Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: vierbit on December 12, 2007, 05:48:00 pm

Title: forest mockup
Post by: vierbit on December 12, 2007, 05:48:00 pm
(http://i397.photobucket.com/albums/pp57/vierbit/pixelation/forrest.png)
Yeah nothing fancy,
Its a mockup smashed together from two pieces that have nothing to do with each other.
-18 colors (could be lower)
-dont like the foreground tiling
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: The B.O.B. on December 12, 2007, 05:55:12 pm
I think the foreground looks great. However, one of the tiles in the background seems to make it inconsistent, in my opinion; well, not inconsistent, just weird. I'm talking about those bush holes in the background, that the forest tiles are making(towards the left side of the screen in the background, to the left of the 2nd, and 3rd tree starting from the left). I've never been partial to them in most games as they just seem strange to me. Oh, and what were the size dimensions of the tiles used? I love the top portion of the foreground to the right, and the style is wonderful. Henk N. would be proud...

p.s., you need to post more, your art NEEDS more lovin' from us....
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Faktablad on December 12, 2007, 09:26:08 pm
Yeah, this is awesome to the max.

I love how you can really tell which is the foreground and which is the background, and I think it's because the darkest color of the foreground is different than the darkest color of the background.  In general I think the background is too 2-dimensional, like wallpaper almost, simply because you can't see any more trees past the initial ones.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Darien on December 12, 2007, 11:11:08 pm
I love how you can really tell which is the foreground and which is the background,

I actually don't like that part of it.  It seems weird to me, like the background is disconnected from the foreground.  There should be a more gradual fade away, I think.  Looks ace, though.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Hyrule_SwordsMan on December 12, 2007, 11:13:31 pm
Cool!
I like very much the art and the colors of it ^^
I can tell you that i dont really like the repetitiveness of the leafs of the trees and the weird violet background
:)
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: madPXL on December 13, 2007, 12:17:53 am
very nicely done vierbit.

so, I think for the background, you should don't use a violet color, but a black color in bush holes to make a better impression of depth/shadow.
It's the same for the foreground too with the dark violet.

but...
I think for the background, maybe you should make another layer of trees instead of making a sort of bush holes that make the background very strange for me. (but you can still keep then a little in the bottom)
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: ilkke on December 13, 2007, 01:17:42 am
Nice work and colors. Love the trees esp. the leaves.

B.O.B. is right about them holes, however. They make the tiling obvious and ruin the organic structure of the trees.
Another thing I don't like is how the leaves on the ground don't integrate well with the rocks (dried earth?). They have much darker shadows then the rest of the ground.
Also, the ground fades off into darkness rather abruptly making the tiling obvious once more.

All in all there's a lot of great pixeling in there, but tile-wise it's is not really executed very well. One might say that it's unfinished
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: crab2selout.png on December 13, 2007, 01:39:01 am
I love how you can really tell which is the foreground and which is the background,

I actually don't like that part of it.  It seems weird to me, like the background is disconnected from the foreground.  There should be a more gradual fade away, I think.  Looks ace, though.

I think it might be because the palettes of the foreground are BG are too disconnected. Jad(or whoever suggested it) had an interesting idea where he used some foreground colours sparingly on background objects.
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=2465.0

The tree leaves are a sore point for me. The tiles edges and leaves patterns are easy to spot. They're almost mechanical in how orderly they are, like the distance between leaves and the equal spacing betweens leaves. They don't overlap eachother, which makes them seem even flatter

Great job on the textures, though. The trees are pretty awesome. I like how creepy and alien they are.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: ilkke on December 13, 2007, 09:39:00 am
Yeah you are right about the colors. If the foreground darkens into a purplish brown, then the bg should be tinted appropriately.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: EyeCraft on December 13, 2007, 01:35:54 pm
*chokes on food* Woah, I love this. I concur with the points made. Maybe with the background have it recede into darker, more distant tree trunks rather than have the purple holes, or have that shrubbery follow a horizontal edging, more like plants growing from the ground, rather than the floating, strange omnidirectional presence they have at the moment.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Indigo on December 14, 2007, 04:07:13 am
color critique/edit:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/calypson/vierbit_crit1.png)

I dont have much time to go through and explain what I did, but heres a list of things I addressed.  Contrast issues, holes, depth issues, and the disconnected foreground and background.

although your were being really cool and adventurous with the orange leaves and such, it was simply poking holes in the image when laying it ontop of a green base color.  opposites on the color wheel.

my two cents
-Dan
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Arne on December 14, 2007, 12:58:09 pm
Palette edit of the image above. Although what exact colors you use is a subject to preference, I think there's a few things one can keep in mind.

Shadow color can be used to bind an image together. I've heard artists talk about transparency in the shadows. Maybe what they mean is that you have a global shadow color, and it's transparent in most shadows (except where there's local reflected light). Here I just added a grey-purple in most dark colors.

The player won't be up in the leaf section (love the leaf btw) a lot, so values can be pushed a bit more there. The tree trunks however could be pushed back.

Sometimes if you want an object to be saturated, but at the same time you don't want it to be obnoxious, you can add the saturation in the edge between light and shadow.

(http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/vierbit-indigo-newpal.gif)

Edit: As for the BG bushes, maybe some tree trunks overlapping the sky would be a good idea, its too much of a coincidence that the sky would only show alternating with the tree trunks like it does.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Indigo on December 14, 2007, 03:23:54 pm
i'm certainly in agreement with the latest edit
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Ben2theEdge on December 14, 2007, 07:31:15 pm
If this tileset were a woman I would kiss it.

