Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: zez on May 22, 2010, 10:16:35 pm
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Ill probably get a screenshot of these in game at some point, once I reformat the sheets to actually work with the rest of the game engine, but in the meantime, here you go
(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/bgtiles11.png)(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/bgwindows.png)
So, these are some tiles Im working on for a game me and some other people are making. I haven't really tried my hand at making tiles prior to this, but Im pretty happy with how they came out. The game is set in Paris, after ww3, with the city having kind of sort of survived a nuclear blast.
The first set was inspired by some photo's of Hiroshima, where silhouettes were burnt into walls after the blast. I thought that was kinda neat, so I figured Id make some tiles like that. The second set is basically just for building houses and such. The architectural elements were inspired by buildings in Paris, obviously, and the pallet was inspired by a bunch of shots of Chernobyl and the peace building in Hiroshima.
These are all for the background, on the same parallax layer as the player, and will be non colliding. They are 16x16 tiles... lesseee... There will be a layer in front of this one that has all the platforms and such, and will include things like planter boxes for the windows that you can jump onto (contra style jumping, where you can come up from under it, and then land ontop, probably with some fake Z sorting so I can put bars and such infront of you once you have passed the top of them, but you are still infront of them well jumping through...)
So.. yeah. Any recommendations on these?
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(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/screen07.png)
Little bump. I finished one more sheet of tiles, and finally got around to combining them into a strip the game source can handle. This is them in-game, with no enemys or anything to distract. The foreground tiles could probably use some critiquing too, but bare in mind that they aren't actually the correct foreground tiles for this area (also, note, the buildings in this level are a test run, and probably wont exist in that exact configuration in the final level/game)
But umm... thats about what they should look like in game. That is a screenshot of the game running, the numbers in the top right corner are just debug text, and wont be there later, although there may or may not be a hud over there (Im kinda unsure on how I want to do the hud. I could do it up there, or in the bottom, or divided and in both like a fighter, or I could just opt too not use a hud at all and have health bars appear over the player when he takes damage and fade out of existing when he's not taking damage. Thats currently how health works for enemy's, and how the players powerup meter works. I could also just have whatever relevant text like combo's and exp, appear onscreen when needed, and float off it or fade out or something... just make the whole game mostly hudless but with relevant data being displayed as needed... Any thoughts on that would also be appreciated, actually...)
But yeah... thems some tiles, making some houses.
Sorry this took so long to update, I recently moved, got a new job teaching autistic children, and snagged a new (well, actually out of production hand made in the early 90's) Edwards Les Paul (Thats a ridiculously awesome guitar, for the laymen,) and my girlfriend got a long weekend, so I haven't really been workin on this much lately.
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Doesn't look very ruinious to me. This might be a nice ref:
(http://www.flyingpioneers.com/pixlg/a12971.jpg)
But otherwise, I really love the buildings. Though they look more like they're from a sidescrolling RPG.
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Your shading style is very simple, if you want it to be more complicated you could always ask and I could edit/explain. It's hard to do it just by words, though.
Also, all the highlights appear at the bottom of the bricks; or that's at least how i see it. Any particular reason for that? I think it looks a bit off, somehow.
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Man, that ref. is friggin gorgeous. I was kinda tryin to get the general feel of french architecture first and foremost, and figured I could make some more messed up lookin tiles after I had the right overall shape, but that will help immensely.
As for Jad's comment, now that you mention it, the highlight on the bricks does look kinda wonkey. Ill have to fix that, although Im not really lookin forward to edditing some odd 100+ tiles... well, probably less actually, as the roof for example wont need it. Im going for a somewhat minimalistic style, largely just because there are a lot of assets I need to make for this game, and that makes it easier to keep them consistent, and prevents me from spending days on end working on one sprite (I mean, I still end up doing that sometimes, but now I can crank out the simpler stuff.)
That being said, I would still love some pointers on shading, and an edit would be greatly appreciated. Im not really tooo strong on it, as can be noted by the lighting on the bricks, and overall minimalism, so anything you could show/teach me would be awesome.
