I do not do pixel art much, but I remember, when I started out, I did the mistake of banding and overusing it. So big thanks for making this! Edit: Also I just noticed the cute doggo at the bottom of the video, slowly moving with the video!
Wait, you were saying something ? sorry. during the entire video i was just watching the yellow dog follow the time slider, it's also strange since the youtube slider doesn't go from edge to edge, so there's some weird kind of parallaxy thing going on.
Thanks a lot Mort! I've been watching your videos since I started to get into pixel art 4 days ago. I actually did my first ever piece of pixel art. I believe with a lot of "no-goes" because I still don't know how to apply the Anti-Aliasing. Once again, thanks a bunch for your videos! :)
It’s so weird for me, cause the beginning stage it looks so off and weird, but the end result looks so good and makes a lot of sense. Good tutorial. 👍🏽
Love the videos! Since I’m relatively new to pixel art: How do you decide between what is “shading” and what is “antialiasing”? For example, if you really wanted to make the belly of the bear stick out...because it is a small sprite, shading to one person may look like overuse of antialiasing to another.
Very helpful. Just got into doing pixel art. Not sure if I'll do much AA yet but it's good to know if I need to do some. Moonlighter fe doesn't use AA at all.
Hey Tyler! There are a few ways depending on how experienced you are. As a beginner I would usually just take the dark colour and make it transparent onto of the other, I don't requirement this in the long run but to start out it might be fine. If you already have a palette you're limiting yourself to then I'd use whatever colour from the palette I feel makes the best looking transmission between the two colours. And Freehand picking I would do some hue Shifting. (what I talk about in my old Colour video) Hope that shed some light on it :)
On the example where the same sprite with anti-aliased outside edges may be seen on different coloured backgrounds, I actually tend to use a % of transparency on the anti-aliased pixels and keep them roughly the same colour as the normal pixels. That way, whatever the background the sprite is on top of, the anti-aliasing will overlay onto it rather than stand out way more on one background colour than another. So, if I have a character with a blue outline for example, I would use say 25%-75% transparent [similarly-coloured] blue on the outside anti-aliased pixels, and those semi-transparent blue pixels will overlay and mix slightly with whatever the background colour is and not be too blatant and conflicting. I use this very rarely though, and only when I think an outline is seriously jaggy and just needs a tiny bit of smoothing in order to look right. It seems to work pretty well. What do you think about that?
i think in pixel art anti aliasing and shading does alot because you wouldnt have much flexibility in shapes and lines and also construction given the less flexibility construction is very good
Is it a good idea to use AA combined with a slight color filter when handling objects obscured by fog etc.? I kinda like the idea of having these little clouds dynamically change sprites passing through in this way, just subtle and yet distinct enough not to look off. To clarify, just having a color filter could blend all the colors a bit and make shapes appear softer as a result, but I kind of like the sort of light diffusion that happens in real life, and wonder if subtle AA might be a good method.
Any advices to making sprites or backgrounds or stages like in sonic mania or sonic 3? Because those sprites are detailed as heck and I don't know how they made it look less of a cell shaded art and a bit more like soft shading with detail
Mort please, make some tutorials about more specific pixelart, because I try and try but I NEVER know how to shade something or how shadows work and stuff like that, and I never draw something I'm happy with. I guess I suck(?
Great videos. For game asset sprites, wouldn't you make the background a transparent colour or maybe one colour (green screen effect) so the game engine can remove it), with this in mind AA using colours isn't good as you so, so wouldn't you make the AA pixels 50% transparent, so the background image shows through.
Great video, Mort, as usual. I noticed that you usually anti-alias your drawings on the inside, right next to the contour line. That's to avoid clashing with a background, isn't it? Also, like you said, there are different styles of anti-aliasing, and there's one kind of AA that people actually break those two dark straight horizontal lines (thinking on your diagonal line there) with a 2-pixel lighter vertical line. Do you know what I mean? Wanna talk about that?
