Tileset WIP not looking the best :(

[Sokyogoku]

Hello, I would appreciate some criticism, advice and help for this tileset I'm making. I wanted to start off with some hard ground/ rocks but they don't look as good as I want them to be.

I think the problem is within the rocks themselves, the shape and placement but I don't really know how to fix them. I don't want them to look too cartoonish though but I just don't know how to fix it. Maybe I will eventually need to redo them completely? Or should I use less colours than 4 for the vertical pattern?

[MysteryMeat]

It's the perspective! As it is here, the rocks look kind of like they're free-floating up. You could probably roll with that though, just add some moss to the very topmost ones for a more reliable platform surface and from there maybe add some extra tiles with floating rock clusters.

To make it a proper hard ground though, you'll have to re-draw it entirely. A good thing to reference would be a mountain path or dry lakebed, to give you a proper idea of the shapes you need to work with! Google mang, it's your friend!

[Sokyogoku]

Thank you, I will just quickly try to finish the last tiles for this anyway because I have to hurry with completing university projects but next week I may have spare time to redraw it

[MysteryMeat]

Oh, a quick fix could be to shift things to overlap instead of have gaps between everything! Try doing that real quick, see if it fixes much!

[Sokyogoku]

Hey, thank you for advice! I just finished adjusting the tiles (tried to do it fairly quickly but couldn't) and that's how it looks now. I personally think it looks slightly better than the previous version, though after the assignments I will try to redraw it from scratch.

[Sokyogoku]

some update, it's almost finished, will do slopes and that's all for it. At later date I will redraw it.

[Cyangmou]

try less, but bigger rocks per tile.
It certainly will make it easier to look at.

[jams0988]

try less, but bigger rocks per tile.
It certainly will make it easier to look at.

How do you know how big they're supposed to be without knowing the resolution of his game? They look fine at 3x or 4x to me.

[Sokyogoku]

Sorry for not responding, right now I'm not redrawing the tileset because I need to have it done rather than done well because I only have 9 days to finish all the coursework.

And yes the (potential) game will be 2x or 3x the original size because I like larger pixels. Though I agree that there is way too many small rocks, not really because they are small but rather unappealing and sort of hmmm just don't look well.

[Sokyogoku]

By the way, I did update the tileset making few more tiles. I only need to do couple more grass tiles but other than that I won't change it until 19th of May. The recolour was made in aseprite, new layer with the blue background colour and mode set to soft shadow? Soft light? Do you know different way of making background tiles?



I also started on making some plants and bushes.

[Sokyogoku]

Hello, I nearly finished the project, there is a quick mash up of the tilesets, background, plants and sprites I did so far.

[eishiya]

Seconding Cyangmou that the rocks are too small. Even ignoring the scale problems, they create a lot of noise, making it harder to see the important parts - where the playable area is, and the details of the characters in front of them! If you don't have time to redesign the rock tiles, consider at least playing with their colours to help the scene read more readily.

I'd reduce the contrast on the background rocks, or maybe even use just the two lighter colours on it. The characters get lost against it.
I'd also make the borders between the tops of the rocks (in the walkable/playable area) thinner and perhaps use a 4th colour to make them lighter. As-is, it's not immediately clear what's horizontal and what's vertical because they have about the same value. Try creating the tops of the rocks with just the two lighter colours, using the 3rd colour very sparingly to create a little bit of extra depth.

Here's a small edit, I modified only the colours of the background rocks, and some of the horizontal surface to the right of the white cat:

Isn't it easier to tell what can be walked on and what's a wall like this? Personally, I'd go further by either adding a 4th highlight colour to the tops, or using the current lightest colour much more sparingly along the vertical parts, so that the playable area is even clearer.

[Sokyogoku]

Thank you your explanation is really helpful. And yes I agree about reducing contrast for background rocks and increasing it for the top of the walk-able rock ground. I will do those edits quite soon and post an update.

For the future though, would it be better if I only drew rocky pattern around edges or should I keep them on each tile only bigger and less attention grabbing?

[Seiseki]

I think you could work more with gradients to get the right sense of depth, try gradually decreasing the brightness of the rocks to get a fade effect.

I also think you are overloading everything with detail. Reduce detail where it's not needed, prioritize the areas that the players eyes should be drawn to.

I made a very rough edit to give you some ideas. 

[Sokyogoku]

Yeah I'm not really thinking strategically about this... probably because I'm hurrying. And I haven't been producing much pixelart so I'm really unsure where to add lots of detail and where to leave just fewest colours possible. This tweak in colours is really good Seiseki, I will make my middle part of tileset darker if I will have spare time.

I changed the top to brighter and that's how it turned out:

[Seiseki]

Don't stress about these things though, just keep them in mind, take a step back and look at the whole picture every now and then.

And I haven't been producing much pixelart so I'm really unsure where to add lots of detail and where to leave just fewest colours possible.

It's not a pixel art only thing, if you look at concept art for environments you'll see how they use light, shadow and level of detail to put things in or out of focus and reduce detail where it's not needed. For all kinds of environment art it's important to know how to gradually shade things to get depth.

It just happens to be even more important for video games, because the player will be inside the environment.

The brighter top looks much clearer. 

[Sokyogoku]

I did notice it in environment concept art actually, and finished pieces too but I thought they were just lazy and didn't want to make everything look nice xD

I will try to remember it, this information should help since I'm studying games design. Once the deadlines are over I will try to tweak this tileset more or make a new one from scratch but better.