Shademp
420
The two paint programs (not counting the basic for-children Paint) I now have *some* experience with is GIMP2 and Paint Tool SAI. I left GIMP because it was too much of pain in the a$$ when I tried to perform...anything.
Up until just now Paint Tool SAI felt better. While I did express a nigh existential crisis at the face of the hue wheel, the truth is that I find it a lot more intuitive than the RGB slides. In those slides, I have no intuition AT ALL about how to find the color I am searching for. With the Hue Wheel and the Saturation/Value square, I could somewhat zone in on for example a gold color by moving to yellow on the hue wheel and then moving around in the square. Same with the quest of finding correct tones of blue, blue-ish silver, brown etc.
But now SAI is acting the show-stopper. I am doing my darndest to create a repeating pattern, but there seems to be no way at all for me to copy one part of the layer into another part of the same layer.
Working on a 252x252 canvas. I heard from Dipsiel that SAI is not really meant for pixel-art, but that it should work fine for my purposes.
Every time I copy something using the selection tool it just copies that thing into another layer. I can't stress enough how much I hate layers. I hate them so much and I want to kill all their two-dimensional family members and friends until there is ONLY THE ONE LAYER LEFT!
Sure, I can understand the principle. My goal here was actually to start building a pixel-version of my living space. When I get to the point of making chairs etc, maybe I want to make them on a separate layer, then combine that with the basic room I have on the first layer, to see how well the chair fits. But yet again the software acts as a show stopper because I am not allowed to copy-paste the repeating pattern of the floor tiles. How do Ishot web copy-paste the way I want?
There are so many things in these drawing/painting programs that act contradictory to what I am used to. Like for example the nigh impossibility of creating a SQUARE eraser. To me this is a basic feature. The inability to create one kept me busy for a long time in GIMP and annoyed me greatly in SAI yesterday. Instead I have to use deletion with selection tools, color replacements with the brush of my choice (in this case, "Binary", because pixel art) and some tricks with transparency (which I seem to have forgotten how to do).
These programs are just so bloody counter-intuitive. It may be that the biggest foe I face is adapting to the software, rather than the foe of considering myself an unworthy inferior creature for even considering the possibility that I could create decent art.
To bring up an example. I struggled for over an hour just to activate the right transparency tools in GIMP in order to create transparency around the official Lazard (Crisis Core) artwork. Even then my purposes were never fully met, because I was unable to create a true "binary 1x1 pixel" size marker to create instant transparency wherever I wanted. I struggled and struggled but had to settle with a 2x2 marker that only created full transparency after multiple clicks.
In the end I managed to create a lot of transparency where I wanted, but the actual fine-tuning which made it look GOOD was when I imported the image into Paint (the one "for children", or whatever professional artists call it, that comes naturally with Windows) and managed to copy-paste darkness into proper spots.
These technical difficulties make me so angry I can't control myself. Give me a decent chance to create a piece of art so I may shun it, at the VERY LEAST!
EDIT: I made the *slight* progress of finding a way to move the copied rectangle on the unwanted second layer so it matches with the first layer, than I merged both layers into one and finally got that bit copied. Is this how lengthy the process is supposed to be?!
EDIT #2: After some merging layers over and over, I've created the following.
After creating the rectangles I used the crayon "brush" to form the "undecided patterns" within each rectangle. As you can tell the first four rows were copied over and over, but I tried to break some of the patterns by retouching here and there with the crayon.
The idea was to recreate my floor, but it ends up looking more like an oddly colored wall because of
1) lack of references (objects and scale)
2) the rectangles are in fact too large. They should be smaller.
Link: This is the actual floor of my living room.
When creating the "floor tiles" I had in mind the seeming mess that is many of the floor tiles in Chrono Trigger.
I didn't at all replicate this of course, but seeing how good pixel art can look even with its messiness, that is why I felt confident picking the crayon brush.
FINAL EDIT:
- Here is what the room currently looks like.