Awesome tutorial! I’m just getting started but for down the line, if you were to animate something would you try to sort of keep the lines in which you anti aliased the same? Say for example if his feet were to turn, would you anti alias where the anti alias you had before would logically be? Idk if that makes sense haha
Basic anti-Aliasing What is basic and anti aliasing and how do we do this Why in this video you want to talk about the very basic of antialiasing and how Why let’s start out by talking about what antialiasing actually is and how Why to break it down your monitor is built up with a bunch of squares and if you’re trying to make a line or a curve you’re actually building that line or curve and sometimes the line won’t seem smooth What is line and curve What is monitor and built up and smooth Why is monitor built up with a bunch of squares and how and if we’re trying to make a line or a curve you’re actually building that line or curve and sometimes it won’t seem smooth and what does this mean Why so what anti - aliasing can do is to transfer things out and make it look more natural and how and what do we mean by this What is transfer and natural Why so let’s talk about when you should anti aliasing and how Why for example use them if you wanna fix a jacke and how and what is that Why did it show two red plant things with no AA and with AA and what does this mean Why and if we don’t know what a jagged line check out your three common mistakes you’ll leave a link up here and where and how do we do this and why so we can check that video out What are common mistakes Why it can also be useful to curve out certain angles or lines What is line and curve and link and angles Why and another thing is can soften outlines and what does this mean Why so if we want to make our outline seem thicker or thinner you can do that with anti aliasing too and how What is thicker and thinner and seem Why but one thing is important if we do it to a piece of art keep it consistent out throughout the entire piece of artwork and how What does important and piece of art and consistent and entire mean Why you just quickly want to show us the difference between anti aliasing and not antialiasing on a piece of artwork you’ve made anyway and how Why so this one is antialiasing and this one isn’t and which and why it showed right plant then left Why beside you can see you haven’t detracted any colours Why you’ve just removed all your antialiasing Why so we can see here on the bottom bit how it’s kind of like smoothing some of the edges out and how and where What does smoothing some of the edges out mean What does removed mean Why where over here it just kind of looks flat and it doesn’t really get a dimension of detail What does dimension of detail mean Why but in general just trying to use it sort of smooth these round edges out and how and what does this mean and which Why we can see here and where and you have a jagged line that you’ve fixed and how What is jagged line Why so normally you would have to go from one pixel to two pixels to three pixels and then whatever and what does this mean What are pixels Why is there big red plant Why but you’ve done one to two here and where and what are you talking about Why so what you’ve done is basically set one to two and a half if that makes sense and what does this mean and how Why we will get more into details to them but that is just to kind of show us what antialiasing does quickly and how What are details Why so there are two common mistakes that you see a lot when people try to anti alias and what are they What are common mistakes Why one of them is banding and what is banding and how And the other one is just plane old overuse of it and how What is overuse and plane old Why so one of the things we want to avoid is banding and how do we do this What is avoid Why basically what banding is as we can see here the pixel is basically just following the outline without shortening or anything and how What does following the outline and shortening mean Why is it showing that blue bird Why it’s just kind of melting together and how and why is that called banding and why we don’t want to do that What does melting together mean Why another thing is overuse of anti-aliasing and how What is overuse Why we can add a lot of anti aliasing but the less experience you is the more difficult it becomes and how and why so you recommend starting out with one ore two colours when we are anti aliasing and how do we do this What is experience and difficult Why so remember don’t do banding and don’t overuse anti aliasing and how Why you said how do we think and apply antialiasing and how and why cause it can be kind of confusing if you don’t understand the concept What’s is apply and concept Why yellow grey and red thing showing Why applying antialiasing can be confusing if you don’t understand the concept Why but if we take a look at the pink line you made here and where it’s supposed to showcase these little boxes over here and we see the pink line is really how we’re supposed to think about this black line here and where and how is it What is supposed Why it’s supposed to be sort of a straight line and why but because we are limited by the pixels it has to go side with jump up side with jump up and how Why we are limited What is straight line and limited and side with jump up side with jump up Why though with anti aliasing we can kind of try and emulate the line that we actually want Why so when it comes to antialiasing less is really more Why you really wanna emphasise on it don’t try and overuse and how and why that’s one of the things that can go wrong when you try and do anything Why of course there are styles that go with it but if you’re just doing it to smooth things out a little bit or blend two colours slightly together this is really more in this case Why again here is a mistake that you’ve seen a lot of people do they just like at one pixel next up one pixel next up one pixel and then blah blah blah and so on and what do you mean that this Why and here and where we have a different variation of of bending that we don’t wanna do Why if you try and fill out this green spot here and where you can see it’s really just only these pixels that we need to emulate so what you’ve done here this first pixel and which you’ve kinda made a little bit dark and then these two here and where is kind of bright and how What is pixels and emulate Why again you don’t wanna to do this one to three different colours and how and why you wanna try and keep it to a very minimum amount of colours and how do we do this and what What is minimum amount Why so either you would do it like this and what Why or you would just make one colour like this and what Why so you just want to zoom into this one real quick and talk about something we might come across and how and why it got closer to bottom green and black thing Why an uneven amount of pixel lined like this one and which is five pixels long and how and what does this mean Why so you wanna say ok I don’t wanna to three because then your antialiasing is bigger than your aliasing and how and how can we know and why so you want to keep it to and how and what do you mean by this Why it’s just below half of the number length of the pixel and how What is number length Why so if the line was this far and a black thing came you would probably do something like you know this amount of length and how and what and why a yellow thing came under black thing Why you see yeah this seems to fit pretty right and what and how What is seems why then of course we if we want to do it’s two colours we can do it like this and how and why but we never want to start doing something like and what and how and why did green thing come in the middle of black and yellow thing and why that’s a no go and what does this mean Why so you hope that helped us understand the concept of how to think about antialiasing a little bit and how Why try and keep this purple line method in mind like if we didn’t have pixels how would the lines look and how and which What is purple line method and pixels and lines Why and you know how many half pixels would we have to put in there and where What are half pixels
Blend the two colors that touch. For example if you look at king dedede's right hand, 2:31, which is yellow and it has a black outline you'll see the anti-alias pixels are a gradient of those two colors: orange and brown.
