how to handle them.
I Expect You to Die
Method: Sketching and coloring in SketchBook.
My first submission to my revived deviantArt account. I'm not sure what'll happen to this thread as I start using dA more and more. I'll likely dump links like this once in a while in an attempt to increase exposure.
This is an idea I've had since first seeing "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" and assumed that people would immediately start making stuff like this. However, I couldn't find anything similar at /r/mylittlepony or Equestria Daily, so I finally decided to do it on my own.
This is one of those pictures where I simply color a sketch without inking. It saves so much time and effort, but obviously looks less professional by comparison. Then again, I think it adds a bit of character. It seems more... "alive", as opposed to the relative sterile "perfection" of an outlined image.
I originally considered adding dialog bubbles but realized that the original scene is so iconic that it doesn't need any.
Unrequited Love
Method: Sketching, outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
Another IRC suggestion saying "Birdo and Yoshi". This is the end result. A (quite similar) sketch can be found here for some reason.
Sketching was relatively straightforward. My biggest problem was trying to figure out what to do with Yoshi's arms. I'm still not completely sure what the heck he's doing.
Inking was an odd experience as I was watching some retsupurae videos at the same time. Trying to draw with precision while laughing is not recommended. I also began experimenting a bit with variable brush sizes (mostly out of necessity as the brush I picked was too large for some of the details) as well as having pointy ends to lines instead of the normal rounded ones. It looks a lot better and I have to start doing that more often.
Coloring was again done using flood fill followed by manually correcting all its mistakes. Oh well, it's still simpler than doing the entire coloring manually. Maybe I should start experimenting with coloring in Photoshop again, but I'm still not quite comfortable with shading in that program.
Also, for once I decided not to be picky about accuracy in coloring, instead picking the colors completely on my own (albeit with pictures for basic reference). Normally, I just take an existing picture and steal the colors directly from it. Turned out pretty well.
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| Posted on 2012-05-08 06:13:41 PM |
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Is this a bump? It's not a whole month yet.
Anyway...
Man, these are awesome! I love the Halloween and Christmas ones, and the Kuribo Launcher one is funny and "patriotic."
As for the one with the Legos and Redstone in the pony thing...
HOW DARE YOU MOCK MINECRAFT AND LEGO LIKE THAT????? NOTCH AND OLE KIRK WOULD BE ASHAMED.
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| Posted on 2012-05-08 08:48:02 PM |
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I don't understand. Where is the redstone and the legos in the pony picture? (it's a nice drawing, by the way)
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| Posted on 2012-05-09 08:43:25 AM |
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Originally posted by DeltaI don't understand. Where is the redstone and the legos in the pony picture? (it's a nice drawing, by the way)
Originally posted by SmallhackerOh God
Method: Outlining and coloring in SketchBook.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah. Kieran, S.N.N. and me. I have no idea why this image exists. At all. Seriously. "Oh God" is probably the most appropriate title imaginable.
For the sake of maintaining pony canon, S.N.N.'s beer has been retconned into cider. Oh, and everybody knows that Lego and Redstone are already canon in the ponyverse. Totally.
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| Posted on 2012-05-10 07:04:19 AM |
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Two Torches going to a Repeater.
Anyway, I'm not serious about it being bad. All these drawings are awesome.
I can't draw squat.
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