[WIP][C&C] RPG tiles, props and sprites!

[Otto-V]

Hi guys

I am working on a RPG tile set for a personal game I am making. I am a experienced 3D artist but I have little to no experience working with pixel art.

I have studied what I have found in the tile sets that came with RPG Maker MV (I am using this as I have no programming skills)

I will keep posting my work here and hopefully I can end up with a nice looking and unique game.

I would also love feedback on the room layout, I am not sure how to best do side and bottom doors. I broke the upper door by scaling it but it should get the point across.

All art in images made by me.

[Curly]

Those remind me of old JRPGs like Golden Sun and Tales of Eternia, they look good (the bed lacks contrast in comparison with the other assets tho), but a lot of people wouldn't call that "pixel art". Here you will find out why and also learn the basic concepts: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
The top door is too big. I think every door should be the same size.

[Tori]

Very smooth, I like it.
I just didn't understand the perspective camera from the top and the orthographic objects.
Is this just for test or something like that, right?

[Otto-V]

Those remind me of old JRPGs like Golden Sun and Tales of Eternia, they look good (the bed lacks contrast in comparison with the other assets tho), but a lot of people wouldn't call that "pixel art". Here you will find out why and also learn the basic concepts: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
The top door is too big. I think every door should be the same size.

Very smooth, I like it.
I just didn't understand the perspective camera from the top and the orthographic objects.
Is this just for test or something like that, right?

If my sprites are not considered pixel art will they still be welcome in this forum?
I worked a bit on the bed and added in some darker lines hope it looks better now.

My main inspiration for the walls is Zelda a link to the past

But my sprite character (still uber wip) are one and a half tiles tall meaning a wall one tile high doesn't look to good. I tried having the top wall two tiles tall and the rest one just to see, but I am really unsure of how I should do this.

Yeah the perspective is strange. The object are Orthographic and I am using a 45 degree angel on the object, it looks strange tough when object reach close to the bottom of the maps. But you can see in the link screen the same happens there.

I might look for another solution on side and bottom walls and would love some feedback on it.

Some updates on my work, haven't had much time yet might get more done later to day.

[Curly]

If my sprites are not considered pixel art will they still be welcome in this forum?
I worked a bit on the bed and added in some darker lines hope it looks better now.

I don't know about here, but this topic gets discussed every once in a while at PixelJoint and they seem to be pretty estrict with it
There is a 2D and 3D section here anyways. If there's a problem they would just move it there I guess.

The bed still lacks contrast, it looks more flat than the others.
The new thing looks good but I'm not sure about the yellow.
I'm curious about how do you paint those

[Otto-V]

I don't know about here, but this topic gets discussed every once in a while at PixelJoint and they seem to be pretty estrict with it
There is a 2D and 3D section here anyways. If there's a problem they would just move it there I guess.

The bed still lacks contrast, it looks more flat than the others.
The new thing looks good but I'm not sure about the yellow.
I'm curious about how do you paint those

I do most of my pixel work in the program Piskel. I can go trough a bit more of what I do in another post.

I am working on a overworld sprite now. This is considered pixel art I think

[eishiya]

The perspective on the character doesn't match that of your tiles. The tiles have a from above-ish view going on (two different ones even), but the character is viewed from the front. If your overworld has the same tile style as the room you've shown, you should probably remake the sprite to be seen more from above.
Tiny chibi sprites can often get ahead with nonsense perspective just because they're so small and distorted to begin with, but with a large sprite like this, inconsistencies are really obvious.

[Otto-V]

The perspective on the character doesn't match that of your tiles. The tiles have a from above-ish view going on (two different ones even), but the character is viewed from the front. If your overworld has the same tile style as the room you've shown, you should probably remake the sprite to be seen more from above.
Tiny chibi sprites can often get ahead with nonsense perspective just because they're so small and distorted to begin with, but with a large sprite like this, inconsistencies are really obvious.

I tried to give her more perspective but ended up shrinking her a lot down. So I made a new bigger version, with eyes I was more happy with to



Edit: Made some changes to the head and made an outfit.

[eishiya]

It'll take more than just moving the features around, bodies look quite different from above. Imagine if the character had horizontal stripes tattooed on her. They'd just look like horizontal lines from the front. How would those stripes look from above? They wouldn't look like horizontal lines, would they? Clothing, etc gets deformed the same way. This example uses trees, but it should help convey what I mean:

[Otto-V]

It'll take more than just moving the features around, bodies look quite different from above. Imagine if the character had horizontal stripes tattooed on her. They'd just look like horizontal lines from the front. How would those stripes look from above? They wouldn't look like horizontal lines, would they? Clothing, etc gets deformed the same way. This example uses trees, but it should help convey what I mean:

I spent most of the day thinking about the sprite design and looking at a ton of other games.

I started with making a quick 3D model of the character with similar propositions to the sprite.
I sometimes use a orthographic camera with a 45 degree downward tilt to help me out with perspective on more complicated props. I also checked it out with a more normal perspective.



After setting this up I started the sprite again.



But I don't like it very much and based on most similar games I've seen even ones with taller sprites like mine tend to fudge the perceptive to make a more appealing character. I set up a test scene in RPG Maker to see how they look in a game like this. The only things I made in this image is the character sprites I posted here the rest is native to RPG Maker MV.



