Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Ben2theEdge on December 13, 2007, 03:51:14 am
-
It's been a while since I posted anything. I felt like doing something small-scale that ISN'T Cave Story-like. Hopefully I succeeded.
It's not much but it'll be a full mockup sometime soon.
I've been trying to learn to rely less out outlines and more on shapes, colors and values to portray forms. Small-scale art really shows the difference, so it's helping me a lot. I included my first pass so you can see the (hopefully) noticeable jump in quality.
First (ugly) pass:(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/OldGatsby.gif)
Second pass: (http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/Gatsby.gif)
With ridiculously huge wrench: (http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/GatsbyWrench.gif)
-
Cute as a button!!!!
I think the outline colours could use a little tweaking as of right now to make the character POP, but otherwise great. I prefer the one with the big wrench. Now give him a steam powered aeroship
-
I think you should take away the goggles. Looked better without them, and they're so cliché..
I also liked the facial expression and striped hat on the first one more. Everything else is quite nice on the second one, though.
-
Wow, these are great! I disagree with MrMister's points. I'd say facial expression, hat and goggles are all improved in the second one.
Outlines might be a little too soft for some backgrounds, especially the wrench. But then again, it could work. Just throwing ideas out there. Gloves and coat seem a little flat. Though they still look good. Leg doesn't appear to be shaded well, the highlight looks sort of like a random noise pixel, or worse a tiny pillow shaded pixel, rather than highlight. To me, anyway.
Maybe darker and less saturated shadow for the hair? Could look nice, add to the definition. It looks a tiny bit muddy in that respect, that area around the hair and collar. Some AA where the brim of the hat meets the shadow of the hat could help. But really the sprites are quite splendid, well done.
EDIT: Oh, and the character read to me as a female?
-
The coat is pretty chickish.
I didn't say I thought the hat got worse, it just needs the stripes.
And the goggles look fine, but are overdone.
-
Love it. Everything in place IMHO. Keep at it! WE WANT MOCKUP!
-
i assumed this was a boy in a girlish coat, jfk junior style
-
Yeah, Adarius has it right - I'm going with turn-of-the-century fashion. I thought about giving him a little debonair mustache but at this scale I figured it would be mistaken for a mouth.
-
Ridiculously huge wrench.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
This is wonderful! More game elements! Show them to us and let us see the connection between stuff :D
-
Mmkay, very WIP. Up next is some kind of awesome flying contraption and other coolness.
I want to have a filter in the game that gives it that great grainy early 1900's silent movie look. (The filter is also WIP... it's hurtin' pretty bad here, completely kills the contrast) But since that makes it hard to see the pixels I've got both versions here.
(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/Mockupwithfilter.png) (http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/Mockupwofilter.png)
-
Awesome :D keep at it! Filters are definitely tricky and have a tendency to wash things out like this...perhaps you can just use the filter aorund the edges?
-
Both versions look great.
What kind of a game is it? More!
-
(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/MockupwofilterB.png)
Now with a flying contraption!
It would be a puzzle-based platformer, mostly revolving around using different tools and repairing/building stuff. And obviously it would have some shooter elements too ;)
-
other than the wheels looking not round, good job.
-
Love the contraption.
I'd add some more clockwork to the health bar. Maybe some bolts and seams on the 'ground' too.
-
Umm, making the filter more opaque, would that work?
Anyways, I hate you for making the game ideas that I want to do. >:(
However, that obviously means I love you aswell (:
Anyhow, wonderful! The contraption is win as well (:
-
Umm, making the filter more opaque, would that work?
less opaque. if the active layer takes contrast away from the ground at a given opacity, then increasing will only result in further narrowing of the range.
-
Haha, I was thinking about it before I posted, I actually meant less opaque, but since I was thinking about what might be correct, it seems that my thoughts got stuck with the wrong choice.
Of course, making it less opaque, would it work or look funky?
-
Hey ben. This is looking awesome man. Amazing concept and composition. Though, I think there are a few things that could be done to make this even better.
