Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: SlimEddie on November 22, 2017, 01:32:24 pm
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Greetings
I have returned to work on my old game, but I lack creativity in terms of art.
I need a castle and some building around it... Saw castle somewhere and made something similar but different and now I struggle since my creative capacity is too small to make other buildings..
I would love to see or hear your ideas on how to make other buildings like farmhouse, stable and etc. maybe some technique you use to make small buildings, Thanks :)
also would love some input on existing castle, I wanna make buildings upgradeable so that includes thinking forwards and going from simplistic building to fully upgraded. I know I talk a lot sorry.
(https://i.imgur.com/sEvlvgj.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/OSbh13c.png)
Some additions
(https://i.imgur.com/skr8QHa.png)
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Hi SlimEddie!
Your castle looks good! I'm new to pixel art, but here may be some inspiration:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/569480/Kingdoms_and_Castles/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/496300/Kingdom_New_Lands/
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Hi SlimEddie!
Your castle looks good! I'm new to pixel art, but here may be some inspiration:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/569480/Kingdoms_and_Castles/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/496300/Kingdom_New_Lands/
hey, thanks! kingdoms and castles does give me a few ideas :)
I tried myself at making simple farmhouse, here is what I have gotten from it:
(https://i.imgur.com/3ba6Elu.png)
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now that I think about it colors on farmland seem a bit washed out and fence could use more contrast
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Some small advice. You should probably turn the green background into a bright pink!
It’s not uncommon to do this as pink itself is rarely used. It can help you see the grass in the farm tile set.
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Some small advice. You should probably turn the green background into a bright pink!
It’s not uncommon to do this as pink itself is rarely used. It can help you see the grass in the farm tile set.
I kind of wanted that greet to be a background grass in game but I feel like the color itself needs adjustments :D
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(https://i.imgur.com/MqOUIvm.png)
tried making couple upgrade levels for a farm building, still no satisfied with the look
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(https://i.imgur.com/PDNTh1J.png)
Threw buildings into one of my backgrounds that I use in my game, not sure about the colors, they seem to look fine for me but I may be misstaken
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Some progress on buildings, would love some critique
(https://i.imgur.com/OSbh13c.png)
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So I almost finished all upgrade levels for castle and Would love to hear what you think should be changed
Also with water or without water? which is better
(https://i.imgur.com/skr8QHa.png)
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Nice work mate!
Your castle and farm houses remind me of a board game.
google a game called Carcassonne.
I bet that you'll find some inspiration!
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Nice work mate!
Your castle and farm houses remind me of a board game.
google a game called Carcassonne.
I bet that you'll find some inspiration!
Thanks, looked into it, got inspired a tad more :)
This is where I am at right now with my castles
(https://i.imgur.com/t3gAaf5.png)
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So I almost finished all upgrade levels for castle and Would love to hear what you think should be changed
Also with water or without water? which is better
(https://i.imgur.com/skr8QHa.png)
The one with water is better. If there is no water the castle really contrasts with the background making it look odd.
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Thanks, I think I will stick to the one with water if it will look right in the bigger picture! :)
I kind of feel like the last castle is just plain too big.. not sure about it..
Any way I added some tent like structures, shades on dirt and such to make it seem less empty.
Also did farms in the different way - still don't like them, it is either color that I am not satisfied with or the farm land, not sure.
This is where I am at
(https://i.imgur.com/NlCg3aG.png)
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So I did a bit more and here is where I am at:
(https://i.imgur.com/SfLoZcg.png)
(Upgraded buildings)
I kind of like it and kind of don't - trees both satisfy me and placing them with overlaps kind of merges them...
Right now I am wondering is there anything I can do to the grass, since it is just plain color right now but the scale doesn't leave much room to play with...
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(https://i.imgur.com/oQQslge.png)
Tried to dabble a bit with grass, now I am not sure if plain old one color was better or if this looks better
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Having the sky visible in a 3/4 view like this looks strange. The horizon should be way, way off the canvas, so this looks like the earth just ends.
I think the plain solid-colour grass was fine. The scale here is too small for grass texture to be visible. If you want to add some variation to the grass, vary the hue in different areas instead of adding texture.
The fields are very high-contrast and distracting. I think it would be better to fill them up with more crops, so that the dark ground is not visible. The ground creates a lot of contrast, and makes the fields look sparse.
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Having the sky visible in a 3/4 view like this looks strange. The horizon should be way, way off the canvas, so this looks like the earth just ends.
I think the plain solid-colour grass was fine. The scale here is too small for grass texture to be visible. If you want to add some variation to the grass, vary the hue in different areas instead of adding texture.
