Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Shifty McSly on August 07, 2006, 01:08:59 pm
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I began randomly doodling using only black, white and the greys in the ms paint default palette. Then I realised they are somewhat equivalent to the palette of an original gameboy, so I decided to do a couple of game mockups. Anyways, here are the results:
(http://www.elliotgeorge.net/images/adventuregbmockup1x2.PNG)
(http://www.elliotgeorge.net/images/adventuregbmockup2x2.PNG)
As is probably obvious, this would be some kind of adventure RPG, with a grizzled old battle veteran as the main character.
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Looks good, but the black selout is a bit harsh in some places. Also you have too many colours. The Gameboy only had 4 shades.
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gameboy doesn't use a plain white color ramp it uses that one greenish tinted one ;)
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I love them. The portrait looks ace. The floor tiles also look quite good.
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gameboy doesn't use a plain white color ramp it uses that one greenish tinted one
I thought it was just the screen that tinted it green.
The doublewide brick in the tiles may break up the grid when looking at it strictly horizontally or vertically, but it's really obvious and distracting (to me at least) when the pattern becomes most apparent diagonally. Adding some more objects and variation to the scene (pots, crates, cracks in a few bricks, discolered bricks et cetera) would really help tone that down.
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Looks good. I got a tool on doing GBA sprites and tiles. It uses 4 colors yep.
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whoops, I didn't even notice that before, for some reason when I scaled the shots up by 2 in mspaint, it blended the colours slightly, I always thought it remained pixel-perfect. I'll try scaling them up in photoshop or something.
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You know, we'll be fine if you don't scale them up at all. We can zoom in for ourselves.
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Fair point, they look better at 2x tho.
(http://www.elliotgeorge.net/images/adventuregbmockup1.bmp)
(http://www.elliotgeorge.net/images/adventuregbmockup3.bmp)
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I have a tool to make GBA sprites and tiles. It uses 4 colors. The key I've found to faking a GBA colorless palette is start with 4 colors. First color is white, the 2nd is light gray, 3rd dark gray, and 4th black. I hope that helps.
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Sorry to bring this up, but what are you talking about, Andy Tran? The Game Boy Advance doesn't use 4 colors, but many, many more. The Game Boy uses 4 colors. Your key to faking the Game Boy palette is also worthless. Not only because anyone can use a screenshot of a GB game to take the palette, but also because nobody in this thread seems to have any trouble with this. It might be a good idea to post critique or at least things or relevance in the threads you visit.
About the art:
main character sprite, I'd go the full way and put a full black outline on him. On the gb, you need as much distinction as you can get. In fact, forget selout altogether for this. Edit follows.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/adventuregb.bmp)
I think single black dot noise is hurting your art. Otherwise I really love this mockup to bits.
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Ack, sorry. My bad. I meant GB. Sorry! My mind has been hearing about GBA stuff too much. Just to give some idea to those who haven't got a method to do it. On the portrait, I would anti-alias the face features. That will smoothen the details of the face out. It looks good overall for the sprites. You can use selout or black outlines if you want for the sprite. Either one. I saw it looked good without black outline. Good luck!
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Have to agree with Helm about the outline. really helps pop the sprite out...Plus it'd allow for more tile color variance ...
The temple definition line on the portrait seems a bit too much to me at least, especially given the direction of the lightsource...
On the overall though, looks quite good... :)
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That's good advice. Seperating the sprite from background with black outline.
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Looks really nice. I especially like the portrait/sidebar thingy.
Helm is absolutely right; the selout needs to go.
I'd also advice you to reduce the high-frequency detail in the base tiles,
eparation between bg and fg, with the help of frequency and outlines is imperative at this size.
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Yeah, you guys are probably right about the selout. I was hoping it'd work but I suppose it's fairly unworkable with only 4 colours. At least for the sprite. Maybe it's just me but I prefer my version of the portrait to your edit helm. Anyway, all valid crits from you guys, I'm sure it'd be much better to look at on a gb screen without selout.
