Pencil Tool or vectors?

[darkblob32]

I have recently gotten into heated discussion concerning the drawing and animation of sprites. Right now I am working on assets for a student game meant for the Nintendo DS and am one of the leaders. Unfortunately I'm no professional artist and am definitely new to pixel art. I thank you ahead of time if you read through this to help me with my dilemma.

Many tutorials I have seen say to use the pencil tool for sprites. That is, place every pixel by hand. However, a friend of mine who says he's studied a lot of low resolution art, says that using vectors such as shapes and such in Illustrator and Fireworks makes a cleaner sprite that is easier to animate. He also suggested lots of anti-aliasing to make it look smoother.

I can see where he is going with this, but I wanted to ask a spriting community for input. I find that using the pencil tool gives me more control, but the idea of vectoring to make it easier to animate sounds appealing. What should I do? Is it better to have more control and draw each frame by hand, or do I go with the shapes? Does anyone have more professional experience they would like to share? Thanks again, your help is appreciated.

[Rakia]

Using the pencil tool is what I do.
Of course I'm not really an expert.
If you make it vector, it's not really a sprite.

[Devicho]

Yeah, vectoring doesn't really count as a sprite. Sprites tend to be done pixel by pixel. So yeah, if you're going to make some sprites or pixel art, then just keep on using the pencil tool.

[Zee]

The prior two posts are correct, pixel art requires pixel precisions and you only get that by meticulous placement. However, I can easily say it's justified for vector graphics and turn them into game sprites for the sake of time and efficiency of effort. Lets face it, the average pixel artist can spend as much as two hours on a moderately difficult piece. While somebody versed in vector art can churn out many more equally impressive looking graphics in the same time. I myself am a vector artist more than a pixel artist now, and frankly, it goes so much quicker.

[darkblob32]

So since I'm new to this, I dont quite understand what is meant when you say vectors don't count as sprites. Could someone stand to elaborate this for me?

Also, could someone offer really good tutorials for animating sprites? So far for pixel art I have:
http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/links.html
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=218

here is an example of what I have done. please give input even though it is not one of the assets we are using. I hand drew every frame.

[Rakia]

The difference is when you zoom in, pixels are still pixelated, but when you zoom into vectors, they're smooth.
(Blurry, but there's an example of pixelated).
And there's an example of vectorized.

[Zeph]

So since I'm new to this, I dont quite understand what is meant when you say vectors don't count as sprites. Could someone stand to elaborate this for me?

a vector piece can count as a sprite in the sense that any movable piece of art in a game is a sprite.
vector however does not count as pixel art, ans pixel art is defined as art in which every pixel is individually placed by the artist.

many sprites are pixel art, and this forum in particular is pretty much dedicated to pixel art sprites, but that's not to say all sprites are pixel art.

[Geo the Fox]

... Am I the only one who uses the line tool? I really can't stand the pencil tool, and I just use the line tool for the same purpose.

[Koopaul]

Well for fine details I use the pencil tool. Wait do you use MS Paint or Photoshop?

[Rakia]

It doesn't really matter.
They both have the pencil tool.

[Nintendo_6444]

I never touched the pencil tool in my life. I much prefer the paintbrush.

[darkblob32]

This part of my message was a bit further down in my post, but could someone please comment on this:

[Devicho]

The image isn't showing up for me. Trying uploading it to http://www.imageshack.us/