Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Vagrant on February 16, 2015, 10:11:34 pm

Title: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 16, 2015, 10:11:34 pm
Henceforth, this topic shall be concerned on the commercial critique of the game called Fire Emblem.

But I don't mean the american FE7 release, but the actual first Fire Emblem instead: Shadow Dragon. This is an in-between projects micro-activity of mine which aims use the GBA Fire Emblem game limitations/specs to replicate the first iteration of the series, to my own whims and taste.

Some of you may know that I like to do GBA revamps here and then, like the Pokemon Emerald Mock-up in PJ. This should be no different.
There's just something about it that's enjoyable.

I'll begin with the Lord himself...

(http://i61.tinypic.com/2wmkmyo.jpg)

Good old reliable Jeigan is also underway...

(http://i60.tinypic.com/11uiwih.jpg)

Basic limitations include 15 colours and fitting in that box there. Concept-wise, I may borrow from Shadow Dragon DS alot, but not always.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Kazuya Mochu on February 16, 2015, 10:22:52 pm
Love these! So freakin clean and neat!
If I had to say anything, and I'm really struggling, is that maybe the cloths could be a bit more saturated... I mean, maybe...

but awesome work!
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: ErekT on February 16, 2015, 10:31:14 pm
I'll be bookmarking this I think.

Wow, so very nice shading! Nothing to crit here, just had to say.

Bottom dude looks like Harrison Ford.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Ryumaru on February 16, 2015, 10:52:51 pm
Will you be doing anything with the tiles and sprites? No doubt you're going to kill it on the portraits, but I'd love to see what you would do with the other assets.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 16, 2015, 11:23:38 pm
I could've sworn I wrote up there what I was aiming for... How could it have been deleted? Eh. My bad.  :-X

Well, I was doing some digging in those FE forums and it seems there's plenty of hacking tools that can easily insert/replace almost everything there is in the games.

I want to make at least one playable map, with all the required components: Four more of these portraits (Kain and Abel and some enemies), a few sprites (Jagen, Marth, Cavalier), the 16x16 tileset for a castle area, and some menus to embellish things nicely. Right, and maybe the backgrounds. (2 of them, 240x160)

It's tempting, and short... I think I'll give it a go.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Bloodocean7 on February 16, 2015, 11:35:08 pm
I love fire emblem and though I am not an artist I've seen alot of work and I love this!


Great job man,
Bloodocean7
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 19, 2015, 07:51:15 am
Beginning on some workable base tiles here. Aiming for a muted gloom feeling.

(http://i60.tinypic.com/29y121l.jpg)

(http://i58.tinypic.com/2v8rayt.jpg)

And honestly feeling a bit lost. Pallete wise, and well, everything-wise?
Advice welcome on how to bring some life to this... Maybe It's because I haven't slept.

I'm using the Shadow Dragon tiles as reference.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Helm on February 19, 2015, 11:16:14 am
Please look at the beautiful Alundra as it's in a similar vein to what you're trying to do

http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Alundra-World.png

edit: perhaps inside the mine in particular?

http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/PSX/Alundra-InsideCoalMine.png
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Cyangmou on February 19, 2015, 11:24:50 am
Beginning on some workable base tiles here. Aiming for a muted gloom feeling.
(http://i60.tinypic.com/29y121l.jpg)

What currently feels odd to me is:

-the walls have the same color/contrast as the ground, if they would have a different color you could improve the readability significantly
-floor is the most detailled part of the piece, the water and the walls are currently much easier to look at - the lower contrasted floor you used less feels much better and should be used for the majority of the floor mapping.

Aside from that it seems that it could get really cool, once it's finished.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 20, 2015, 12:32:44 am
I appreciate the critique. Here's a revised version... Although I'm not yet still 'there', at the 'takes my breath away' level I'd prefer this to be.

(http://i59.tinypic.com/fc5yyf.jpg)

(http://i57.tinypic.com/2dj99mt.jpg)

I felt lost at first, interestingly enough. Found myself having that unconscious lag, or, the slowness one gets when trying something for the first time. Staring at the image a lot and over thinking pixel placements, and not knowing where to take the piece. (As opposed to having your brain effortlessly doing everything almost automatically, which is the sign of experience and practice.) Overcoming that is making this exercise more than worth it.

