Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Rotflturion on March 13, 2013, 01:28:35 am
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Hello, I am developping a 2D farm sim/economy type game and I could use some feedback with my pixels, as I'm more like a newbie graphic artist
How does the game look at the moment:
(http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/3557/gamepres.png)
The player:
(http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/7950/playeram.png)
At the moment I am working on the player character walking animation [he's not detailed / shaded yet], and would be grateful for any [constructive] criticism - what's ok? What's not ok? Any tips on how to make his movement look better?
TIA for any replies :)
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First thing that comes to mind is how puny our character is in this enormous game screen. If you shrink it down in a manner so there are less tiles visible, it's harder get visually lost. The game screen probably shows you more of the game world than you really need to see anyways. It's also harder to make good use of your space. Your house interior has a ton of empty room but it's easier to fill up that space if that house is smaller, or if your furniture is larger (then again, it's already big enough for a giant, heheh). When there are more tiles visible, it creates a feeling of fakeness when it becomes needlessly obvious that it's a tiled world.
I also wouldn't be so concerned with shading and detailing as much as I am concerned with color. What I see are some pretty heavy colors that creates a bit of a somber mood (via cloudy weather?), but that's probably not something I see would go well with how I think of farm games.
You can use color to control where the viewer should look. The reds used on the flower is great with bringing attention to that area, and I can see potential to use that as an accent of sorts to bring attention to areas a flower would be at. I think a red flower would be better used as some houseplant though. You would also probably be interested in giving our player character some colors that makes him stand out from his surroundings.
While I lurked around this place: I found this post to be useful: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=14893.msg137131#msg137131 Hopefully you'll find it useful as well?
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Do you have any requirements on the character's appearance? Right now he is quite boring. For example, in Harvest Moon the main character has a blue cap to bring him out of his environment (as few things are blue in Harvest moon I think.)
It might be a good idea to draw out your character so you don't have to invent while pixeling. Like someone said about 3d modeling, I think it's hard to go about it as fast as your thoughts go. :o!
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@Pix3M:
First of all, I realize that he's small, but I wanted the player to see as many tiles as possible, for easier fields arrangement. The house is empty, but for now it's just a placeholder that will be reshaped - I need to know what will be inside first [probably some chests, a kitchen, wardrobe? and stuff like that] - then I will divide it into several smaller rooms :)
Could you explain the "somberness" a bit closer? I'm not sure what does it mean :p The game was even darker before, like this:
(http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/258/gameeeeeee.png)
But I found the trees and new weeds blend into the grass too much and brightened it up a little
About the colors - as I said I'm a newbie at PA, so any advices concerning colours, shading and stuff are mostly welcome - I find the link you provided very useful, thanks!
Also, the potted plants are a good idea! :)
@Ymedron:
Thanks for the reply!
Well, the character is a WIP at the moment, I'm mostly concerned about the animation itself - you have got a point here, I will try to make him stick out a bit more; also what do you mean about "drawing out" a character? Like drawing a big version of it to use it as a concept art thingy?
PS: That's how the first version looked like! [uglyness]
(http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1935/gameplayz.png)
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I actually like your old one more, tbh. I've never liked when games showed the inside of buildings, and I like the textured look your old one had (and your new one has, to some extent). How did you get that cool textured look on the roof and stuff? Is it pure pixel art, or did you use auto-aliasing tools like Photoshop? It looks neat. Reminds me of Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube.
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@Pix3M:
First of all, I realize that he's small, but I wanted the player to see as many tiles as possible, for easier fields arrangement. The house is empty, but for now it's just a placeholder that will be reshaped - I need to know what will be inside first [probably some chests, a kitchen, wardrobe? and stuff like that] - then I will divide it into several smaller rooms :)
Could you explain the "somberness" a bit closer? I'm not sure what does it mean :p The game was even darker before, like this:
Seeing as many tiles as possible? I can see where you're coming from. I like to think that if we imagine a ridiculous extreme with 8x8 tiles on a HD monitor played at fullscreen unscaled, things would be very annoying to look at. Obviously, there must be a line to be drawn, though we do seem to draw the line in different places.
(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3223/image10mq.png)
If I were to crop this so it's at a resolution of 320x240, it's much harder to get lost in a seemingly endless sea of nothing.
