AuthorTopic: cartooney mountain backdrop  (Read 3093 times)

Offline TheSilentRoomate

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cartooney mountain backdrop

on: May 04, 2010, 01:25:31 am
I`ve never really tried anything this big and not tiled before in pixel art and i was hoping someone on here could give me some critique as to how im doing and where i should really go from here!

Offline Mathias

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Re: cartooney mountain backdrop

Reply #1 on: May 04, 2010, 03:09:20 am
Looking very rough (technically, not conceptually I mean). Ignoring the char sprite and foreground, I'd say all here is only the result of quickly blocking in your basic shapes. Good so far, but you haven't gotten very far yet.

Mountains are built up but then lean over, which won't ever happen in real life so it creates an unreal effect, yet overall just seems wonky to me. I do like the general right-pointing direction of the mountains, implying movement to the right - makes sense if your game scrolls to the right. Perhaps refining the bg will give it more credibility. The pink clouds are nondescript, make them poofier, more cloud-like, I don't really like how they're simultaneously in front of and behind the mts -  doesn't make sense to my mind as I try to establish what depth/distance from camera everything is. If you wanted to parallax them separately you wouldn't be able to.

If you're going cell-shaded style, at least think about affording some AA colors in your palette. Non anti-aliased (or aliased) graphics always remind me of poorly rendered vector shapes - they bug me on a technical level. Though, they can be done in such a way that the desire for smoothing is minimized.


Offline TheSilentRoomate

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Re: cartooney mountain backdrop

Reply #2 on: May 04, 2010, 08:04:47 pm
thanks!
Yeah the game does move primarily to the right which is why i made the mountains facing that way and also to give them more of an unrealistic cartoony thing! I'm glad that came out! The pink stuff was supposed to be fog but i guess ill have to make that more obvious. Yeah i do really need to make them only infront or behind the mountains which ill do an edit of right now.
I would try some AAing but im not sure if it would go with my games look, do you have any examples of it done well?

Offline Mathias

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Re: cartooney mountain backdrop

Reply #3 on: May 04, 2010, 08:24:50 pm
I encourage you to at least experiment with AA. It has a way of taking pixel art to the next level, giving it that strived for polished look.



This one uses minimal AA for fg, and none for bg. Notice black outlines were also used for the fg.

by big brother


Panda's AA is inspirational. Look at the polishing effect it has on his work.


Then who can forget about Cave Story's nice minimal style.



Whether this "breaks" your style is up to you, but I can tell you from a personal standpoint I would like the gfx better if some AA was added.

Offline TheSilentRoomate

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Re: cartooney mountain backdrop

Reply #4 on: May 04, 2010, 09:07:21 pm
Those do look really good! I never really noticed that cavstory used any AA actually, ill try some out right now and see how it turns out

I tried a little bit of AA, am i doing it right?


I'm also looking at some art by taka M. and im trying to somewhat learn how he did his AA on his clouds

but im finding that pretty hard
« Last Edit: May 04, 2010, 09:46:44 pm by TheSilentRoomate »

Offline Mathias

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Re: cartooney mountain backdrop

Reply #5 on: May 05, 2010, 11:51:03 am
A good start. Already looking more refined.
To test your AA, try drawing this scene with an auto-AA brush tool and see where the computer places the AA pixels. Of course it'll use as many colors as it sees fit to achieve AA but you'll be able to see where the AA pixels would naturally fall.