Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Zanorin on April 17, 2018, 07:26:05 am
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Hey all,
I'm doing a tileset and sprites for a game for school, and I finished a mockup for an office scene.
(https://i.imgur.com/bCoXhAp.png)
I'd like some C/C on the environment, does everything fit well together ? Do the characters look good inside this environment ? And how could I improve the wall tiles (with some texture ? I tried but nothing came up)
Thanks :)
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bump :)
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Have you considered office supplies to fill up the walls? Calendars? White boards? More Potted plants? Financial charts (the thing with the red arrow).
I don't understand the stairs from a visual perspective on the lower floor.
Have you considered having less saturated colors for background elements? Right now they all seem on the same plane so to speak so it's hard to distinguish what's in the foreground/background.
Hope it helps!
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Hey Zizka,
I definitely think it kind of resembles an some sort of office! So you've got a pretty good start on this!
For me my issues are that I can't really tell what kind of office it is. Are all of the people there supposed to be waiting to see someone? Without much context it looks like they're waiting to see psychiatrist tetris player. lol
Also, since this is supposed to be an office I'm not sure if the ground is supposed to have green carpet? But, it definitely reads as grass and dirt. I would definitely try to play around with showing some sort of titled floor. Did a quick paint over on the top floor of the office to show you what I mean. Just tried adding some darker dirt, concrete, and just tried adding a floor tile.
(https://i.imgur.com/YTyHRyH.png)
Digging the look and feel of this for sure. I would just try to make to add some more stuff depending on what kind of office it is and work on the floor titles. Coming along for sure though!
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where are the lights on that office :lol:
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Heyo Zanorin ;D for the wall texture, maybe you can try :
1.Very light shading that darker as it reach the floor
2.Paint stain
3.Some pillar
What do you think? :)
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Hi everyone, thanks for all the feedback :lol:
Have you considered office supplies to fill up the walls? Calendars? White boards? More Potted plants? Financial charts (the thing with the red arrow).
I would actually like to avoid clutter and keep the background as easy on the eye as possible ; if I add more stuff than what's already there it's going to be a mess :(
Have you considered having less saturated colors for background elements? Right now they all seem on the same plane so to speak so it's hard to distinguish what's in the foreground/background.
Right now the player can interact with lots of the elements that you see. What elements would you suggest I desaturate/make less visible ?
For me my issues are that I can't really tell what kind of office it is. Are all of the people there supposed to be waiting to see someone? Without much context it looks like they're waiting to see psychiatrist tetris player. lol
Good point ; people are actually waiting to see Mr Tetris player to pass a job interview, but the player will get that when talking to the different characters :)
Heyo Zanorin ;D for the wall texture, maybe you can try :
1.Very light shading that darker as it reach the floor
2.Paint stain
3.Some pillar
I would avoid paint stains or anything that would make my office look in bad shape ^^ I also think pillars would add more clutter. Idea n°1 sounds cool, how many tiles would you use to do something like that ? ???
Here's what I've got so far :
(https://i.imgur.com/VXp62lX.png)
I took inspiration from @CupOhJoe's floor tile which looks great, to make another carpet that doesn't read as grass, and tried some texture on the wall to make you understand what I'm failing to achieve... Still looks terrible :lol:
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the light look like are off add some bright after you set them on :y:
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The lightings will be later added into the game dynamically ;)
(https://i.imgur.com/Ldz8uAT.png)
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Imo ;) those light don't look very good for a pixel art game i recommend my method
by adding this layers with opacity to a your image
(i used the old one cuz i needed the image without effect)
(https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HjyWa0U.png)
(https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HjyWuGR.png)
(https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HjyXurd.png)
putting all below this two layer you can achieve this
(https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HjyVGSV.gif)
in game u must put this two layer above all so the npc and players get affected by light :crazy:
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Actually the contrast between a pixel art environment and "realistic" light effects is something I want to achieve on purpose, throughout the game all lightings are going to be that way (lamps, moonlight, light emanating from a computer screen...), I've talked about this with the people I'm making the game with and we all agree, so it's not gonna change :)
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depending on the program, I believe there are in fact ways to constrain light effects to the pixel grid, I know that Terraria does it if I remember right. might help to study those and see how they did that
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depending on the program, I believe there are in fact ways to constrain light effects to the pixel grid, I know that Terraria does it if I remember right. might help to study those and see how they did that
If both the game and lighting are rendered to a small texture at 1x zoom prior to be scaled up for display, that automatically constrains the effects to the pixel grid. If rendering to a smaller texture isn't an option (e.g. if the characters should be able to stand "between" pixels, or there are high-res rotations of sprites), then it's still possible - render just the light to a smaller texture, then scale that up for rendering to the final, zoomed in display.