IMO, I can picture several possible approaches:
1. You can simply make your character bigger
2. Or, you can make your tiles smaller and cut down on your game resolution.
IMO, I think the latter is a better route because your tiles are done with a ton of single-pixel noise; if we really want awesome pixel artistry then they definitely need to be replaced with something more refined and less noisy. Pixel art is a bit of a misnomer as it ought to be more about art with pixel clusters created by similar colors touching each other, not single-pixel dot detailing. Pixel dots aren't great for detailing anyways.
As for the somberness, a quick looks outside tells me that grass is a much lighter color than what you have done for yours. the colors also seem to suggest some really dark weather as well. Why not go for sunnier weather, with much stronger contrast between lights and shadows, with a touch of hue shifting to suggest a warm light source and such? I find that the really dark grass just makes this graphical style feel a lot more depressing.
As far as I've figured game graphics, game graphics should be done in a style that complements the game play. Picture whatever game you happen to know with a cartoony art style. Imagine how that looks if it used a realistic 3D graphical style instead. I've made similar mistakes before. Game graphics shouldn't try to be real just for the sake of being real; realistic pixels go best with games that try to be real and serious. My ideal of a farm game - it should be all 'Hey, this is just a game. Chill out and have fun!.' A cartoony style ought to go well with that mood. I see realistic art styles to be more like "This is srs bsns bro. Step up your game". Maybe something for FPS games, but I have difficulty seeing that work out for a farm game.... unless by chance it's an educational game?
What I've been doing lately is look at examples of game graphics out there just to see what's possible. Have you thought about doing that? Sometimes it really helps to see how other artists approach things so you can learn something.
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Yes, I did mean drawing a concept art drawing of your character. It'll help you figure out how to make your character work for the game you are going for. (Remember to try many different solutions, and don't just go with the first drawing you make. You never know if the first one is the best.) Your main character is the most important part of the graphics, after all. In general you should know what kind of a style you are going for, so we can best help you get there. It's not very efficient if you have a ton of finished sprites in entirely different styles.
I can't really say much about the animation, as Im not very proficient in small scale walkcycles. They seem pretty typical for a three/two step walk, though.
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I actually like your old one more, tbh. I've never liked when games showed the inside of buildings, and I like the textured look your old one had (and your new one has, to some extent). How did you get that cool textured look on the roof and stuff? Is it pure pixel art, or did you use auto-aliasing tools like Photoshop? It looks neat. Reminds me of Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube.
I kinda want to implement roofs in the future, like when you go close to them [doors/windows] they disappear and show the interior
The roof was made of millions of small beams, and then shaded using the brighten/darken tool - I use GIMP
@Pix3M:
I will try to redraw the grass again, with less noise and if it looks better then the other sprites - I do admit I use noise a lot, to try and make things look more ... random
About the resolution, do you mean something like this? [A game I was making with a randomly generated island thing, 64x64 sprites]
(http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1805/islanderz.png)
@Ymedron:
Yes, I think I will do just that, and draw some bigger sized characters - I am still trying out different styles :)
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Yeah, I find that more comfortable to look at. Then again, I also thought of another alternative to scrap the need for a player character. The player will just be an imaginary hand who makes stuff happen from thin air, and you're sure to be able to get away with having more tiles in the screen.
And besides, not that I played many farm games, but it may be worth making the game less busy so instead of tending to so many individual crops, you focus on fewer, but they are more rewarding. That sort of approach will definitely go better with a non-srs cartoon style though... it would be funny selling a single ear of corn in a realistic world for like 5 bucks or whatever your in-game currency is. :)
I also wouldn't agree with a 'random' approach to game art. Interestingly, I don't know if I've seen great stuff made 'randomly', except maybe Jackson Pollock. In the case of grass, would rather doodle little grass-shaped clusters to make a grass tile. I'm not yet comfortable with making my own grass tiles as an example, so here are a couple of grass tiles I've found:
http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/som/sheet/15951
^I think this is an interesting example of drawing grass by just drawing plant-shaped clusters around instead of using pixel-dot detailing. I prefer this style over noisy grass tiles because you can look at the clusters and go 'oh, that's a plant!' You can't really do the same for other grass styles full of dots which you can't easily point at and say what that dot is supposed to represent.
http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/lozminish/sheet/6483
^Other possible styles that focuses on pixel clusters tend to convey grass by just drawing relatively few blades of grass on the actual tiles. What I really like about styles like these is that they're kinda powerful with suggesting that all the details are there but it doesn't draw in that many details.