I make sprites decently often and learned the hard way not to blend (no... just no.. that looks bad) Instead i'm making a minecraft resource pack with my newfound skill of spriteworking (what?) The idea is it gives you a look at what you're wearing (how you'll look) while invisible... it'll take a bit of setting up but eh
Great video, I think the "over banded" sprite still looked really cool. Is it just a question of taste or is there a technical reason not to over-band?
There is no wrong or right but some things just make everything easier when you make more complex stuff, but in the end you should do what you think looks cool! :)
Antialiasing is a softening of edges through average pixel value. Like averaging three lines in three layers into one line. Pixel art AA you describe is nothing else than dithering. Average of color shades. Dithering is a 2D technique, AA is 3D technique. There is no true AA in 2D pixel art, it´s all dithering... 2D AA can be done by using transparent layers not just different color shades... And still... true AA requires time value to cheat eyes while dithering does not use time variable.
Why you know there’s no such thing as a half pixel but that’s just what you’re calling it and what in this case and how Why so you wanna talk a little bit about how to apply antialiasing to a video game sprite because a piece of artwork is very different from a game sprite and how What is apply and video game sprite and piece of artwork Why we can see here that you antialiased blue around him that fits with the background and how but why in games our character can come across a variation of different coloured backgrounds so if we start to make antialiasing on the outer side of this right we can come across this weird looking stuff here and where when it comes up against another background and how What is variation and backgrounds Why so your suggestion and remind us if we’re going to make antialiasing on a sprite for a game try and build a sprite on a neutral background like a grey and try and sometimes see how it looks on a bright background also see how it looks on a dark background but in general we’ll just try and build it on a very neutral coloured background and how What is suggestion and remind and sprite and neutral background and in general and neutral coloured Why that way it is easy to sort of like see if it’s in between or if it’s too dark or if it’s too bright and how Why another thing you want us to keep in mind if we are going to do antialiasing on a game sprite is that we have to think about this sprite might have to be animated and how Why so if we animate something we would have to animate the anti-aliasing as well and how What is animate Why you know it may not sound that complicated for more experienced people but if we are a beginner this can be something that can make our animation process even way more difficult and how Why alright so you wanna talk about how antialiasing can also be applied to lines and how What is applied and lines and complicated and experienced and animation Why we can see here and where that these lines are kind of like fading out and how and why was white thing on black things next to purple and why and it’s kind of emulating like a brush that gets thinner and figure so we can see down here and where the line is very thin but it gets thicker up here and where and why but we can’t really make the pixel smaller than one pixel so this is a way again to sort of like shrink things down because then pixel art everything is just an illusion and we’re trying to make one pixel display as much information as possible and how and why so this is a way that we can sort of like thin out a line in pixel art and how What is the cat and the three different colour rectangles and the black thing next to the purple What is fading out and emulating and thinner and figure and thicker and illusion and display and pixel and information and possible Why you just wanna zoom in on your cat guy here because we can see here on his mouth you could just make all these sort of like dark greys and which and where be a black line but it’s a way for you to sort like thin these and what lines out and how and why so instead of it’s just one thick line it’s sort of like look a little bit thinner if we see it from a distant and how and why for example up here and where we can see you’ve made one pixel here with his hair and it just helps give the illusion of a little piece of a hair sticking up that actually sits in front of his head right and how Why so try and think about how we can use a thinner line in some cases instead of just using a plain out black everywhere and how and what does this mean Why so last off before you end the video you just wanna try and add some anti aliasing to guy and which and why it showed some bear and talk about your process meanwhile and how Why bear is in top right Why so first off you like to have your preview window here and where of your sprite so you have a close-up view and a faraway view and how What is preview and close-up and faraway view and sprite
