Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: aamatniekss on February 23, 2016, 09:25:19 am
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Hey!
So i've been meaning to make a bit more hi-res platformer mock-up in a while, and I finally feel comfortable enough to make something decent looking.
well, to be fair it's not exactly hi-res as the tiles are 32x32px, but basically the character would be 32x64 and so on, pretty hi-res for myself, as im used to doing 16x16 tiles mostly. :)
Anyway, here's where im at now
(http://i.imgur.com/xTZgzu6.png)
I still got all the polishing to do, stuff like AA, and cleaning up. And the colours will probably change too, but I'll appreciate any feedback on this piece, as I want it to look good in the end. :)
EDIT: emm, anyway here's a little edit already. I fixed the top rocks, basically, and made the walkable rocks even lighter by adding another colour.
(http://i.imgur.com/KtJWDEu.png)
EDIT 2: Well Im awfully productive today, so here's some more progress. I changed the colours and fixed the walkable rocks again, by removing the highlights from all the rest of the tiles to better emphasize the walkable space. made a little mockup out of everything. Now im thinking if I should do the fade to the dark in the middle of the tiles or not, hmm..
(http://i.imgur.com/if0HRwy.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Ad86ob0.png)
EDIT3:
Guess Im calling this finished for now, if noone got any more suggestions.
(http://i.imgur.com/McOu1xv.png)
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the tiles that get darker in the center a def. better, it doesn't get too repetitive.
It's a pretty good and consistent tileset already, if you're still working on it I'd suggest to throw in some colors that contrast well with brown to make it more visually interesting (some small patches of grass etc).
Maybe work on the tiles on the bottom to make it look less like a squared shape (example) (http://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/original/536/5360430/2522336-chasm_screen_3.png).
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I think it would look even better if the black areas inside the rocks were broken up by occasional small patches of rock tiles here and there.
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I like the version without the black personally. That it's repetitive doesn't matter once you start breaking it up with variations and set pieces, which you should do anyway.
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@MAVW Oh yes, im definitely adding grass on top, I just first wanted to finish off the rocks. As it will basically be sometimes rocks, sometimes grass, to break up the repetition. :)
But it was a good point to make the rocks less squarish, which I did in this new edit, I think it looks much more natural! :) Now Im thinking of maybe even adding slopes, that could make it look so much better.
@Cherno, yep, added that too! :)
@Gil, hmm well, im liking them both too, but I changed the colours a little in the newest edit, and I think it looks better than the rock filled version. It looks much more interesting. And Im not sure I could pull off the filled look very good, as it lacked depth and Im not really sure how I could fix it. The black middle is an easy fix, and it looks really good, imo.
Anyways, here's where Im at now. The basic rock tiles are finished. Now I'll focus on adding the grass on top, I guess.
(http://i.imgur.com/k2CsZHC.png)
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I agree with the black in the middle..
It creates a nice outline, without it you have this overwhelming pattern of things with nowhere to rest your eyes.
I'm also looking forward to see how the sky develops in the background.
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Both look good to me. I wish I could easily do an edit to show how to make the patterned one, but that'd be way too much work. So yeah, go with the black one if that feels more comfortable, it looks great too
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I like the black inside as well, reminiscent of metroid. One thing is that the part on the bottom right looks like an angry frog with the parts with the sky peeking through being the eyes.
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The "black" inside looks good, but it feels a bit "carved inside the rocks", giving the feeling that the rocks have big holes inside (but maybe that's what you are going for). Tried to make an edit to fix it, couldn't really correct it.
Maybe a little less purple ?
(http://i.imgur.com/52JqRFf.png)
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@yaomon17, damn hadn't noticed that, it really does look like an angry frog! But im loving it! :D
@washk, I get what you mean, but I dont think making it darker would make it seem less like a hole, it seems vice versa. But I dunno how to fix it though, making it lighter would make it just pop less, and would look less like foreground tiles. I think im going to leave it as is for now.
I started on the background tiles though, but Im not sure about the colour scheme for it. This feels fine to me, but im not completely confident
(http://i.imgur.com/NAisNok.png)
I kind of made a more contrasty version, too. To better pop on the background tiles, but Im not sure I like it better.
(http://i.imgur.com/zGg6cgS.png)
EDIT: I started on the grass meanwhile, too. And made some little vines coming from the ground. They're meant as a small non-interactive decoration. So i kind of used the same colours as the rocks on them, to make them less distracting. Again, while I really like how the rocks came out in the end, Im not sure I like the grass.
(http://i.imgur.com/hOoAYRF.png)
EDIT2: I got pointed out by cyangmou, that the grass looks like plastic, and it was indeed what I didn't like about it. He suggested to make it less saturated, and that helped a lot imo.