*EDIT*
(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/screen08.png)
That took less time then I expected. Fixed the highlights on the bricks, because after Jad mentioned it, I couldnt un-see it, and it did look pretty wrong. Now they are more consistent, with the highlights being in the top of the bricks... makes a bit more sense.
*EDIT2*
Now the windows are buggin me, Ill probably re add the bottom highlight to them.
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(http://zez.herobo.com/gangs/eep.png)
Okay.... some more work has gone into this. There is something bugging the crap out of me right now tho.
The balcony railings. Basically, they dont blend in with the building they are attached to. That is semi intentional, because they need to pop out as something that the player can jump on, but they are supposed to be part of the background image as well, and as of such dont really work. I also noticed that adding tuns of the cracked bricks in an area looks pretty awful, but I think the problem there is exactly that. Ill just use them more sparingly well I actually build levels.
So umm... any suggestions on the balcony? I know I need to lower the contrast between it and the rest of the building to make it blend in better, but I also need it to pop, and I have played around with lowered contrast, and it basically just ends up not looking like a possible foreground element. (meaning, it doesnt read as "Oh yeah, I could just jump up onto that and then jump off it to get over here," it reads as "that background image has one more bit of variation... oh hey now Im standing on it, whats up with that?")
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Maybe make the balconies low contrast at the left/right edges (the balcony curving to attach to the brick wall) and high contrast in the center where the characters can walk?
Tourist
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Hmm... That actually helped a great deal.
(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/better.png)
I also added a shadow under it to make it look less like a separate object floating in front of the wall (I mean, it IS, but I dun want it looking like that,) and moved the bars to the furthest on either side in a tiny bit to give a slight illusion of depth. Thankee Tourist, that was driving me a little batty.
I think next up is to finish the tileset for ruined buildings, and maybe make some rubble tiles that can hang out on the ground....
Also probably fix up the shading on the enemys (down below in this screen) to make it less pillow-ey, and add in some more (I have concept art doodled up for 2 other enemy's and a partially spited boss, but I have been in tile overload...)
That, and start working on a game engine based loop sequencer, sense I finally managed to get flash to play nice with mp3 loops.
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The colors there are a bit too green and the characters doesn't really fit in at all.
Try making the brick redder.
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Im not totally sure I agree with your critique, the pallet was based on numerous reference pics, and although it IS simplified, bricks actually do take on a dark greenish yellow hue when exposed to massive amounts of radiation (near as I can tell at least, I have seriously sifted through far more images of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl then I thought I ever would in my life... Google it sometime, if you arent feeling too squeemish.)
Ill admit that the background colors and the character clash a bit, but Im not really sure hue shifting everything to be closer to together (read, lower contrast) is actually a solution to that problem, or that it is even a problem (about 90% of the time my pants dont match the sidewalk, or the buildings around me. Just saying.)
If you would care to elaborate on HOW the character doesnt fit, if the assumption I jumped too in interpenetrating your post was incorrect, by all means let me know, I do want to make everything in this game feel congruent, Im just not convinced making the bricks the incorrect color to match a pre-conceived pallet is the correct approach. Mind you, yellow/green bricks is kind of counter intuitive to me to, and wasn't in my paradigm before.
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bricks actually do take on a dark greenish yellow hue when exposed to massive amounts of radiation
about 90% of the time my pants dont match the sidewalk, or the buildings around me
Never let reality interfere with your art. Your goal is to make it look good, not real. The sickly shade of green does not look good to me, and I think others may agree. I also have to agree with Lizzrd, the characters don't feel like they fit, color or style wise.
You don't need to make all the colors closer together, but you do need to find an overall combination of colors that look good. Your pants may not match the sidewalk but when you're walking around you're not trying to create an aesthetic. Saturated pinks next to desaturated green/yellows does not look good.