For both examples I posted, where the grass borders the dirt, there are many more blades poking out over the dirt to show that the dirt path is lower than the grass. Could be a useful trick to try out ;D
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Hmmm... Tell me what do you think about this style of grass:
(http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/160/grassy.png)
Or... this [new weeds too!]:
(http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/160/grassy.png)
I think it looks a bit better [I agree the realistic look doesn't really fit a farm game of a type I have in mind - not a realistic educational simulator thing, but a Harvest Moon style] - if I decide about such approach I will just save the current graphics for a more ... serious game [maybe someday an RPG? :)], and redraw everything accordingly
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I feel that it's more convincing. Do not try to go overboard with detailing background stuff though... if it gets to a point where the player is distracted looking at details of minor stuff, you'll want to tone down the detailing. I prefer the top grass over the bottom personally.
I still think it's a good idea to make it so the character is much larger than the game tiles though... think about it... those are some ENORMOUS weeds. Downsizing your tiles to 16x16 also means four times less work.
For shading, here's something I really think you should consider. Your hues don't change going from light to dark. You could have a yellower green for the lightest areas but bluer greens for the shadows and outlines. There's a lot of creative freedom here you're not yet taking advantage of, and it easily creates coloring less boring to look at.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/83822168/web/C/c/weed.png)
^Why have the left instead of something a bit more interesting like on the right?
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Hmmm, for resizing the character it would be kind of hard to do as I coded the whole engine having 32x32 in mind everywere [layers, collision detection etc], also as much as I love old NES style games, I think 16x16 holds just too little space for detailing, unless you own some pretty powerful skill with suggesting details that are not there [that I do not yet :P]
About the blueish-shadows and yellowish-lights I have read about those in a couple of tuts about pixelling, but they seemed to create a bit too strong contrast everywhere - I will give it a try tho, how is that? [Changed it in the weeds, turnip and flower leaves - also new road and soil]:
(http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/5412/biscuits.png)
Also I'm a bit afraid of using too dark blues, as the day/night system gradually adds lots of blue for the night time [that means things that are already dark blue will turn black]
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Stuck with 32x32? Hmm. Yeah, you may be interested a bigger character, if possible. I still think his puny size is a bit awkward. I still wouldn't worry about detailing too much as what I think is most important is that the player can tell what they're looking at. Besides, I've seen too much 'meh' artwork that focuses too much on detailing and not the big picture - stuff brought up like color choice and character design, and the overall art style. I feel it's possible to drop some needless detailing especially on the weeds so they're easier to read.
As for suggesting details not literally there, in the case of styles I posted earlier, I would say that it's mostly drawing only a few details you're able to fit in. Even 32x32 is far too small for a hyper-realistic grass tile (not that I've seen any at that size). Look at the character's hand. It's like four pixels wide. The smallest literal piece of grass you can possibly pixel is no thinner than a quarter of his hand. That's huge, since grass is supposed to be much, much thinner. That's how pixel art is... it really helps to toss out less important details you can't really fit in a small size. We're not stupid - we can easily fill in gaps of missing information anyways.
You're totally right that shifting your hues will add contrast, but luckily hue contrast isn't the only contrast available. You can just change your value contrast if the hue-shifting creates too much contrast. Besides, it's a bit lifeless to have hues not move anywhere especially outdoors when you have a warm-colored sun and a cool-colored sky creating warmer lights but cooler shadows. Maybe with overcast weather things become more monochromatic, but even then there will be colored objects giving off colored light and such. I find the newest revision to be more appealing overall and without contrast issues. Then again, I dunno how it presents on your particular monitor though.
I wouldn't worry too much about blues turning into blacks... not that I know how your day/night system would change things though.
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Hmmm, do you mean drawing him still in 32x32 grid, but bigger?
