Another practice piece, I'm really not used to doing larger style pixel art, its more like drawing.



I'm not really sure what direction I was trying to go with this, kept getting caught between line art and solid colour styles.

Spoiler

Quote from: Linaru on June 22, 2017, 01:15:45 pm

I was trying to limit the entire colour pallet to the 6 parchment colours I did attempt drawing a version of the character with an outline but it became difficult as the outline would join or blend with the hair colour and make the character look odd if the outline was light and it would look incredibly weirdly shaped and out of place if the outline was dark:


Trying to make the characters look like they are on the parchment along with world details and only using 6 colours is proving difficult for me, it's not a style or palette limitation I am used to working with

a lot of the older games that use outlined characters have the luxury of using a completely different colour (such as the green and red in your example) to separate it from the outline.. but working with 6 shades of very similar colours for the parchment look and feel makes  the outlines blend into the appearance of the character?

having issues explaining what I mean here, hope that is clearer...

Ah, thanks for detailing the issue. Sounds tricky indeed. Hrrm. I am not actually qualified to help, but until someone comes along who is, I will throw in what things I stumbled upon, okay, because I like how dedicated you are to your work no matter what. (Oh, eishiya already stepped in, good. Anyway:)

I suspect that despite the difficulty of the outline, you will have to find a way to make it work, even if it means a bit of a sprite redesign because otherwise, I see no real way you can ever make the chars work on the background at all. But whatever the case, I just remembered another piece that seems to have a similar restriction, maybe it's a more useful reference. Maybe look more classic Gameboy Titles for inspiration, (likewise to what eishiya just suggested).



by neofotistou on PixelJoint.

Okay yet another attempt, this time I reworked the pallet to make a few of the darker shades  darker this might cause issues when working on tile maps further down the line I'm not sure yet, your references are actually quite a lot more useful than some of the Gameboy tilesets I have looked at for reference so hoping this is better:



these new darker shades look a bit 'Grey' to me but its hard to tell

===========

more work on the character:


 struggling a little with the face on the side profiles

===========

Started playing with characters standing rotations

Regarding the problem of the characters blending with the background. Is there a reason you avoid outlines for the main characters? Do you think it would take away from the parchment style? Do you think it costs too many pixels for other details? I noticed from looking at old games with these sort of restrictions that they go for very heavy outline anyway, and try to use the outline for working the details.

An example is a game screenshot that Ryumaru posted in the game art appreciation thread:





I know that it also very much relies on colours to differentiate things. But still, maybe it helps to study the style of how it manages outlines on this small space.

I was trying to limit the entire colour pallet to the 6 parchment colours I did attempt drawing a version of the character with an outline but it became difficult as the outline would join or blend with the hair colour and make the character look odd if the outline was light and it would look incredibly weirdly shaped and out of place if the outline was dark:


Trying to make the characters look like they are on the parchment along with world details and only using 6 colours is proving difficult for me, it's not a style or palette limitation I am used to working with

a lot of the older games that use outlined characters have the luxury of using a completely different colour (such as the green and red in your example) to separate it from the outline.. but working with 6 shades of very similar colours for the parchment look and feel makes  the outlines blend into the appearance of the character?

having issues explaining what I mean here, hope that is clearer...

hmmm....
I'd say some fraying around the edges! Make it look like an old piece of paper instead of a doily by giving it a rougher more torn-off organic sorta shape.
Like this!

the image does not seem to work.

ill work on the border some later, as currently, it I am just trying to get the basics in place,

I've had another attempt at the character having added another shade and tweaked my pallette have also made the dirt path tiles lighter, I branched off from the original theme a bit for the wood table tiles as I felt this would help separate the paper, a bit from background elements but im still not happy with those colours.