It's odd because I've been working on this other game for over a year now, which has a very similar approach and style to this, except it's tiles are 32x32 instead of 16... I didn't think it would be -that- different. 
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: mzn528 on February 20, 2015, 12:53:21 am
OMG the countless hours I spent on GBA fire emblem....

Great Job man, I really love your work so far and I can't wait to see more.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Seiseki on February 20, 2015, 01:17:36 am
These are amazing.
They look quite pale though.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Helm on February 20, 2015, 02:36:55 am
For me the biggest problem with your tileset at the moment is that at a glance walls and floors share too much of the same value/texture. It flattens the thing out. I'd take a step back from pixelling textures in your tiles for the moment and make certain that flat planes with simple values read as walls and floors and half-tile ridges and water and so on.

(http://www.locustleaves.com/2342345rt.png)(http://www.locustleaves.com/fc5yyf.png)

Is this less confusing to look at? If so, why?
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Ryumaru on February 20, 2015, 04:07:19 am
Hmm it is odd, as the tiles in general are very good. Besides the contrast issues, they aren't inspiring. I think going from the old snes era like influence to the modern informed pixel aesthetic you've lost a bit too much. Everything looks brand spanking new. I think there is a place for dither, a place for noise, and this is probably it. Perhaps you can find some unique ways to suggest it while still fitting withing pixel cluster theory.

When I think of Fire Emblem tiles I remember weathered brick walls and kicked up dust. But that's just me. I also think that they're more impressive stuff happens with the landscapes. Specifically the freaking mountains. Some of the best tiling I've seen. Don't know if you'll be tackling that in your map.







Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 20, 2015, 05:04:40 am
An excellent reminder Helm.. I don't know why I didn't think of this before.


Hmm it is odd, as the tiles in general are very good. Besides the contrast issues, they aren't inspiring. I think going from the old snes era like influence to the modern informed pixel aesthetic you've lost a bit too much. Everything looks brand spanking new. I think there is a place for dither, a place for noise, and this is probably it. Perhaps you can find some unique ways to suggest it while still fitting withing pixel cluster theory.

When I think of Fire Emblem tiles I remember weathered brick walls and kicked up dust. But that's just me. I also think that they're more impressive stuff happens with the landscapes. Specifically the freaking mountains. Some of the best tiling I've seen. Don't know if you'll be tackling that in your map.

I don't know why this is, or what's causing it, but I feel exactly how you feel.
It's just a bit dull. Although I often times like to use sober colours, this just isn't working for this one. 

It could be the cleanliness. But my suspicion instead pins the blame on the current palette... Maybe I just need better hue shifts than just monotone-looking blue?
I'm not certain yet, but I shall experiment.

Dqmn. This piece has me stumped like I haven't been in years.
Maybe this is meant to be exciting.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Ryumaru on February 20, 2015, 06:54:10 am
(http://i.imgur.com/l1BNcKy.png)

The palette is definitely part of it. Is this supposed to be night? If so it can work, otherwise it needs a major brightness and hue check. If you don't mind me getting a bit romantic, I think more detail can be more love. Of course there is the tight and clean pixel pushing which has it's own sort of affection, but some of the best worlds are created with detail oriented obsession. Cracks in walls with ivy growing out, steps that have seen the history of thousands of travelers, bricks replaced with one's of different origin. Sometimes simplicity, simply can't grab you in the same way.

In painting, the Alla Prima ( one session) painters are usually known for bravura brushwork, distilling information into the most essential brush strokes, often capturing the effects of light with stunning confidence; yet somehow, many never amount to the best indirect paintings. Ones with many layers, catching the artist at different times of day, different mindsets and moods. Where the artist has searched and replaced, with hints of indecision peeking through the final thoughts. Encasing within them a history that simply can't be held in a 2 or 4 hour effort.

I struggle with this a lot in my fine art stuff. Sometimes simple statements and striking compositions seem like the "truth". Sometimes labors of love and fervent searching or obsession seem the same.

This is to say in my opinion, a good bit of cleanliness will have to go for the sake of history, grit, and textural identity- which I think are some qualities that make FE tiles so good. Right now I can't tell what everything is made of. I'm sure some of that is the WIP status, but as you have it presented now, all of the wall has a mostly matte feel. You are describing different forms, but they may as well be all spray-painted flat gray and lost any identity. The cobblestone?esque tiles that create a dock probably break through this the most, and stand out currently as the most rendered. A revamp is always a good time to abolish the few pitfalls a game with good graphics has; you could stand to break the grid a bit more in this area.

