What I'm Doing Now
Recent All-
Poke Training
I also remade the thumbnail for my [Poke Training](https://aethy.com/@humbird0/109469156713271020) game. This time I aimed for half size (100x75 pixels.) That made the process go WAY faster. At first I was a little unsure how I would re-create the background but all I had to do was put down a few soft blobs of color, scribble in a few blades of grass, and sketch in the rough shape of tree roots, then let [Pixelover](https://deakcor.itch.io/pixelover) crunch down the colors with some dithering. That worked out well enough. Besides who's even looking at the background anyway. ;-)
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Creating Sprites
I wonder if the old Viper hentai games used a similar bilinear anti-aliasing technique? Some of their lines look somewhat broken up, so maybe they got the scaling a little wrong? I tend to get good lines when I work at double size and only shrink down by half. Of course there's no arguing with their absolutely insane animation talent.
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Creating Sprites
Even if you believe I could justify tracing to create a derivative work (which is debatable), that doesn't change the fact that my drawing skills are getting rusty. Which means that if I ever want to draw something that nobody else has ever drawn I would struggle to do it well. Relying on tracing prevents me from improving that skill, holding me back.
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Creating Sprites
And the same applies for poses. I've decided to free-draw my most recent character portraits, choosing to only look at reference material instead of tracing it. The results may not look as good in the short-term, but in the long-term my skills will eventually improve. These days the main thing that's holding me back are not the tools or techniques, it's my rusty drawing skills.