The fields are very high-contrast and distracting. I think it would be better to fill them up with more crops, so that the dark ground is not visible. The ground creates a lot of contrast, and makes the fields look sparse.
Thanks a lot, I did notice that skyline sort of makes it seem weird - gonna work on that!
Gonna try varying the hue on the grass the way it is done with sky, hopefully that improves things :)
Regarding fields, they do seem out of place, gonna try few different things to remedy that!
Thanks for your input, time to fix it ;)
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(https://i.imgur.com/Tj2IdCQ.gif)
So I replaced sky with the ocean, but I wonder should I spend time animating seashore foaming waves or should I leave it static?
For now I'll go and try to fix everything else what we've spoken about
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Did a crude water foam anim just to see if there is a point in trying to animate it. What do you guys think, should it be just still or animate it?
Crude example
(https://i.imgur.com/YT1AWAS.gif)
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I'd say the water animation is fine, it's not too distracting.
So far, the thing that bothers me most is the lack of cast shadows : The different shading of roof sides indicates that the sun is to the right, then tall structures should cast a shadow to the left. Not much darker than the ground, not very long (let's say 1 pixel per 10 pixels of building height), just enough to make the vertical structure "pop" from the ground. And without dithering, since at this very low resolution, it would be a real "pixel soup".
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I'd say the water animation is fine, it's not too distracting.
So far, the thing that bothers me most is the lack of cast shadows : The different shading of roof sides indicates that the sun is to the right, then tall structures should cast a shadow to the left. Not much darker than the ground, not very long (let's say 1 pixel per 10 pixels of building height), just enough to make the vertical structure "pop" from the ground. And without dithering, since at this very low resolution, it would be a real "pixel soup".
Hey, sounds like a plan! just received sort of dream job so I didn't have much time to work on my game but I added shadows to every building where I felt that they were needed, also as said before I changed farmlands - not sure if for better or worse :???
I kind of like new farmlands, though they still pop a lot into the picture...
Now I am off to make water slightly more satisfying, this crude three frame animation kills me
(https://i.imgur.com/bDHJdj5.gif)
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So I made some progress regarding UI,
would love to hear your thoughts, what in your opinion doesn't look right here ;)
(https://i.imgur.com/yYrPRQi.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/msKQgvd.png)
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The / and progress bar look a bit weird.
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The "/" symbol is a part of font that I use, it does feel a bit odd.. I sort of feel concerned as both those things represent the same thing... I would love to keep the progress bar but it makes it hard to understand how many levels building has :S Would love to hear some more input on this meter, should I keep only bar or only text and/if not what is the best way to change it? :/
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How about having the starting level (0 or 1) to the left of the bar, the max level to the right of the bar, and the current level inside the bar, if it's greater than the starting level but less than the max?
Regardless of how you do the text, I think you need to find a font that'll let you have text that has the same pixel size as your artwork. It looks bad as-is.
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How about having the starting level (0 or 1) to the left of the bar, the max level to the right of the bar, and the current level inside the bar, if it's greater than the starting level but less than the max?
Regardless of how you do the text, I think you need to find a font that'll let you have text that has the same pixel size as your artwork. It looks bad as-is.
Yeah would be cool if text was the same pixel size, right now I have like 32 pixels per unit of measure on UI so I have to some how either work out the font size or just make my own, would be easier if game didn't need any font '-_-
But yeah gonna work on that, didn't notice it myself.
Regarding the way you suggest marking it, I did think of something similar today, gonna give it a go tomorrow and we will see how it looks :)
Also the progress bar doesn't suit the style too well, I tried making something like bar out of blocks (for example like minecraft health bar but only in full blocks), it needs coding because when it comes to pixel art, unity is very fussy with core features that would let me do that and stretches the pixels.. So either I work this out or just gonna code my own progress bar made of separate icons.
Finally the Xmas craze is over and I can continue on this project, happy holidays by the way! :)
And thanks for the input, much appreciated :) did a lot of games through out the years and I am just not gonna give up on this one and fulfill my dream of publishing a game:)
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So I think I have settled on solution shown below ( for the building window ) although I would still appreciate your input. The other thing, I tried working on font as suggested and I can't seem to find an easy way to match pixel size with UI... The issue is that I change font and it is created by unity rather than drawn on a sprite... I will look into other free fonts later when I come back to polish it a little bit more :)
(https://i.imgur.com/wH14fyM.png)
Also threw together a quick view of a mission selection window, it looks simplistic, but I kind of like it ;) would love to hear what you think
(https://i.imgur.com/n8iQVMp.png)
And sorry for potato image quality, I should write a script to screen cap the game view -_-
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(https://i.imgur.com/RHa7sVY.png)
Checked out quite a few fonts and I think, this one works the best of them all..