I think the main problem with the building is that each brick is way over shaded. It's distracting. You should instead perhaps suggest a brick texture, instead of drawing a load of bricks, all lit exactly the same.
Get your colors under control. There are 113 in the latest image you posted. I was going to make an edit but modifying colors under these conditions is impossible. As you add colors, keep an organized palette somewhere, so you can see if you need it or if you already have another color that can be used.
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Huh... there ARE 113 in that, hang on... that makes ZERO sense....
layer 1- 13 + alpha
layer 2 - 6 + alpha
railing - 4 + alpha (shares 2 with layer 1)
player - 10 + alpha
enemy - 5 + alpha
shots - 3 + alpha (times two I guess, because the enemy shots are all pallet swaps of the player shot)
// other stuff
temp foreground tiles seem to be at 17 colors + alpha, thats the one bit of sprite work that isnt me, and is actually for a totally different area...
there is another 1 color for the bg, and 1 more for the unfinished silhouette in the parallax layer (mostly just there so I could make sure parallax was working)
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that should be 46 total in the assets being used (everything but the 17 in the foreground tile,) and 63 total.... That is also making the assumption I never reused colors, and that is flat out untrue.
That being said, I just noticed that I didnt crop out the windows vista screen boarder, and when I copied a small portion of that into a new image, got a solid 73 colors, time to crop.
... ok, new count is 43. Thats still slightly overkill, and I could probably do things about it like match the bullet colors to the player, but its not nearly as daunting...
Ill re-assess the hue on the bricks them self, but Im kind of curios on how to suggest a brick texture... My art has all the subtlety of a "sex crazed rhinoceros on bad acid", and as of such any pointers on doing that would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, umm.. heres the cropped image
(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/better1.png)
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(http://zez23.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/screen09.png)
Pretty massive changes made to the pallet, and some changes to the enemy sprites. There are now female version of the bloodwolves (the blue guys, its kind of a joke,) and enemy's are given a gender randomly on creation. The bike in that screen is super WIP, btw. I still need to add in the engine block, and actually shade it, but thats the overall form blocked in.
Anyhow.... If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix the bricks in the tiles to look more textured and blend better with the rest of the game, that would be rad. Any other comments or suggestions are also more then welcome.
*EDIT* Ohyeah, Im also down to 16 colors counting alpha. That number will likely go up as I add in more enemys, as the different gangs all get there own gang colors, but yeah.
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how to fix the bricks in the tiles to look more textured and blend better with the rest of the game.
IMO, the Batman - Nes (1989) (http://www.mobygames.com/game/nes/batman-the-video-game_) is a good reference for a dark/gloomy/gothic brick tiling with limited palette, 6 colors here (if gui and sprite removed).
(http://img816.imageshack.us/img816/7206/batmannesingame41254.png)
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I like the bricks the way they are, if you try to add texture to bricks in that resolution I think it can get real noisy real quick. The new palette works good but the dark tones are too saturated maybe? Cooked up a little edit to illustrate:
(http://i834.photobucket.com/albums/zz263/ErekT_Pixel/ruinsofparis.gif)
I also allowed myself to add in a line at the left house's beam to make it stand out some more.
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Word, that does look a whole lot better.
I was using the same darkest color I used on the player (mostly around the boots) so it was a fair bit more saturated, yours definitely looks better, and manages to work fine as the darkest color on the player as well (ends up upping the contrast a tiny bit and actually makes him pop more, well making some details more noticeable.)
The batman bricks are friggin gorgeous, but I think that much dithering would be to distracting, given that the game will be double sized. I bet that looks amazing on a crt tho.
I also may steal the idea of having lighter 'pillars' that are made of larger bricks to show some illusion of depth, as that looks really good, and totally shows up in french architecture.
The line on the pillar on the left hand one looks pretty good, and does a good job of making it look rounder and pop from the rest of the building a little bit, unfortunately it doesnt work on the one on the right, and as of such the rightmost one looks flat in comparison. You have however inspired me to try and shade the pillar better, so there should be another version of this soon.