Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Clandesdyne on February 04, 2014, 11:05:20 pm
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Hi everyone! This is pretty much my first post here. I just wanted to share some work I did way back in 2008 for a game called Cor Aureus that was never completed due to the loss of most of the assets in a mechanical HDD failure. (I still have the harddrive, but the recovery companies quoted me at 10-20k to get the data back). There used to be more baddies, but these were the only ones I could salvage.
(http://clandesdyne.com/graphics/baddies.png)
Most of the monsters have three forms that you would encounter in various stages of the game. The gameplay was a mix between the NES Final Fantasy games, and Dragon Warrior. The animated battle sequences was similar to what you'd see in the Fire Emblem games on GBA.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the style. Keep in mind, my pixelart skills have evolved immensely since 2008. ;D Six years on the internet is like 60 years irl. ;)
If anyone wants to use them for a project, feel free, just give me some credit.
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these look pretty good, they have the old feel of good rpg's, wonder what's the specialty of the human from another realm :D, even static the poses convey action :)
good work
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I'd love to hear your thoughts on the style. Keep in mind, my pixelart skills have evolved immensely since 2008. ;D Six years on the internet is like 60 years irl.
Why don't you try to draw these sprites again with your "evolved skills". They will definitely look much better. :y:
What's the main reason you want to hear critique for these, as you say old, sprites? Do you want to learn something from this, or you just wanted to post it for people to see. Cause if you are more experienced now, you know what are the problems here, and you wont learn much from our comments.
As I said, either redraw them, or post some of your resent work for comment.
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I understand what you're saying, but with new experience or not, I think this set can stand on its own. I was just interested in what the community thought could be done better or different.
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In general, I would say that almost everything is a bit flat and you're not using colours to create as much depth as you could with such a large palette. While most pieces have high contrast, you have certain colours that are nearly identical on some pieces and don't serve much of a purpose. There's many cases of individual pixels creating unnecessary noise and reducing readability. There's several cases of trying to add too many small details, which take away from the overall cleanness of the sprites. I would advise you to start out with bigger blocks of 3D shapes and adding details in the end, instead of starting with clear outlines and then trying to add colours to create a bit of depth as an afterthought.
Eight years ago, that is.
I have to agree with HarveyDentMustDie - With so many people trying to improve their current skill level and work on current projects, it seems a pointless exercise to critique something that is 8 years old, and probably pointing out a lot of mistakes you're already aware of. I don't see what's to gain. If the objective is to learn from your mistakes, then more recent work is more useful. If the objective is to measure the knowledge of the Pixelation community, look at other threads. If the objective is to have old art simply evaluated, scored and rated for the sake of judging its quality, you should take it to a gallery like DeviantArt or Pixeljoint.
You can insist on having people critique your old art, of course. I'm just warning you that a lot of people will may consider it pointless and abstain from helping you.
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I appreciate the input, cels. I'm new to the group and wasn't aware posting older works was an exercise in futility that may annoy the community. I value your guys' expertise and thoughts, sorry for the social faux pas.
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I do not possess any sort of expertise worth mentioning and I do not in any way speak on behalf of the community. I was merely trying to offer advice ;D
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Well let's see if I can say anything you wouldn't know.
I'd say the colors on the last dragon recolor are really poorly chosen. White outlines are generally a bad idea for a normal sprite, it's very irritating on the eyes.
The wing anatomy is pretty unappealing on all of the winged creatures on this page, they are unresearched and pretty clichely repeat the solutions of other people. For example, the "elbow-finger" on the baby dragon and the demons is really common on wing designs done by young artists on deviantart.
On the adults the wing shape is unclear and hard to understand how the wing is folded (also the fingers are folding in a curved arc that further makes it more of a symbol rather than any real shape.
The green and red slimes lack interesting color variation, the yellow slime is the most successful in that regard.
The bigger tree with the wasp nest is flat and the nest shape detail is too spread out. The smaller nest does it much better.
The rest of my commentary is just about personal preference, but I prefer designs that are less spindly. For example the wraith, scorpion and flying snake are all rather thin and don't show off much detail. For the snake it probably would be fun to have a bigger head.
Play with contrast on the size of your creatures - small body + big head, or medium body + big limbs + small head or something like that.
On most of these, they're all kind of medium body + small head etc.
Hope there was something new among this stuff.
Edit: I was bored so I tried designing some of the monsters to be more interesting and maybe better for pixeling. (I haven't tested them in the arena of pixel art tho.)
(http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/tt235/Ymedron/designs_zpsea238e21.png)
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@Ymedron Main thing was, that this is Clandesdynes old work and that he said he is become better in the mean time. I think that he should give us an edit of at least one character (or maybe few), so we can give him the input that can be valuable to him. Commenting work that he surpassed long time ago is somehow pointless.
BTW I like your winged snake edit. :)
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I am aware of that, Harvey, but I thought since he asked for people to give their opinion on it, might as well not waste the thread and actually give advice he might not have figured out.
You never know how much someone has improved or whether they're over/underestimating themselves.
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Rock'n idea Ymedron. I been up for over 48 hours working on a project, but as soon as I'm conscious again, I'll give it a stab. :D
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First, let me ask, what's your sketching process? Do you use a digital medium for comps or a physical one? I'm very impressed with the expressiveness of the characters, especially the wyvern. It brings back fond memories of the Kid Icarus manual when I was a kid.
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These are completetly digital.
Basically my sketching process... You can see the circle for the head. I usually draw circles for the general area where the head is.
I was aping the pose of your snake, just exaggerating the curves into kinks and things. :O!