Sorry if this has been useless, heh. I just know what you're feeling and remember being lost, wishing for some outside help. Of course with stuff like this most of the problem solving will have to come from within. Can epiphanies occur at faster rates if we race towards them head on, or will they always stay out of reach until they deem us lucky and worthy? If not exciting it will be humbling.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: |||| on February 20, 2015, 08:05:10 am
I think it's looking really good since you separated the values more between the wall and ground tiles.
The sprites look kinda cramped into the spaces.. maybe only because their isometric angle with the straight and narrow layout of the top-down tiles?
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 20, 2015, 08:14:08 am
I actually like that edit, Ryumaru. The whole detail-oriented viewpoint is key when it comes to Fire Emblem. Though it seems to be more grainy, where it concerns the GBA games... I'm looking for a nice mid-point.

But to clarify, this is wip of course.

(http://i61.tinypic.com/k48lkz.jpg)

Interior flooring and blue carpet planning. Not still sure what to think. I'm keeping the torchlight glow limited to one tile and one colour for now, until I get my GBA restrictions properly clarified by experienced FE hackers.
Confirmed. Fire Emblem tiles uses 5 rows of 16 colours... Feels generous enough to me.

Interior walls should look different also. Current is just placeholder.
This is Castle Altea, btw.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Cyangmou on February 20, 2015, 09:04:17 am
I don't know why this is, or what's causing it, but I feel exactly how you feel.
It's just a bit dull. Although I often times like to use sober colours, this just isn't working for this one. 

For the GBA the color scheme most probably won't work at all.
Since there was no backlight build in the first versions of the GBA and the glass mirrored most games needed really bright and light palettes (FFTA; Fire Emblem, Sword of Mana,... to name a few examples) -
just check out how light even their darkest areas are.

If your aim is to go for a working hack you could consider this technical aspect/restriction as well.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 21, 2015, 02:41:42 am
For as long as it displays well in my monitor/Pixeljoint, it's fine. It's no hack, but an exercise capable of being hacked.


Palette changes, plus interior work begins...

(http://i62.tinypic.com/j8cmcp.jpg)

I am keeping a night blue for the atmosphere, with fire blaze to balance things. But I may do another scene of an outside sunny day-plains map, typical of Fire Emblem... To taste both flavours.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Ryumaru on February 21, 2015, 03:04:06 am
Oh yeah, that floor is starting to bring everything together. Bringing the right level of detail into the mix. I think more could be done on the ramparts, perhaps a dark counterpart to the lighter bits you give to the corners.

Will you be doing unit sprites too? I don't think I've seen better examples of what one can do at such a small scale, especially the mounted units.

Unrelated to the art, would be kind of cool if tiles near the light had higher accuracy ( or the reverse, darker tiles had more evasion, I think that's how it would be done)  :hehe:
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on February 21, 2015, 03:19:53 am
Oh yeah, that floor is starting to bring everything together. Bringing the right level of detail into the mix. I think more could be done on the ramparts, perhaps a dark counterpart to the lighter bits you give to the corners.

True, true. Quite true.

*Notes*

Will you be doing unit sprites too? I don't think I've seen better examples of what one can do at such a small scale, especially the mounted units.

Unrelated to the art, would be kind of cool if tiles near the light had higher accuracy ( or the reverse, darker tiles had more evasion, I think that's how it would be done)  :hehe:

Unit sprites; It's not really -really- necessary, but maybe for the sake of posting this on PJ... Do some one framers? Sure, why not. For an actual hack, I'd be happier to recolour the existing ones. Like you said, they are just ideal.
Cept Marth. He needs his own sprite.

How's -10 accuracy sound like?
(I think these things are easily edited in a blink, in that Nightmare of thems)


(http://i59.tinypic.com/bf3kpi.jpg)

Edited portrait colors and textbox sample a bit, to match.
 





Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: AlcopopStar on February 23, 2015, 08:47:20 am
Wonderful work Vagrant,

I thought the Marth portrait was looking a little flat so I gave it a pass over. I think my edit has lost a little of the originals personality, but hopefully there are one or two changes in there that could help. I may have also tread over some of the GBA limitations, not sure.

(https://33.media.tumblr.com/2e626a830bc074209838f170c8776aea/tumblr_nk7uz6nmXV1u3fa1zo1_250.gif)

Also really really love the way you've done the hair, that's going straight into my reference folder ;)
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on March 10, 2015, 05:13:54 am
It did look flat, I believe.. It's on my to do list to redo all of it once I make at least one instance of all the other game aspects. (Menus, battle screen, ect.)