For the first time ever I am actually *using* layers.
Up until just now Paint Tool SAI felt better. While I did express a nigh existential crisis at the face of the hue wheel, the truth is that I find it a lot more intuitive than the RGB slides. In those slides, I have no intuition AT ALL about how to find the color I am searching for. With the Hue Wheel and the Saturation/Value square, I could somewhat zone in on for example a gold color by moving to yellow on the hue wheel and then moving around in the square. Same with the quest of finding correct tones of blue, blue-ish silver, brown etc.
But now SAI is acting the show-stopper. I am doing my darndest to create a repeating pattern, but there seems to be no way at all for me to copy one part of the layer into another part of the same layer.
Working on a 252x252 canvas. I heard from Dipsiel that SAI is not really meant for pixel-art, but that it should work fine for my purposes.
Every time I copy something using the selection tool it just copies that thing into another layer. I can't stress enough how much I hate layers. I hate them so much and I want to kill all their two-dimensional family members and friends until there is ONLY THE ONE LAYER LEFT!
Sure, I can understand the principle. My goal here was actually to start building a pixel-version of my living space. When I get to the point of making chairs etc, maybe I want to make them on a separate layer, then combine that with the basic room I have on the first layer, to see how well the chair fits. But yet again the software acts as a show stopper because I am not allowed to copy-paste the repeating pattern of the floor tiles. How do I
There are so many things in these drawing/painting programs that act contradictory to what I am used to. Like for example the nigh impossibility of creating a SQUARE eraser. To me this is a basic feature. The inability to create one kept me busy for a long time in GIMP and annoyed me greatly in SAI yesterday. Instead I have to use deletion with selection tools, color replacements with the brush of my choice (in this case, "Binary", because pixel art) and some tricks with transparency (which I seem to have forgotten how to do).
These programs are just so bloody counter-intuitive. It may be that the biggest foe I face is adapting to the software, rather than the foe of considering myself an unworthy inferior creature for even considering the possibility that I could create decent art.
To bring up an example. I struggled for over an hour just to activate the right transparency tools in GIMP in order to create transparency around the official Lazard (Crisis Core) artwork. Even then my purposes were never fully met, because I was unable to create a true "binary 1x1 pixel" size marker to create instant transparency wherever I wanted. I struggled and struggled but had to settle with a 2x2 marker that only created full transparency after multiple clicks.
In the end I managed to create a lot of transparency where I wanted, but the actual fine-tuning which made it look GOOD was when I imported the image into Paint (the one "for children", or whatever professional artists call it, that comes naturally with Windows) and managed to copy-paste darkness into proper spots.
These technical difficulties make me so angry I can't control myself. Give me a decent chance to create a piece of art so I may shun it, at the VERY LEAST!
EDIT: I made the *slight* progress of finding a way to move the copied rectangle on the unwanted second layer so it matches with the first layer, than I merged both layers into one and finally got that bit copied. Is this how lengthy the process is supposed to be?!
EDIT #2: After some merging layers over and over, I've created the following.
After creating the rectangles I used the crayon "brush" to form the "undecided patterns" within each rectangle. As you can tell the first four rows were copied over and over, but I tried to break some of the patterns by retouching here and there with the crayon.
The idea was to recreate my floor, but it ends up looking more like an oddly colored wall because of
1) lack of references (objects and scale)
2) the rectangles are in fact too large. They should be smaller.
Link: This is the actual floor of my living room.
When creating the "floor tiles" I had in mind the seeming mess that is many of the floor tiles in Chrono Trigger.
I didn't at all replicate this of course, but seeing how good pixel art can look even with its messiness, that is why I felt confident picking the crayon brush.
FINAL EDIT:
- Here is what the room currently looks like.
For the first time ever I am actually *using* layers.
Last edited:
That's going to punish me tomorrow. Indeed, this overconfidence will probably punish me later on, bringing me down to earth.