Here's an edit to demonstrate what I mean ( Mine <---> yours)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/calypson/ben2theedge_crit1.png)
Colors:
Here is where I think you're lacking the most (mostly in the flying machine, but other areas of your works as well). You've got the nice brown and gritty steampunk flow going on, but some hue shifts you are using are just bizzar and its breaking the image a bit.
Take a look at the wood part of your flying machine for a second. You've got a nice warm brown that starts to hue shift towards purple as it gets darker - then *BAM* it shifts back up to a muddy brown again destroying a lot of potential depth. I suggest continuing the shift in to the desaturated purples to finish the flow of that ramp.
This same thing also occurs on your wings. You start to shift to purple, then back to muddy-ugly-brown for the darkest shade. I also suggest shifting that towards purple. If you're smart with this, you can offset the two new colors enough for them to act as buffers for eachother. My image demonstrates this which also gives the appearance of more colors with none added. (see areas such as the shading under the wings)
The red on top of the wings is also slightly obnoxious to the image. I toned it down a bit. Not too big of a change, but it helped the ramp tremendously. I also took out the second lightest color on the wings... it just didn't seem like it was doing much. I then tweaked the other to fill the void.
Consistency and technicalities:
some areas of your image I like a lot, and others not so much. this is most likely due to the inconsistent rendering. On parts it seems like you're going for the whole '1px colored outline / fejer-esque' look, and others you evade the outline entirely. This breaks the image a bit. Based on your character sprite, I'm going to assume you were going for the outline look, and applied that to the rest of the image. While doing this I tweaked a lot of colors slightly. Some where too close, some too contrasted. You want your palette to be the most versatile as possible obviously, and these are things you should always keep in mind
the last thing that could be fixed up a bit is your lines in general. You're using not so pixel-friendly curves and such in there. Its amazing how much little curve adjustments can improve a pixel image. I also touched up some messy AA.
Anyway, thats all i've got. Again, I absolutely love this whole concept. I'm excited to see where this goes.
-Dan
-
Im in love :D are you going to make the game? else I want to do it :D
-
I agree on that! xD The edit shows some nice changes; This style is quite awesome. Be sure to make more =)
-
I felt like animating. So here he is running.
(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/GatsbyRun.gif)
-
Ahahaha what the heck is up with him? It looks like he's about to topple forwards > D<
I like it, but it makes me laugh :D
-
Looking at it now... yeah, he seems like he's leaning pretty far forward.
Slight edit:
(Old -> New)
(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/GatsbyRun.gif) (http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f230/ben2theedge/GatsbyRunC.gif)
-
Is that a guy or a girl? I'm lead to believe that it's a guy but the legs are quite feminine and it looks like he's wearing a skirt.
-
ditto - dude looks like a lady! The lips and leg rendering combined with outfit and hair definitely give the character a clear feminine bias (in my eyes anyways)!
-
I love everything about that run cycle.
as for the style, i'd love to see a game with a feminine lead character. I don't mean jpop feminine either, i mean like brian eno feminine. that or just make him young enough to get away with it.
-
Really reminds me of Dark Cloud 2, which is a good thing! The style fits it, yet, it really is a thing of its own. And ya... I like that run animation... leaning or not. The leaning kind of adds a bit to the style I think.
-
Really reminds me of Dark Cloud 2, which is a good thing! The style fits it, yet, it really is a thing of its own. And ya... I like that run animation... leaning or not. The leaning kind of adds a bit to the style I think.
heh, i was almost going to mention Max a little while ago....
know what you could do if you like, have him start out sorta running, then dashing, then leaning more and move forwards until he goes into a "sonic" roll/dash, could be fun :P
-
Just popping in to say that I love everything about this mockup so far. The character just has so much charm (especially with the huge wrench), the style of the background and the ship is perfect steampunk, and the run cycle is so cute. All I can suggest is that you'd better spend a lot of time on the story, because a game that looks this good and has this much style definitely deserves a memorable story.