(http://i.imgur.com/Eqw9jaB.png)
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It's looking great now! The details and colors draw the eye really well.
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(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41033795/edits/rocktilevariations.gif)
rough sketch edit that doesn't follow the grid at all! but I have, in the past, made tile sets with blood sweat and tears, so I know this kind of idea definitely can translate into tiles and tile variations etc!
So I looked back at when you were choosing whether to go with dark centers or filled in tiles and I absolutely am of the opinion that dark center is the way to go. The one instance where I think the filled in tiles works is on thin platforms about 3 pixels thick.
So this is an idea about where you could go when you make variant tiles or variant tile clusters. My experience with working with tiles is that you'd think you'd get the most mileage out of 6 one-tile variants, but actually using variant tiles I've noticed that variations that span larger distances (like 3 tiles tall, an entire 4 tile corner, etc) that have a distinctly different structure than the regular tile set will do much much more to give a more organic feeling to the entire piece.
So I'll go through some of the edits from left to right!
- I think one of the best things to realize about a tileset like this that has a middle piece, edge and corner pieces like this, is that every side can look very different as long as they're bridged together. There is no actual reason that the upper edge and the lower edge should have a similar structure - they'll always be bridged somehow regardless.
So I showed this by making the bottom edges have a stalactite kind of feeling to them. It's kind of an unimaginative solution but it's just to demonstrate that the tileset might become richer if there's a larger variation within it.
- The 3x3 block isn't super sexy. The way it's composed of tiles that bridge toward black without having a full block of black within it makes it feel a bit like a sphincter - here's a perfect variant tile opportunity! having a tile that makes it look like a full shape instead of a butth- .. donut!
- The entire right side is ideas about variant tiles that, in parts that are thin, break up the dark middle and make it feel more physical. I think the large dark void looks good on big tile pieces, but on thinner pieces of ground I think it's a good idea to light up more of the rock to make it feel more solid and physical.
... lots of words, sorry. I hope this will be helpful for you. I had fun with it, anyway, so no matter.
Good luck.
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Thanks a lot for the in-depth post Jad! It will definitely help me! The larger tiles is a great idea, and I'll try to use it. Won't have internet on pc for a couple days now(changing providers), so i'll have to post a new version next week.
Edit: hah, nope, i get my internet already. That went faster than expected. :) So i'll post a new version soon
EDIT2:
Ok so here's the new version. I took in the suggestions jad mentioned. Especially the filled butthole rocks, those can not be unseen, haha. Looks miles better. However I didn't go for too drastic changes, like in jads edit, with the bigger rocks and stuff. As I tried it and it felt inconsistent with everything else, because there are no big rocks elsewhere, so they kind of popped too much. I suppose I could eventually try making even more variations with bigger rocks though, so they dont stand out as much.
I also used the stalactite idea, which seems like a great way to vary the tiles a little.
Right now im not really happy with the grass, I guess it looks nice, but it seems kind of off to me. But i'll leave it as is now, and try making the tree or some other larger decoration next. Maybe I'll get some ideas for the grass later. Or if you have any ideas what I could do with it, please help.
(http://i.imgur.com/egixyG2.png)
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Well, I started on the tree and sketched out all the basic shapes. How does it look? Is it alright, correct? It's not the right colours that i'll be using, just using these to make drawing easier.
(http://i.imgur.com/hFJFwgV.png)
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I made an edit a little while ago which I forgot to post regarding the colour of the vines and a small tweak to the palette.
(http://i.imgur.com/yF0J6Qf.png)
The grass was more saturated then, so I'd pick different colours now, but I added extra saturation to the vines to make them look like not-rocks.
I also made one of the rock colours a little bluer to make the foreground feel more like part of the background sky.
Nice tree though and the colours are way better now - look forward to how it turns out.
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@Ambivorous, well yeah, your edit really helped me with the cliff colours. :) Thanks :) The blue was a really nice touch.
Anyway, I finished off the tree, and am now exploring some more palette options for the grass and tree. But I can't really decide which one I like the most.
This is the original generic green palette.
(http://i.imgur.com/YU0Upuw.png)
This is a more 'autumny' palette. The tree I like the most in these colours, but I don't really know about the grass. But still this is my favourite colour scheme.
(http://i.imgur.com/oj1W5Ye.png)
And this is a more unique and unnatural colour scheme I tried, just for the sake of it. Everythings purple. This one is also nice I guess.
(http://i.imgur.com/u815myz.png)
EDIT: Well, while Im trying to decide with which colour scheme to go, I pixelled the clouds. Pretty happy with them I guess
(http://i.imgur.com/zhFf7UJ.png)
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Hmm, well I think Im happy with this for now! Thanks for the help everyone! But if you still got any suggestions I'd like to hear them!
(http://i.imgur.com/McOu1xv.png)