Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: IIRawsomeII on March 07, 2016, 10:48:42 pm
Title: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on March 07, 2016, 10:48:42 pm
Hello and I am just a beginner at pixel art/spriting
So I have made a stone wall autotile (For RMXP) And I would appreciate some critique on this
(http://i.imgur.com/UE9QBGx.png)
Please dont say anything too negative im just a beginner at this
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: Glak on March 08, 2016, 04:23:58 am
What is an autotile?
As for your art: It isn't clear to me how this would be used. It almost looks like a floor to me. I think that people would be better able to critique if you showed it in context (a mocked-up scene using these tiles along with some other tiles, monsters, doors, etc...)
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on March 08, 2016, 04:51:31 am
This is meant for a game engine called RPG Maker XP it is a file where the application can automatically place edges and corners without doing it manually
Ill quickly prepare a map using it
Edit: I've made it i made it in a rush i i haven't made sprites to go well with it so i used the bundled pre made sprites that came with the engine
(http://i.imgur.com/PFAwZIn.png)
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: kilenc on March 08, 2016, 03:14:37 pm
it's hard to tell how your tiles look with all the default tiles "clogging" the screen
but my first notion is that the tiles you made are very monotonous, or in other words they are all very similar. try adding some variation to your tiles, like two or three copies of each tile, to break everything up and have everything look more natural.
for example, look at this stock image of a brick wall:
it has varied shapes and colors; some bricks are cracked and faded; some bricks are more inset than other bricks. variation is what makes it look realistic.
take a look at the default tiles gamemaker, provided, even. there are cracks in the walls, crack tiles on the floor. these are all tiles, too, but they're not the default, generic tiles. instead, these tiles are used to give personality to the setting.
another lesson you can learn from gamemaker's default tiles is their use of hue. the tiles are very saturated (more grey), just like yours. but the default tiles also add a green-ish hue to the wall, which gives it character. grey walls are boring, because they tell us nothing about the building or environment, except maybe that it's boring, too. green walls tell me that the environment is in nature, or that the environment is plagued, or that the environment is on the sea in some way.
the fact is: color speaks volume. imagine if i painted a dog in a bright red and then in a dull brown. a bright red dog would be angry, menacing. a dull brown dog would be subservient and loyal. the same should go for your walls. what are they? where are they? why are they there? this should influence the design of your walls, and also, what little bits like cracks you add to them, too.
both color and detail in mind, i made a quick, rough wall, which should serve to illustrate my points. it's not tile-based, because i'm short on time, but it should show what i meant well enough.
(http://i.imgur.com/TrCKS3r.png)
i wish i had a bit more time to make a better edit, but i'm not a great tile-r myself, so id need a while. nevertheless, think about variation and hue to your tiles to give them more interest in the viewer's eye.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on March 11, 2016, 04:02:56 am
I probably shouldn't put this many pictures but i have no idea if i should show 6 Pictures or 3 or 2 or 1 so I am just gonna show these pictures
I want to tell the player that the place is old or was left out for a long time so i put moss. The reason why there is moss on the wall is because it's been through lot's of rain
I plan to use this on some old church and / or some old and ancient ruins but I don't know if this wall will look good in those places, What do you think
I have no idea if these are good or not so i need help on this
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: MysteryMeat on March 11, 2016, 04:15:08 am
Bricks are a bit small, honestly. That's fine if you're going for a sort of medieval ruins aesthetic, but can be a bit noisy visually. That's a judgement call though, I haven't seen the relative style of the player character to see if they contrast well or not, so take this with a grain of salt.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on March 11, 2016, 04:27:47 am
The main character currently looks like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/BKiJpLZ.png)
So the character would probably contrast with the wall
However I am probably going to change the character sprite to something that looks very different from this sprite sometime soon or lots of time soon. But I would probably change the character to something that still contrasts with the wall.
As for the wall itself I agree with you. I probably used to much stuff everywhere that it look's a bit like noise I have no idea what to do to make the walls less noisy though I could just paint over some parts (Yeah I guess that would work) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (edit1: Do you mean make the bricks bigger or remove a significant amount of colors on the bricks) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (edit2: That character sprite is just a character from the default run time package with some extra clothing from a site) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (edit3: is anyone going to respond?) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on March 21, 2016, 12:37:54 am
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Questions to focus on:
Firstly: I experimented a little bit and I did some dithering (I think that's the word) On the bricks so does it make it look better or worse?
Secondly:I made the bricks bigger so it does not look noisy when viewed normally in a game but is it better or worse? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edit:Did i double post?
Oops :o
Edit 2:I realized my other sprites other than this one had no depth (I think that was the word) meaning the bricks didin't look 3D.
Edit 3: I need critique on this please I hate it when no one replies to your post in a while
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: aeveis on March 22, 2016, 02:45:13 am
1. current dithering is better than your tiles before, as it shows a more consistent light source from the upper left. That being said though, dithering can added unwanted textures, especially for small tiles like this. You can try experimenting with solid shading as well.
2. it is more readable than before.
I think it's okay if it takes you long time, but saying that you were lazy feels like you didn't try very hard, and makes it harder for people to potentially respond.
I would also look back to kilenc's post and think about varying colors (at least hue shifting the colors a bit so it's not just all greyscale). To add to that a bit, it can help to look at references to help inform how you make your tiles, especially if you don't know/not sure what something may look like. Right now you have very small/thin bricks, is there reasoning behind that? Either way, answering that question can help better define what you want to brick wall to look like (for example, a wall made out of stones of various sizes vs a regular brick wall).