Only thing I don't like is the shade of blue for the very deep background. It doesn't communicate more forest or sky... just kind of a nebulous blue void. I think it could work if it were a different color like green or bright yellow or something... but since there's no blue anywhere else in the tileset it's kind of jarring.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Opacus on December 14, 2007, 08:12:05 pm
So, I'm a bit out of my league to try to edit this, but I did it anyway.
(http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/5674/edit68vq5.gif)
Maybe you should go for something with more depth like that?
It'll surtainly make it more lively.

furthermore, I adore it.

Edit: I suddenly noticed how sudden the transition from the rocks (on the top right) to the black is. Those 2 black tiles are tiled to obviously imo.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: vierbit on December 14, 2007, 09:49:59 pm
Wow what an response, thanks guys.

And apperantly the blue backgroundtiles must be really bad.
About the oranges leafs, I somehow liked these :-\
I experimented with bigger tiles rather than the 16x16 types I mostly use, so the rocks are 32x32 and... well, didnt work.

@Arne, yeah the the more decent tree trunks helps really. The global shadow idea is interesting, Im looking into it.
@Opacus, I had a simelar idea, but couldnt bring it to work properly with the rest of the tiles or maybe lazyness.

I already work on an bigger edit, so stay tuned.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: ndchristie on December 14, 2007, 11:05:35 pm
opac - you've established a dark ground, so the changes you've made actually flattens the piece rather than adding depth.

indeed, this is the problem with all of the versions - we are told that light is over dark, and then are expected to believe that it is also far behind it
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: The B.O.B. on December 15, 2007, 02:25:54 am
You guys, those edits are great in all, but are adding a new issue now: the leaves of the trees, especially starting from Indigo's edit, are pushing them to the foreground now. If the leaves of the trees are active bushes that once hit, give you some extra goodies, like health, 1 up, or mushroom(heh), then it's fine. However, 2 hues of the leaves of the trees in the background, are about as strong/vibrant as the green in the ground tiles. I was under the impression that further back is usually less detailed than things up close...don't know but I could be wrong. And Adar dar, I guess that's true, but I'm sure there have been several games that make this mistake as well, so maybe it's not as big an issue as it would seem. Here's a less than great edit from yours truly:

(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n118/TheBoBslow/fotodemetal-1.png)

I took out the background tiles, but that isn't to say that it looks fine without any. This is just so you can focus on the trees and how they can blend into the background without having other distractions in the piece. The background tiles are ok, but maybe you should try experimenting with some different types of tiles, like distant trees, with minimal light coming through. That, or change the background tiles so they don't read so much as squares, that punch through the dark bushes...or a different palette, or some junk.

Btw, I still think this is some solid ShriT right here. Please keep it up...
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Indigo on December 15, 2007, 03:30:21 am
Bob:
I think its a good thing to have the leaves apearing somewhat more foreground.  Arne mentions this as well - its generally more above the character and helps unify the scene.  Unless the character is going to be over the leaves often, this wont be an issue whatsoever and can only help the scene have more depth (rather than two seperate layers, which is what we were trying to avoid in the first place.)

Quote
The player won't be up in the leaf section (love the leaf btw) a lot, so values can be pushed a bit more there. The tree trunks however could be pushed back.

Arne:
I notice that a some of your colors make a pretty big jump, which might benefit from being toned down a little - such as between the lightest and second-lightest brown on the trunks.  Same on the leaves.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: ndchristie on December 15, 2007, 04:27:34 am
I'm sure there have been several games that make this mistake as well, so maybe it's not as big an issue as it would seem.

meh, lots of games have shoddy mechanics, bad interfaces, gaudy character designs, and overgeneralized symbolic representations.  sure, there are examples of games which do things, but i think it's a great difference between good and bad which games chose to let which problems slide past.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Helm on December 15, 2007, 04:42:01 am
None of  the color edits thus far in my opinion have significantly helped the piece. They have given it different directions, but they have not proved them to be more valid than the slightly more washed-out original with the red leaves. That also happens to capture a pretty nice ambience. Not to discredit the work of those that are helping, but I don't see them being very successful here. If anything I'd add a bit of saturation in the bg tiles of the original mockup (yes, therefore moving it closer to the foreground, I see no problem with that. Value range differentiates the layers clearly in my view) and call it done. Very Henk Nieborg'ish, very nice mockup.
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: mattness on December 15, 2007, 04:19:33 pm
Awesome mockup vierbit!  ;)

My opinion is near to Helm's, so I made noobish background experiments with saturation and brightness on Indigo-Arne's edit:
(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/3514/forestmockuparneeditedez5.gif)

I also liked very much orange leaves and violet sky from the first image, so I made another one:
(http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/9999/forestmockupmattnessedixa9.gif)

On 1st edit I prefer the"brightness: +10" solution, on the 2nd one the "saturation: -50 , brightness: +10" solution.

Hope animations will not be messy for you; I can pause the sequence by clickin on Firefox upper bar with right mouse.

- - -

NEW - Same experiment on original background, but now decreasing brightness:
(http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/6802/forestmockupvierbitedithq5.gif)
Title: Re: forest mockup
Post by: Dusty on December 15, 2007, 09:32:08 pm
I think it needs some parallax?