Here's an attempt at a battle screen, battle background, and sprite.

(http://i57.tinypic.com/2cqfpl1.jpg)

(http://i60.tinypic.com/nqb61l.jpg)


And an original for comparison. I'm keeping it's limits.

(http://i61.tinypic.com/r8uhl4.jpg)


This is... fun!
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Cyangmou on March 10, 2015, 10:12:14 am
as far as I understood it, the battlebackgrounds were composed out of a bunch of tiles -
you can see the horizontal lines really clearly and if you look, you see that the same texture patterns repet themselves quite often too.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: |||| on March 10, 2015, 11:02:14 pm
That battle BG looks hot! I like that it's simple, with the big flat clusters. Gives it a great depth of field effect, It's making the sprites and HUD really pop out.
 
I particularly like the use of violet in the darker shades.

I guess I'm saying don't add much more detail to it especially the distant parts. Maybe a touch of detail in the foremost parts.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Ryumaru on March 11, 2015, 06:32:07 am
That background is looking great of course, but will you incorporate the turf blocks that serve an actual gameplay purpose? The color and rendering I know will be on point, so I would think at your level, the challenge would be in balancing art elements with game art practicality.  I wonder how feasible it would be to create transition assets that would work for all possible combinations ( or at least ones that have the possibility of being displayed at once) so that you could have both this seamless background, and still show the unit's tile identity.
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: stevenblanc on March 11, 2015, 10:25:08 am
Hey Vagrant,

Loving your work so far, particularly the battle background and HUD. One thing I would say about the HUD though. While I prefer your revamped HUD to the original I can't help but feel like it loses some of the traditional red/blue definitions of the versus battle.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend changing the colours to red/blue but I would look at finding a way to differentiate the two sides from one another. A perhaps lighten the brown and throw in a complementing forest green? The two side can be built from separate palettes, yes?

Steven
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Vagrant on March 14, 2015, 01:15:02 pm
Thanks all of the feedback.
These are the latest experiments, though I still haven't tried some things that were suggested. (Like the colour differences Steven said, which, indeed, are two different palettes. I just prefer the look of the uniform browns though.)

Add +1 hero sprite.

(http://i57.tinypic.com/dngacx.jpg)

Alt. version

(http://i60.tinypic.com/345e8lx.jpg)

Portrait + BG

(http://i62.tinypic.com/au6r0z.jpg)

as far as I understood it, the battlebackgrounds were composed out of a bunch of tiles -
you can see the horizontal lines really clearly and if you look, you see that the same texture patterns repet themselves quite often too.

It looks like it, but it's actually a complete image that you can extract and insert with editors of the game.  ;)

Quote
That background is looking great of course, but will you incorporate the turf blocks that serve an actual gameplay purpose? The color and rendering I know will be on point, so I would think at your level, the challenge would be in balancing art elements with game art practicality.  I wonder how feasible it would be to create transition assets that would work for all possible combinations ( or at least ones that have the possibility of being displayed at once) so that you could have both this seamless background, and still show the unit's tile identity.

I'll def. try to experiment, but it doesn't really feel like it will work.

Fire Emblem, Shadow Dragon for the DS did away with the stands and I barely even noticed them. There was one case where in an indoor castle a unit stepped on a water tile, and in the fight, it showed the background of a sunny lake. Still, I only noticed because I was being ultra observant.
Personally, I would do away with the stands.

However, if there ever was a simply perfect solution it would be this; Background mode, and stands mode (With the blacked out battle map shown above in the mock-up.), which you could switch to and from in the options... If only one could turn the stands off in background mode. (Maybe it's possible to hack this in.)
Title: Re: Fire Emblem
Post by: Cheetah on March 14, 2015, 10:31:29 pm
I love the transition from more to less detail in the background according to distance. It is really effective of adding to the illusion of depth. The tile approach might be more traditional, but I like the characters straight on the background. If anything you could just make it wider so it could scroll if you have an archer attacking a melee character. Both sprites look amazing, great style and proportions. How many colors?

The new portrait has a similar issue as the previous one. I feel like you are making the character's right cheek to large and rounded. It makes that cheek look fat, while the contour of the other cheek is obviously much more slender. In reality it is a very minor edit.