persistant little bugger, arent you? two days is not at all a long time for someone to go without reading a forum imo. Also, if i were you, i would refrain from judging an entire game by an early set of generic soldier sprites which does not include monsters, constructs, or characters. to say that this is without a unique thought is fairly insulting and entirely unfounded and unnecessary.
Okay, let's start with the "bugger" thing. I'm not sure you know me well enough to comment on my predilection for sodomy.
Second, I comment on what I see, how I see it. If that changes later, by all means, I'll be the first to comment on it. However, after almost two dozen character sprites, of which "generic" is the perfect description... if a leopard hasn't changed his spots, it's fairly safe to assume he won't.
again, even without the hats, i find no difficultly telling you which job type they belong to, and the specific job class within that type comes just as readily
What? You call that a group shot? By golly, they are all evenly spread apart!! Let's see some actual combat situations, where they are close enough to lick each other's balls! Heavy melee characters tend to spend a lot of time in melee range, don't you think? Luckily, I'm not on my laptop now, so I can present my own representation:
Can you honestly look at that picture and tell me what each unit is, and whether or not they are in an attacking position, being threatened by their neighbors, or within magic range of another particular unit? And I even fudged it, because I was lazy, and all the characters are pointing the same direction. You mix in different facing, and it will appear an even greater visual nightmare. Perhaps even worse is that this image all features characters on different levels, such that their entire bodies are clearly visible. If they were all on the same plane, they would obscure each other significantly... let's see how much:
THAT is unplayable.
Let's compare it to FFTA:
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ffta/screens/ffta1001.jpgDo you see how the game uses a very obvious outline around the characters (it doesn't use hard black on the inside) to make them stand out? Such that when you've got a bunch of characters with different silhouettes, it's pronounced. The individual units each have unique color schemes as well to further separate them out in a group.
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ffta/screens/ffta1046.jpgHere you can see that each character has three colors - head, torso, legs. These are not dull, muted colors. They are vibrant and significant, and there's infrequent or no mixing of warm and cool colors. Each character has a unique scheme - and these aren't even characters that show up later in the game.
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ffta/screens/ffta_10.jpgHere you do see warm and cool colors mixing, but the reason that is happening is to emphasize the solid color hats. If these characters were wearing blue capes (or the same shades of orange, purple, and blue) , then the hat would become a useless blob. The artist knew exactly where the characters would stand in relation to each other, and made a special effort to color them in such a way that, if their hats were important, that the hats were the first thing you see and that there was no way for the hats to be confused, obscured, or otherwise invisible at a glance.
also about that picture, the tiles and objects are very much WIP atm, i was wary of showing them at this early stage, but i think if it is understood they are WIP and missing a huge number of tiles (like transitions etc) then its fine. feel free to critique as such, in fact id encourage you all to because it helps me out a lot to know what the issues are sooner
You aren't missing tiles. You are missing depth. Look at this picture. Can you actually tell me what is going on here, even having drawn the tiles? You've got walls blending into floors. That, what I assume is a ramp, thing in the middle is completely indistinguishable from it's own side wall and the connecting side wall - and doesn't really connect to the land tile at the top either. Also, the ramp would not be completely obscured by that tiny little half wall, so it shouldn't be shaded completely itself.
You really need to create some definition here. You can do this by strengthing your shading colors, using better judgement on what to shade, or simply use different colors altogether for ramps so there is no change for them to disappear from sight.
just one more song before i go: i wish people wouldnt edit out posts, regardless of content! i wanted to chew out i think it was werewolf (sorry if im wrong!) who did that earlier in the week. If its too harsh, the worst i can do is try and make a counterpoint, no? also, the fact that i agrue against something, or even if i consider it irrelevant to the task at hand, that doesnt make it any less valid as a statement and i could be damned well WRONG about something, especially if your opinion is echoed. if you think something say it, even if you later think better of it. as it is, im wondering what it was you said, because theres a good chance that it was useful. i dont suppose you logged it? if you really feel that it is too harsh or hot for a public forum, feel free to send it to me in a PM or Email.
You have to understand that when I'm brutally honest, the emphasis is on brutal - especially this time. I think there comes a time when an artist hits a place where they are strong enough to hear certain things unfiltered. I made a judgement call and decided that you wouldn't take it particularly well. I don't mean to be like that, and lord knows I've made a couple enemies giving critiques. I just don't know any other way to do it.
edit: changed to use links instead of hotlinking FFTA images. Do the copy and paste thing.