Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Pixelnick on April 16, 2016, 11:50:06 pm
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Hello all, thanks for all your help on my last post.
Here is my first round of desert/rocky tiles. Could you critique the desert ground tiles (please ignore other artwork) in comparison to the more or less final forest ground tiles? Thanks!
(http://pixelnick.net/other/pixelation/5/desert.png)
(http://pixelnick.net/other/pixelation/5/forest.png)
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FYI your image has some kind of subtle image effect over the tiles, which is messing up the palette and making it difficult to edit. Nevertheless I played around:
(http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z212/gastrop0d/desert_edit.png)
- The contrast of the darkness of the rocks against the sky seems too extreme to me. I think lightening the scene will relieve the eye a little and also contrast it nicely with the darker forest scene.
- The purple shadows cool the scene too much, imo. The desert is a great opportunity to create a sense of intense heat and brightness. Try using something redder or browner.
- The uniform lighting on all faces kills the feeling of intense desert sun. Try lighting top-facing tiles and leaving underhangs in shadow. I added bounced light on the undersides, once again thinking of intense sun bouncing off everything.
- The vertically striated rock texture you're going for is tricky to execute without causing banding. I'm a little stumped on how you can reconcile it, however. :-\
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I think a sky with a yellowish glow would help too.
Without sand, it is of course more rocky than desert. Tiles are very flat so it doesn't look like it's a "natural setting".
(http://wallpapershome.com/images/pages/pic_h/5511.jpg)
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I'd say it lack matter, the line is really thin. Maybe try to make a more progressive gradient from full colour and texture, to the black area?
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Thanks guys, I've taken a slightly different approach to it now.
(http://pixelnick.net/other/pixelation/6/desert2.png)
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I think it's going in a very good direction. The darker tiles are a bit in between brighter tiles and a bright background, they could be a bit more "red" or sandy in my opinion.
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Your image still has a subtle filter over the tiles that makes it difficult to edit. :yell:
I still feel the contrast and the cool shadows are holding back this piece. I've attempted to fudge an edit:
(http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z212/gastrop0d/desert2_edit.png)
Do like that skybox first pass!
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Thanks guys, and sorry I keep forgetting to remove my lighting shader, and its so subtle in most areas I don't notice it! I'll make sure to remove it in the future. I love what you've done with the colours there, I'm not sure why I struggle so much with colour.
The backdrop isn't being created by me :)
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EyeCraft nailed it. That's what I meant. Colors are quite hard, especially when the sense of color isn't natural, you have to force it into to you until it becomes more natural.
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"Colour" as a tool involves a few different bodies of theory.
The first is light and its behaviour in a scene. I would suggest reading up on light (link (http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm)), what happens when it bounces and how its colour changes. Playing around with 3D engines like Unity can be a great way to quickly experiment with lights and see how they affect shadow and object colour (video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D392TitSE4k)).
Particularly the matter of ambient light from the sky, bounced light from the scene and scattered light from the dusty air are elements that were central to the edit I performed.
The second aspect is mood and composition. Colour provides cues for warmth, emotion and energy, so knowing when to "cool" or "warm" your scene's colours, or when to "excite" or "relax" your scene with colour can make a huge difference to the conveying a mood for the scene.
Unfortunately I cannot really point you to good resources on colour psychology. Perhaps someone else can jump in. Googling "colour psychology" could otherwise be your starting point.
The third aspect is contrast. Neighbouring hues will have differing levels of contrast to each-other depending on how distant they are from each-other on the colour wheel, with complementary colours having maximum contrast and "excitation". Different hues also have different brightnesses, with yellow being the brightest and blue being the darkest, so as you change the hues of your shadows you need to tweak the value of the colours to keep the contrast of your scene the same.
I hope that helps give you a basis for colour. :)