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your guy uses 5 colors, with transparency. i think theres ways to do that but main characters havent ever been like that. plus the extra contrast of taking away a color would make your guy pop even more.
liking your mockup btw.
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your guy uses 5 colors, with transparency. i think theres ways to do that but main characters havent ever been like that.
Actually, there isnt, at least not that i know of, except in cases where the character takes up his entire box. All images on the NES and Gameboy system must be 2-bit, so while tiles can use their full 4 shades per 8x8 square, sprites must sacrifice either transparency or one of their shades of gray in order to fit the specs. typically i think the darker gray is left out of the character, who will use white and light gray for shading and black to outline and mark in very dark portions (Boy's hair in SD is left black).
I tried a quick edit of how you might accomplish things. it came out suprisingly well, youve maganged to create a sprite that holds up against a very aggressive reduction (25% of the palette was eliminated). the table didnt fair so well, but then, iso angles are rough on the gameboy
<-edit-----------------helm's-----------------yours->
(http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/8995/exampuz7.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/adventuregb.bmp) (http://www.elliotgeorge.net/images/adventuregbmockup1.bmp)
its a little ironic to me actually because i tihnk that doing away with the gray actually improves the way the character sits on the page
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the way i was speaking of is layers, say a sprite with transparency and white, light grey, and dark grey and another layer of transparency and black.
another way of course is to sacrifice transparency. pokemon battle images sacrifice it but they made the background white so you cant tell the difference.
unless im mistaken about these statements ...
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doubling up sprites can work, but any hint of desyncronization or offset makes things rediculously ugly. (btw sorry for the thread hijacking to talk about specs)
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I could be wrong about this, but it might work better if you made either the background much lighter, or the character much lighter. The reasoning being contrast.
For example, check out this scene:
(http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/courses/frontiers-06/samples/pixel-artist/34.gif)
(Yes, I found it in Tsugumo's tutorial.)
Also, consider this view from the original Pokemon games:
(http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/thumbnail/1075382417-00.png)
The character is made to look darker, primarily by using a pattern to shade. As you can see, the character uses solid color (well, grey...) to seperate him from the background.
Just a few thoughts.
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Colors and how one masks on DMG asides...
The thing with it was that the amount of sprites it could handle at any one time was fairly restrictive.
So, first comment:
The 'stats' panel - you wouldn't be able to display it... as you've illustrated here - there's far too much information for the amount of sprites the screen could handle. Realistically it would have to be on a separate screen.
The Fonts must adhere to 8x8 with no Kerning (that's when the character buffer up to each other nicely) like you've got on the "l's" in Alexander...
Plus from a gameplay perspective you've got ZERO reaction time...
The 'knight character' - is too big. Currently 21x43pixels wide and high... on the (DMG) GB that would equate to 24 pixels wide x 48 pixels high - in terms of sprites used that would require nine 8x16 sprites stacked up in a 3x4 configuration...
Sprites on the DMG were either 8x8 or 8x16 (x,y) which is why most games had small 16x16 sprites in them... (actually two 8x16 prites laid side by side)
Now, If my memory serves me correctly there was then the ultimate in ball aching sprite restrictions on the GB which was the amount of sprites on a line (that's a horizontal row) was limited to 9... (which is why multi layering of sprites isn't such a good idea - [JUST to get that extra tone of grey]) any more than 9 sprites on a line and you'd experience 'sprite drop out' which means that random sprites all over the screen would flicker... or dissappear entirely.
Finally, the DMG only had 2 banks of 256 characters allowed in memory at any one time... (a character is equal to 8x8 pixels)... the best way to imagine how limiting this is, is to draw 2 squares in your package of choice that are 128x128 pixels... then imagine, all your character sprites (with animations) [even thought there were code tricks to get round this]) all your ingame background tiles, all your font/s (a-z A-Z 0-9 ,!"£$$%^&.... etc), all your panel edging for the menus, incoporated into that space... that's why games looked like this...
(http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/courses/frontiers-06/samples/pixel-artist/34.gif)
Yeah... I know I'm being pedantic... and in all honesty it's purely academic anyway.... as far as the skills on show here are pretty good, limitations aside.