Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Cage on January 20, 2013, 12:30:03 pm
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Hey guys, I'm working on a tileset for a tactical game from a typical "j-rpg" viewpoint - while I'm happy with the general look and the rendering, I'm not happy with my color choices and the water animation gives me headaches :P Here's how it looks
(http://i.imgur.com/cEKdaSI.png)
Here's the water animation:
(http://i.imgur.com/HKaX5dN.gif)
I'm thinking about doing the water the simplest way - solid color fill and just some animation on the shore tiles - waving around a bit on the edge and the grounds reflection being broken out a bit
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For the water, what about just horizontal waves? think horizontal shine-lines moving left and right.
I think the problem with the color is way too much saturation. The dirt clashes with both the water and the grass because they have the same level of saturation. Making the dirt grayer and slightly darker could help with that.
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The dirt colors are rather awkward. I believe if you redo them, everything could look a lot better. They could probably use some contrast, and some color variation. A bit red-brownish, maybe?
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(http://i.imgur.com/ELOrzMs.png)
Guess it's a bit better now
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Sorry if I appear uninvited, but I felt like increasing the HUE and VALUE contrast more with the dirt:
(http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/3851/elorzms.png)
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Okay guys, learn my lesson and PLAN AHEAD :D
While I've had a good image in my head, how I want the stuff to look like, I've jumped into the assets :P which got me into the whole color debate.
For the sprites, I've made drawings first and a quick color/shading paint over and then actual sprites. Only two done so far (without animation yet) but I'm a lot more happy with them and they just look "right".
(http://i.imgur.com/Ifimg1g.png)
No changes on tileset, I might do colour tweaking once I'm done with all the sprites, so they work together best.
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I think the top edge between the wall and the grass need to be different, because right now the grass makes it look like its' over the wall. Perhaps using the middle tile, or making the grass otherwise sink down?
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I would agree with Ymedron here. You seem to be mixing perspectives here. Always imply 3rd depth by making lower objects/entities to appear being concealed by higher objects/entities in front of them. It depends on the engine your are using. If it's not allowing a foreground layer (which would, for example, contain walls), this concealing must be "faked" by very pixel tile work.
I really dig the details on the dirt ground, although I think the green leaves appear like pasted over it, and not growing from it. Maybe add some shadow there. Also, maybe you are mixing too many different type of details there (moon craters, light areas, dark areas; a bit inconsistent and generally too much one such small area).
In the end, the implied height of the wall is not consistent with the height of characters.
I overall impressed by the quality of pixel work and it's the skill level I would kill for, so you are really little from making kick-ass pixel art. You only need to concentrate more on these perspective/size/style problems. The very technique, for my standards, is excellent.
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The general idea behind the wall is something like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/pgJ74Fu.jpg)
The engine doesn't allow tiles obscuring the sprites so I've decided that a trapezoid wall would be the way to go. I'm not sure if the current tiles really show this.
If I won't be able to work out a nicer grass edge, I might go with a shadow, we'll see. As far as the amount of detail tiles, it's my mockup-testmap and I've kinda crammed most of the stuff there.
As I've mentioned already, I think the whole problem with this, is that I've rushed into the gfx without thinking too much ahead. Redoing the tiles more-or-less would help tremendously but I'm on a deadline with this and the client likes how it looks currently - I'll try to do some fixes if I'll have some time left. Guess it's not the first time I'll finish a project with kinda "meh" feeling :(
I overall impressed by the quality of pixel work and it's the skill level I would kill for, so you are really little from making kick-ass pixel art. You only need to concentrate more on these perspective/size/style problems. The very technique, for my standards, is excellent.
Thank you very much for the kind words, I consider myself intermediate at most, though ;) You're 100% spot on on the perspective/form/color shortcomings, those are general art qualities at I need to work a lot, and well, I'm doing as much as I can :)
OH HEY LOOK A HORSE
(http://i.imgur.com/ytLJZGP.png)
Ignore the legless rider and no "utilities" like mount etc. :P
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Here is a quick edit of what I meant:
(http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/tt235/Ymedron/woahdude_zps72dc790a.png)
Edit: Maybe I should say something.
Basically it's a matter of using the tiles you have more efficiently, is what I guess I wanted to say. I haven't edited anything else but the transition from the wall to the grass at the top there.
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That looks kinda weird though, since you can see both sides of the wall.
The grass in general looks a bit too straight and uniform too.
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Maybe push the top edge of the wall so that it doesn't have the back wall showing at all? That wouldn't be too problematic, I think. (of course it gets inconsistent with the front where there are garden bench-style patches of grass... Hm. I still think my edit looks less jarring than the original?)
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Is the wall inspired on the Warcraft II tiles?
http://spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/warcraft2/sheet/29501
If not, maybe you can take it as a reference for yours.
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Hey, I roughed in a bunch of ideas for the unification of the view, and for reducing repetition. Having the characters at near profile with a lot of the tiles near top down is always gonna look a little odd; I blocked out one of knights more consistently with the rest of my edit, but I always give the the disclaimer that it can make stuff a lot harder doing so, especially if you've limited time. The rest:
- What Ymedron already did with the grass/wall border + making the north grass/dirt less flat as if the bottom were obscured; also the top of the wall to the top edge for the same reason.
- Gave the plant some overlap and a slightly different hue for contrast, broader variants tiles for the grass and wooden bridge, exaggerated the shadow/reflection on the water for depth and removed the busy highlights from all the cobble.
- In general I'd keep any contrasting details to the borders of stuff so as not to distract; like Lachie I thought the variant tiles for the cobbles were just too abrupt. The flowers seemed to tie the whole thing together better in white, mirroring the wall.
(http://i.imgur.com/Ifimg1g.png)(http://i.imgur.com/3aNpI1a.png)
I slightly toned done the saturation but thought the colours were mostly ok, if quite bright. They just needed some unification: flowers/wall water/plants etc :y: