Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: MadToaster on December 01, 2005, 06:18:37 pm
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Here's a mockup I did today of a game I've had in my head for a long time. Studied a lot of video game screenshots to figure out how to make sprites stand out against the environment. The whole premise of the game is that youre the samurai guy and you keep beating up an endless mob of ninjas until you get stabbed into submission. :P
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/madtoaster/ninja-ambush-mockup.png)
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i will always love your work
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Very impressive. It's really interesting how you can make it look so good with such a small amount of colors.
tetsuya_shino
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those ninja's remind me of some of tsugumo's sprites for some reason. anyways very nice,the samurai's right arm looks a bit odd tho dont know how youd fix it.
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You know I'm a big fan of your stuff, Mad Toaster; however, I think you need to step up the detail level just a smidge. Details make things interesting and memorable. While your art just oozes with style, I'm hard-preseed to really differentiate between your characters. Don't get me wrong, simplicity has it's place, but in a game situation where I'm fighting hordes of ninjas I really want those ninjas to be something out of the ordinary since they're about all I'll be seeing for the next 30 or so minutes. A small edit:
(http://www.latentmedium.com/images/pixel/madtoasterninjaambush.png)
Not perfect but a step in the right direction if you ask me.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/zach3427/littleguys.jpg) my warriors versus your knights
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You know I'm a big fan of your stuff, Mad Toaster; however, I think you need to step up the detail level just a smidge. Details make things interesting and memorable. While your art just oozes with style, I'm hard-preseed to really differentiate between your characters. Don't get me wrong, simplicity has it's place, but in a game situation where I'm fighting hordes of ninjas I really want those ninjas to be something out of the ordinary since they're about all I'll be seeing for the next 30 or so minutes. A small edit:
(http://www.latentmedium.com/images/pixel/madtoasterninjaambush.png)
Not perfect but a step in the right direction if you ask me.
I disagree.
My suggestion is to keep your style, thats why people will contract you, dont go and lose your style just for getting a few more bucks. Seriouslly, think about it, games with wicked styles always stay on people's mind, look at games like katamary damacy, rez, jet set radio, these games have unique styles and make them different.
I love your style man, unique and fresh, the simplicity of your sprites will open you the gates to probably the best animations. If anything, just learn all about the pixel technique (AA, Selout, working with reduced palettes, etc.. etc..) and that will open you the gates of the game industry. (speaking of 2d game art)
Just my 2 cents... Some might disagree :P
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love the mockup, really nice colors on the samurai but i agree with madafacka on the ninja tho.
your current ninja lacks depth (especially on the shoulder) and detail (headclothes). you should see pics of real ninjas how their clothes were assembled, they're wicked cool too =) now the head looks like it's more of a robot ninja than a human ninja.
the samurais front arm could benefit from being less bulgy, maybe use more dark shades on the bottom pixels and on the hand to stand out since it will be in mobiles i presume?
also add roundish shadow on the samurai to make it look less like flat plane (straight line on the bottom).
the basic rule to make foreground stand from background is use darker more contrasted shades on the foreground. and that you have achieved ;)
-tomi
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Alex: Thanks for the motivation. :]
Tetsuya: Thanks, I tried really hard to pick good colors for this.
Ryumaru: Your right about it having a Tsugumo flavor. :o Just noticed. I wonder what he's up too right now.
David: Texture is a weak spot of mine especially at this scale. Your ninja looks pretty good, gives me a better idea of how to express cloth. Was too occupied thinking about other art related problems while making this.
Zach: Bring IT! Maybe we should have a battlefield collaboration. :P
Madafacka: I agree with the whole not copying other peoples style thing. I had a recent period of time where I was trying to mimic a bunch of professional work but I gave up on the idea, it was only good for making me upset. The only real references I use now are photos from google image search and the occasional game screenshot to improve on broad things like color theory and composition.
Tomi: I agree the sprites are a bit rough. I was focusing one the environment so much because that's something I'm weak at.
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cool scene , i really like the Background.
The only cirtis i Got is about the lower part of the trees looks flat .
good screen overall
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Great, mad, I declare myself fan of your stuff, the simpllicity of your sprites is orgasmic.
Keep up the great work.
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I do declare I like this piece very much. Your style is really neat, the mecha had me hooked from the moment I saw it.
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this has a bit of a Game&watch thought to it...were you aware of that at all? I say that because of the purely colored background which has a completly diferent sense of depth than the main characters.
maybe you could emphasize that too by making the chars 1 bit and animating them in a Game&Watch manner?
anyway, you got something going on with that background...honestly I think the sprites arent very special except because they contrast so much with the background, the contrast in the sprites themselves is poorly handled since the only truly contrasting color is the black, the rest of the shades look like they should be just tween shades not the keyshades like you are using them.
I think you need to study some more resources on miniaturizing features, for faces you should look for Megaman series games.....practically any of the spinoffs except for MEGAMAN ZERO is really good at that.
Most nes games are good at that too...you can check Shantae on GBC as well.
Probably GBA rpgs, except dont relay on the outfit details rather than the faces because they tend to use lots of templates.
for the general construction of the sprites you can look for Castlevania SOTN...there's something about the way those sprites are shaded that is very concise, frankly the GBA versions are a disappointingly poor translation of that, the new CV DS game has mostly poorly drawn main characters, but most of the enemies (since they come from SOTN) and some of the new summons are still good.
Strider2 for psx would be a great catch too, specially for the armored enemies in the medieval level. Heart of Darkness for PSX is great as well.
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Thanks again for the comments guys. :]
Hey Camus, Your critique is along the lines of a thought I had. Was thinking of studying a lot of the old masters (heh, kind've funny when 10 year old art is considered old) far back as NES to see how they tackled some problems an to appreciate how things have progressed. feature minimization does have me stumped. seems like something you have to develop an intuition for rather than having specific methods to follow.
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nah, actually there are methods. Small spritage is one the most docomented types of pixel art. Do study NES art, look at tutorials and remember that clarity and vibrancy is the biggest concern for small sprites. Especially in applied art like computer games where the player has to realize what he's looking at right away.