Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Mrwhitepantz on September 23, 2015, 01:43:03 am

Title: [C+C]Wood Planks texture, half right.
Post by: Mrwhitepantz on September 23, 2015, 01:43:03 am
(https://i.imgur.com/kOMu6zm.png)

Hey guys, so this is a tile I'm working on for some wooden planks, and I think it looks decent, certainly better than my first attempt, but I still feel half of it needs more work. I like the way the bottom half of the tile turned out, the grain structure looks good (to me) and I feel like it looks pretty realistic given the size of the tile. But I can't seem to get the same effect on the upper half, and I'm apparently not good enough at critiquing to figure out what it is that's setting them apart exactly.\

Is it that the lower half has larger shapes, or are the color transitions between the grains better? I can see that they're smoother overall, but I guess I'm having a hard time translating what I did in the lower half to the different grain structures in the upper half.


This was the image I originally pulled inspiration from, the planks on the right look really good to me. Though I don't want mine to be quite so beaten up, maybe I just went overboard trying to separate the darker grain from the base color of the board.
(http://u.cubeupload.com/XSSheep/a16example.png)

Any help or insight you guys could provide to me would be very much appreciated! Thank you.
Title: Re: [C+C]Wood Planks texture, half right.
Post by: Joe on September 23, 2015, 03:36:36 am
Hey there. So you're going for something between the left and right versions of your source?

Some general crits are: color, try shifting everything towards red a little + desaturating. Also this would be one of the few cases where lower contrast would help. Wood help.  :hehe:

Okay so if you study your reference notice the base tone is accented with essentially 1 dark and 1 light. My recommendation is to recreate that for the sake of study, understand why it works.
There's waay too much grain going on with your planks. Yes of course if we look at hardwood floor, we can see much variation, good contrast etc, but consider: if we compress that into pixels, information must be lost.
It's a lossy compression. And so you can't have all that detail anymore, you have to make compromises.
Your ref is a good example. There's just enough variation to be like "hey, this is wood and it has grain" but it's made with controlled, deliberate strokes.
Look at how each stroke flows into another, they touch but don't line up (save one which should be corrected). This is essential, as it avoids unnecessary noise.
Look at the low range of contrast between grains and the base color (again, because we can't fit detail) and the higher contrast which separates planks, and the highlights which help individualize them.
Title: Re: [C+C]Wood Planks texture, half right.
Post by: Linaru on September 23, 2015, 12:27:51 pm
Your wood looks very hectic and scattered
the one in your reference only has 5 shades and keeps a each colour in a sort of lengthy block
where as yours have more than a few single pixel sections of a particular shade.

sometimes its better to simplify

heres an example of wood from an old project i did:
(http://i.imgur.com/NJb8Hri.png)

its a much smaller scale than yours but i keep it down to 3 or so colours making sure the main colour of the wood shows through in large blocks.

i know theres a technical term to describe what i am talking about me but the word escapes me at the moment.

(http://i.imgur.com/K4IKnkf.png)

heres both your reference and your wood with what i would say the main shade replaced with blue.

in your reference you can clearly see long blocks of colour following the grain of the wood, in yours they are much smaller and less directional. most go horizontal.. a couple go vertical and many single pixels could be considered either direction. so it does not give the feel of a long grain like effect.

i hope that helps and makes some sense. ive been awake for 2 days at this point.. hehe