I am still going to tweak the sprite to make it look better then get to work on the male version as well, but for now I have decided to go for this look instead of a more correct perspective.

I really do appreciate your feedback tough


So these are the current sprites I've made. A lot of them as tests to figure out how to make them. Now I am going to do some research and figure out a visual style to go for in each area of my game to better guide my sprite production.

[MysteryMeat]

There's a pretty big problem here too in that the characters seem out of mesh with the props. Where the props are very detailed and have high colorcounts, the characters seem to be simplified and anime-styled and it is clashing pretty harshly with the rest of the world.
To use one of your mentioned inspirations as an example, look at how detailed they made the overworld sprite here:

While I always felt the shading makes him look kind of like a wooden nutcracker doll, the way it fit in with the rest of the world made the whole way more cohesive despite the simplicity of it.
That said, he did still stick out pretty bad due to color choices and the strong shadows, as seen here:

[Otto-V]

I don't think I mentioned that game as I have not seen it before
What game is this it has a interesting look. The sprite almost look like a pre-rendered 3D model much like the classic Donkey Kong Country games where.

But you have an excellent point, either I should bring up the characters or bring down the environment.

[MysteryMeat]

Oh! That was curly who mentioned it, haha. The game's golden sun, a personal favorite of mine in spite of some very numerous flaws.
Glad my point got through regardless though!

[Otto-V]

I tried to get some perspective on the sprite again and animated it

[Curly]

The left arm should move forward when the left leg moves backwards

[Otto-V]

The left arm should move forward when the left leg moves backwards

Thank you!

Better?

[Curly]

Yeah

[Otto-V]

Walking to the side.



EDIT: Removed phantom pixel

[Thanewdude07]

I'm keeping my eye on this thread! I'm more or less doing the same thing myself.

How many frames per animation are you looking to do? I think 8 frames for rpg walking animations look pretty fluid when done right.

That being said if you add some inbetween frames you could make it a bit more smooth.

[Otto-V]

I'm keeping my eye on this thread! I'm more or less doing the same thing myself.

How many frames per animation are you looking to do? I think 8 frames for rpg walking animations look pretty fluid when done right.

That being said if you add some in between frames you could make it a bit more smooth.

There are only 3 frames in the walking animations with one of them shown twice so four.

I agree more frames would make it look smoother but with the number of characters I need to make all with clothing and animated hair its not doable with my current resources.

I am aiming to make a demo of my game and get it online before Christmas to then hopefully generate some financial support. Most of my day goes away to freelance work tough and I am considering to take a few weeks of freelance to work on these tile sets.

[Thanewdude07]

Oh there is a deadline in place for this? that changes a few things.


Well I understand meeting deadlines but if possible I would suggest putting more more frames for the main characters animations and maybe the np characters only having 3 frame walks if you have to cut down a bit. The player will be spending most of their time with the MC so the amount of effort that goes into boss characters and Main character should be a lot greater then a town npc.

Just a thought. I agree while its quicker to do shorter key frame animations smooth moves are always pleasing to the eye.

[Otto-V]

Oh there is a deadline in place for this? that changes a few things.


Well I understand meeting deadlines but if possible I would suggest putting more more frames for the main characters animations and maybe the np characters only having 3 frame walks if you have to cut down a bit. The player will be spending most of their time with the MC so the amount of effort that goes into boss characters and Main character should be a lot greater then a town npc.

Just a thought. I agree while its quicker to do shorter key frame animations smooth moves are always pleasing to the easy.

I'll give some serious trough to this, the deadline is a personal motivator.

Pixel animation is new to me I am primarily a 3D artist.

You say 8 frames for walking animations, do you have any examples to show me?

[Thanewdude07]

Sure do! here is a great tutorial

http://finalbossblues.com/walk-cycles-part-2/

I made mine following his advice from this tutorial ( also watching The animator's survival kit)

[Otto-V]

Sure do! here is a great tutorial

http://finalbossblues.com/walk-cycles-part-2/

I made mine following his advice from this tutorial ( also watching The animator's survival kit)

So yeah since my animation uses the idle in between my character seems to shuffle rather then walk. I am not sure about doing 8 but 4 unique  might be a good idea tough ^^

I am going to test it now ^^

[Thanewdude07]

fair enough! good luck with making improvements!

[Otto-V]

fair enough! good luck with making improvements!

So I went with 8 it seems

I animated her legs still needs some fixing.



Edit: Legs re-animated. I also edited the title for this thread to something more relevant.

[Thanewdude07]

Looking good

When the leg is extended towards the camera add more of the lightest shade on the foot to show its exposure. kinda like if you have the  way you have the leg getting darker as its moved further away from our sight.

 just do the opposite to show its extension

[Otto-V]

Looking good

When the leg is extended towards the camera add more of the lightest shade on the foot to show its exposure. kinda like if you have the  way you have the leg getting darker as its moved further away from our sight.

 just do the opposite to show its extension

Current version of it, trying to decide how I want her arms ^^



Edit: I messed this one up but I tough it looked funny so I'll show it

[Otto-V]

Ok then here is my current walk for my female base!



Edit: Started working on a over world goblin. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated



Edit2: I worked some more on it and tried to make it look less square. I see some mistakes in the female walk now to.