And yes, I like it more too - the old one I must admit I just overdid - I kept adding details, applying filters, noise etc. just to make it look good and fit the rest, and then move on to the next thing, but it ended up as just a cluster of noise and darkness
Here's how the day/night cycle looks like [brightest day around 12pm and darkest night around 12am]:
(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/8383/daynight.png)
It's going from one to another seamlessly [with a long period of darkness during the night, and a long period of sun during day]
I wanted it to suggest it's night without making it all pitch black, as it's not a survival horror, but I'm not sure if it isn't too bright now
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I think there's a number of characters in a tiled world of 16x16 tiles, and the characters are 16 pixels wide and 32 pixels tall. You could go for something similar, though drawing a sprite like 64 pixels tall might be a bit daunting for somebody who doesn't draw with pixels too often.
I think it's funny that the night time effect increases the contrast of your tiles. Might make things more difficult to read when background detailing is cluttering up your screen.
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Hey it looks like you're off to a great start! I've always wanted to make a harvest moon style game.
One thing I'd suggest is to try and get rid of those outlines. They can often make sprites noisy and harder to read rather than clearer like you'd expect. And as a bonus, by removing them you get an extra pixel to play around with! for free!
Here's a quick edit of one of your flowers to show you what I mean:
(http://coarsemode.com/pixels/PlantEdit_Rotflturion.png)
I know it's a bit of a stylistic change but I think it makes the plant fit in more with the grass.
I hope that helps!
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@Akira:
I will definitely try that - for one thing, I am aware that the outlines make things stick out and catch the players attention - and with the big tile view range that's not always a good thing [large amounts of 'sticking out' purely decorational plants like flowers can distract the player easily and make it hard to see whats going on on the fields] - I just hope stuff won't blend in too much and become a blurryness fest, but it's worth a try; and hey, Free pixels are always welcome! :D Thanks for the idea!
First try [I think I made it blend in too much X_x]
(http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/8651/floweryz.png)
Note: The cow head thingy isn't mine, just a placeholder :p
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I'm happy I found out about this forum - the game looks changed drastically, and to the better [which in turn motivates me even more to work hard code-wise also!], thanks to your advices guys! :)
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A new tree, fitting the rest of sprites:
(http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/8260/treee.png)
Is it only me, or does it look like a big green poop on a stick? Should I detail it more? Should I use more colours? Should I redraw it? Or is it fine as it is?
Slight Edit:
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/4743/treeek.png)
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The new edit gives it more structure but there's no overlapping of the leaves, the leaves on the top should overlap the ones below.
It almost looks like there's a hole at the very top of the tree.
You have separate patches of leaves that don't interact much since they're separated by outlines. Try making a clearer hierarchy with the top patches overlapping the ones below.
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Hmm.. Any advice on how to do that? Making the upper part borders brighter instead of darker maybe?
How about this?
(http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/5148/treees.png)
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Looks better, but the patches are a bit too uneven in size and placement and there's some irregularities in the shading. Like the lower left part, there's a small patch in between the larger ones that sticks out because it breaks the dark shade. (I could point it out better in an edit, if I have time tomorrow.)
Also, try to keep outlines and the dark shades below the patches and not as much between them and avoid doing longer lines.
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I think the foliage is looking pretty tight. Definitely enjoying the lack of outlines ;D
I think the trunk could use a little work, it's currently a little noisy. One way to avoid this is to separate your highlights and your darkest shades a little. Here's another quick edit to show you what I mean:
(http://coarsemode.com/pixels/TreeEdit_Rotflturion.png)
Also don't be afraid to have your props interact with the ground. I added a bit of green from the foliage in the tree to create some shade around the base of the trunk. It helps to ground the object and make it feel more like it grew up rather than being placed down.
Here's a pretty brilliant tree process by st0ven if you wanna take things further: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=10520.msg112358#msg112358 (http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=10520.msg112358#msg112358) stylistically it's quite different, but the fundamental principals are pretty solid.
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Hmmm... like that?
(http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/4076/drewt.png)
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The main problem I see here is that the perspective is from a too flat viewing angle. With this kind of tiles and size it's not a big problem if the chars are from a viewing angle of about 20-35° because of the readability, but for the bigger environment pieces you should try to create the proper perspective.
look at both trees, this shows you what I mean:
(http://www.abload.de/img/trees_pixelationdlj17.png)
read the raw version with a tree as subject here:
http://www.abload.de/img/perspective_tut_cyangkmkpt.png (http://www.abload.de/img/perspective_tut_cyangkmkpt.png)
or the in depth version with a lot of more additonal details here:
http://cyangmou.deviantart.com/gallery/37668128