I made a pixelated cat on Krita and then decided to give the cat an accessory such as a bow. I drew a pixelated bow on Krita and tried to resize it so it would fit the cat’s ear but after I tried resizing it using Transformation tool, the bow lost its details.
How can I fix this issue? The bow is on the right side (it is red colored). I tried resizing it to fit the cats right ear but it lost its shape. *Also, this is just a quick bow I made, I will be fixing it later. I know it doesn’t look correct right now *
If I’m guessing correctly, you’re currently at one of the highest zoom levels, if not the maximum zoom, and there it should be almost impossible to make things that look nice big look nice when scaled down. That is, if you are working in these last zoom levels, then you need to draw a barrette, a hair bow, or whatever needs to be adjusted in roughly similar size, but preferably the same size. Even algorithms like Lanczos 3 fail, and it is one of the best when it comes to scaling.
That’s at least my experience in this zoom range, let’s see what the experts in the field of pixel art have to say about it. But Pixel-Art in this scale means placing Pixel by Pixel.
Oops, I just see you are using “checkered paper” and are on a larger than assumed scale, let’s see what the other forum members have to say about that.
But one thing is for sure with reductions over large factors it becomes problematic.
You can scale ‘pixel art’ up by a factor of 2, 4, 8 etc provided that you use Nearest Neighbour filtering.
You can’t scale it down by a factor or 0.5, 0.25 etc without losing fine detail and you can’t do ‘variable growth/reduction’ by using the transform tool.
Thank you so much for welcoming me Michelist! Yes my grid settings are at 32 pixels and my pixel grid is showing at 400%. I am wondering if there is a correct way to set up my grid where I wont be having this issue?
I hope your day is treating you well so far! Thanks again for responding
Thank you for this suggestion! I am a complete beginner to Pixel Art. I tried the nearest neighbour filtering option and tested out several of their options such as scale and position but I was still unable to maintain detail after the bow got re-sized. How can I check my scaling? (I am not sure what factor of scaling down I am using)?
Scaling down pixel art is never a good idea because the arithmetic gives fractional pixel sizes and fractional pixel placement values, which are impossible to have.
The result, depending on which options you choose, can be a pixel in the wrong place, a pixel spread over two (or more) pixels, or a pixel determined to be less than 100% opacity, or a combination of all those things.
If you use the transform tool, you’re sliding the scale value over a continuous range of values, including fractional values, and it’s just not something you should do with pixel art.
You can only scale it up, by integer scale factors, and only then by using the Nearest Neighbour filtering option.
As @Michelist said, you have to paint it pixel by pixel.
You can use scaled down pixel art as a ‘guide layer’ for a freshly painted and corrected vesion if that’s helpful to you but you can’t manufacture it with scaling and transform operations.