Terraria constrains lighting to the tile grid. Instead of light being drawn as a bunch of pre-drawn overlays, it is dynamically calculated based on the distance (in whole tiles) of each tile from the light source. There are many ways to render this. The most performant is probably the same method as above, but scaled up by zoom*tileSize rather than just the zoom, so that each "pixel" of light covers a tile. In some engines it's also possible to give individual tiles a tint based on the calculated lighting.
Anyway, I agree with Xorceles that the soft lighting looks out of place. It also goes through the floor and walls, which makes the light look just pasted on rather than like it exists in the scene.
Don't shade using black/grey. The image will look much livelier if you have some hue in the ambient light (the ambient light is what gives shadows their colours). I also think it's best to render both light and shadow rather than just light or just shadow, so that the relatively neutral base art can be be given a nicely contrasting colour scheme by the lighting. This can all be done programmatically.
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Ok so our game is being created with RPG Maker, with which I'm not entirely familiar, and it may limit the range of what I can do in terms of "doing stuff programmatically".
It also goes through the floor and walls, which makes the light look just pasted on rather than like it exists in the scene.
Yup that's not intentional, I plan on fixing that later on :)
I also think it's best to render both light and shadow rather than just light or just shadow, so that the relatively neutral base art can be be given a nicely contrasting colour scheme by the lighting. This can all be done programmatically.
I'm sorry, but I don't think I understand what you mean at all ^^'
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By that last part, I mean instead of calculating just the shadows that darken the image, also calculate the light that lightens the image. Give the shadow pixels and light pixels different hues (e.g. blue shadows, yellow lights).
Here's an example. This image just has blue shadows applied. Looks better than grey already!
(https://i.imgur.com/NYy911r.png)
But here are the same blue shadows, plus yellow light:
(https://i.imgur.com/4tLH7LE.png)
I think this looks much more interesting, because it creates a nice warm/cool contrast.
(The blue shadows would probably look better a little darker, but hopefully the basic idea comes across.)
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Oh right I get it, I was planning on experimenting with hue-shifting later and I must say your example looks super cool *-* But now I wonder, does that warm light fit with a stark office environnement ? I'm certainly going to use those colors in the other levels, but I don't know if I should in this one.. ???
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For the texture on the wall, it might be more helpful to create the suggestion of texture with a few well-placed details of texture (like cross-hatching) rather than texturizing the whole wall. No matter how unobtrusive your wall texture is, you're still going to fall into the same problem of your wall looking sterile and empty. Your eye will tune out repeating patterns, so!
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Oh right I get it, I was planning on experimenting with hue-shifting later and I must say your example looks super cool *-* But now I wonder, does that warm light fit with a stark office environnement ? I'm certainly going to use those colors in the other levels, but I don't know if I should in this one.. ???
The yellow light probably does look more warm and welcoming than you might want an offuce to look. You can achieve a bland look without going completely boring and grey, though! Keep the colours of the objects in the office constrained in hue and mostly dull, use a duller yellow for the light. You could even use a greenish colour instead of yellow if you want the office to look like it's using those headache-inducing fluorescent bulbs.
Here's an example using a less saturated blue, and a green colour for the light:
(https://i.imgur.com/mNn8WuM.png)
It's definitely duller and less pleasant, but it still looks more interesting than just using greys.