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on April 01, 2016, 01:27:48 am
I made the wall again with some of them having different hues
------ (http://i.imgur.com/ypGQPcB.png) ------
The Facts ::):
1: The reason the bricks in the wall are the size they are is that the building that used the tiles have been made with effort on a not that big budget but not that small budget
2: I choose some bricks to be a bit green in hue because it's been through many rain's (is that even correct grammar?)
The Questions ???:
1: Did I make the hues correctly? Is the saturation good or not so good? I need feedback.
2: Is the reason of why the bricks are the size they are logical / make sense? If not i can change the brick size or the reason why or both.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: rocifier on April 02, 2016, 06:33:55 am
You still don't have good observation skills. Look at a brick wall. There are basically two sizes you see. The first is a brick long ways, and the second is a brick end ways. Only two. Why are you spending time changing hues and dithering when it isn't representing the true form of what it is? So you should start with the reference photo that was suggested to you.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: trough on April 02, 2016, 07:31:31 pm
You still don't have good observation skills. Look at a brick wall. There are basically two sizes you see. The first is a brick long ways, and the second is a brick end ways. Only two. Why are you spending time changing hues and dithering when it isn't representing the true form of what it is? So you should start with the reference photo that was suggested to you.
Maybe he is not trying to draw a brick wall, but a stone wall, like this:
(http://www.travel-images.com/pht/peru10.jpg)
I think Rawesome is trying to follow the advice. He did remove the dithering as suggested. Then aeveis suggested this:
I would also look back to kilenc's post and think about varying colors (at least hue shifting the colors a bit so it's not just all greyscale).
But Rawesome is not familiar with what we usually mean by "hue shifting." Rawesome, here (http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139392#139392) (http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139392#139392) is a good guide which explains hue shifting. You might also find the rest of the guide useful.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: rocifier on April 03, 2016, 09:19:06 am
Ohhh, yes I am sorry, no that I read your comments I looked back through the thread and I think you are right he is going for a more chunky medieval style wall, instead of a modern brick one. My bad! If that's the case I'd consider rounding the corners slightly by changing some pixel colours on the outline.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on April 07, 2016, 11:36:40 pm
It's OK :)
Anyways do you mean rounding the bricks like this :
(Also when I first made this I did not use a palette so i don't know if that is good or bad)
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: rocifier on April 07, 2016, 11:59:32 pm
Yeah that looks better. I would round all of the bricks though and try to make the sizes a little more equal. Some of them are very wide and some of them are just 1 pixel wide. I think it's a little extreme variation.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on April 08, 2016, 11:45:39 pm
Here it is:
------ (http://i.imgur.com/ar3EuWz.png) ------
(Made from scratch)
Notes:
First: Added a kinda unnoticeable green hue layer on the sprite
Second: Rounded the corners of the bricks
Third: Nothing else really
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: aeveis on April 10, 2016, 05:01:58 am
I think it's looking better!
One thing I noticed is how the highlights on the bricks are set against the dark color, so the corners still feel sharp where the highlights meet the dark cement: (http://i.imgur.com/6SNdmwe.png)
There's a couple things you could do here... here's a first edit I made (you can click to zoom in): (http://i.imgur.com/HQtlOc6.png) You can imagine for the corner pixels some of the highlight is hitting that corner, but not all, so it's not as bright as the highlight color. So what I did here was just take a slightly darker color than the highlight (the base color of the brick) and placed it in the corners. This makes the corner look not as sharp.
However this does have an unintended side effect of making the top right and bottom left of each brick look sharper instead of rounder: (http://i.imgur.com/Wd8x49N.png)
I can go about making these corners softer the same way though, by choosing a darker color to soften those corners: (http://i.imgur.com/zWS9WWn.png)
That's some brief process that's hopefully helpful for how you want the bricks to look. An assumption I'm making here though is that you want to corner to just be slightly rounded- there are times where you do want some sharpness, but usually when you want to define a harder edge.
For the colors, I would say you could probably push it more green. You mentioned "kind of unnoticeable" so that means you could tell that it was hard to see it was slightly green. So make more green until it reaches a level you think is good, like maybe "kind of noticeable" or "noticeable" or so and so.
I would also like to reiterate going through this tutorial on pixeljoint (http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299 (http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299)). It covers some of the fundamentals for creating pixel art as well as defining a lot of the terminology.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: MysteryMeat on April 15, 2016, 01:29:20 am
I did a few tweaks to this on my own, to see if I could get more of a cobbled look to it like in that example piece. I also added a bit of noise to each brick, to make it less clear where it tiled and to give it more of a rough appearance.
(http://imgur.com/jCPHOXi.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/qfKIeWE.png) and here it is tiled
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on April 23, 2016, 02:26:12 am
Ok here is the wall with the corners softer (I don't know if I did a good job lol)
(http://i.imgur.com/aRn9VjL.png)
Also I think banding is occurring between the bricks and I don't know how to fix that (Or mabye I think im getting the meaning of banding wrong but I dont know)
(Also PUSHHH!!!!!! ::))
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: Limes on April 23, 2016, 05:10:44 am
That latest edit looks very nice I would run with it.
Title: Re: RMXP Stone Autotile Critique
Post by: IIRawsomeII on April 23, 2016, 06:55:01 pm