Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: dkh on November 16, 2008, 11:55:37 pm

Title: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 16, 2008, 11:55:37 pm
No, I'm not gonna try it, just kidding. :P

In fact I was referencing a piece by Helm that I found on pixeljoint. Take a look here (http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/5829.htm).

I instantly liked the style and the - as he says - somewhat bland palette and tried to design some assets that would fit.

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1.png)
Ignore the black pixel...

This was only done as a practice and I hope I don't break any rules by doing this study of style or however you want to call it. Some of the pixels in the image above (namely, the blue pipes in the background, the fan block thingie on the celing and large parts of the general design of the big gray gates - the palette as well) are taken from Helm's work, I'm not trying to call them my own or anything - they are in there as to capture the style. If there are objections, I will delete the thread.

I do think there is enough own material in there to allow some general pointers as to where I should improve though, and that's exactly what I want.  :D

Also, here is a running animation for the player character, six frames (I realize eight would probably look smoother, working on it):

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/little_guy_running.gif)

Also note that it's all designed to work at fullscreen!
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 17, 2008, 11:11:04 am
You have a problem with the depth of the room. It's cut in half, if the person is supposed to pass through that passway on the top floor on the left at least, that's super narrow.

A thing I can tell you is that you need to stop looking at my inferior version and examine the actual Flashback pixel art to do better. This goes for the animation of your main character too. Nearly nothing I did in that piece was right or good so I'd hate to passively inspire through that.

That being said if you fix the depth issue and perhaps dress the tileset a bit more this will look good. The design acumen of the actual Flashback will not be there because you're not studying Flashback, heh. You really should.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 17, 2008, 04:52:24 pm
Thanks for the feedback. The reason I chose your art over the original Flashback is simple, yours seemed a lot more accessible. I have tried drawing in the Flashback style but it always keeps failing because I can't quite put my head around it yet, I guess I'm lacking in the technical department, composition, color theory etc. It just doesn't make any sense beyond looking good yet. But your work seemed logical from the start up, I instantly saw why you did what (that's what I'm thinking at least). But don't worry, look at it as some kind of stepping stone in between working with the real Flashback stuff! ;D

Thanks for the practical advice, too:

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver2.png)

Fixed the depth issue (hopefully, I just doubled the depth), what exactly would fall under "dressing" the tileset though?

Others are invited to answer as well, I appreciate any feedback. Edits are welcome etc.

I have also worked on some more animations (after firing up Flashback and taking a close look) but it's not yet at a presentable stage.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 17, 2008, 06:38:51 pm
(http://www.locustleaves.com/helm_style1_ver3.png)

check the top floor. Perhaps a drop shadow from the ceilings will help show the planes more?

Also check what I did to how the doorway connects to both floor and ceiling. I hope you can see that the original broke perspective there.

Your main character's arms are a bit short btw. One or two pixels.

What I mean by more furnishing is just that. More tiles and variations. Objects, radiators, tubes, sci-fi mubmo jumbo. Dirt tiles for the walls, cracks, different sort of terminals, perhaps a series of objects in a complementary color scheme like chairs of room divisions or whatever else. Think ahead what you might want to use in the future in this tileset and draw it today.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 18, 2008, 06:05:49 pm
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver3.png)

New version is up, I fixed the perspective (thanks for pointing that out, can't believe I didn't see that before), added more details and made the player's arms one pixel longer. I think it makes a great difference already, thanks a lot for the advice and the edit!

Anything else? Again, everybody is invited to comment, I'm sure a 'community' effort/discussion is more productive than an ABAB chain of replies (no matter how valuable and appreciated your input is in this case, Helm).
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 18, 2008, 07:27:30 pm
One point I'd mention is that nobody idles with their hands, their palms pointing back and their knuckles pointing fore. People idle with their hands at their sides, thumbs front. This will help make the idle pose of the sprite more natural. It is already better I think so too. It might be a good time to mention that pure greys are pretty bullshit non-colors to have straight ramps of in videogames and to suggest you try some subtle metalic tinting, it will help lots.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Sokota on November 18, 2008, 07:39:22 pm
One quick thing that stood out to me were the pipes making a blocked doorway. They seem one or two pixels out of perspective, to me, anyways. Perhaps just making them shorter would help?

Sokota

Not an expert, at anything, but just thought I'd let you know.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 19, 2008, 06:34:35 pm
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver4.png)

Note: there are actually two lifts in there to show how the platform would look in position and how while moving, forgot to add the rails to the second one...

I tried to follow your advice for the arm/hand of the player character to make him look more relaxed. I also tried to steer away from the gray and go into a slightly blue tint, does it work yet (I'm not very trained at palettes yet)?

Sokota, I'm not quite following your point there, making the pipes longer or shorter would not break perspective (or make it 'right'), it just alters depth. Can you elaborate? Anyways, I shortened the pipe by a pixel because I might have made them pretty long in the first version but shortening them any more really doesn't look good. Maybe a little image would help illustrate your point!

Please keep the input coming!
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Tobe on November 19, 2008, 07:46:57 pm
I don't quite get it.

Is Flashback kinda art very hard to produce?
I was working on a game design of a similar genre, though it didn't occur to me that it's any more difficult to produce than other genre.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Jad on November 19, 2008, 10:59:58 pm
Haha, flashback is no genre : D

Nah, It's probably as hard to replicate as for example seiken densetsu 3 or any henk nieborg graphics (I'd say?), but Helm is particularily infatuated with and fascinated by the flashback art, so that's clearly his point of interest. (:
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 19, 2008, 11:10:46 pm
(http://www.locustleaves.com/edge.gif)

Please take this into account
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Kazuya Mochu on November 20, 2008, 01:08:26 am
helm I think he's got his light on the top left, judging but the bottom right corner of the image.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 20, 2008, 09:33:38 am
Best not to because that would hast shadows on the fore walls the player sees constantly, whereas if you put it at the top right the light is cast on walls that the player doesn't see because the foreground tiles obstruct the view.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 21, 2008, 01:03:25 am
Yep, Flashback is just a game with very good graphics for me (and very good animations and very unintuitive controls :P - at least when playing on an emulator). I don't think studying and recreating its style is more difficult than the other games that have been mentioned or Metal Slug for example or whatever. It's just hard because the originals were so damn good.

Anyways, have changed the shadow - I was kinda confused with the horizontal position of the light source, but Helm makes a very valid point and - last but not least - that's the way Flashback has its shadows too.

New version features nothing groundbreaking, I've just been pushing a few more pixels around:

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver5.png)

Let me know what you think please.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 21, 2008, 10:09:36 am
It's looking more and more beautiful, it starts to bring tears to my eyes with its flashback-ness.

However I have bad news for you. Devastating, sad news. You will probably have to rework some surfaces.

This ties is with 'omg what's so difficult about Flashback art anyway?'. Well what's difficult about Flashback is that it's very deliberate. There is artistic direction and it is consistent. Delphine had thought things out very very much. Let's look at a flashback screenshot.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/jaguar/flashback-the-quest-for-identity/screenshots/gameShotId,27493/

This is from the jungle level. This whole level is lit in this way: the front surfaces of everything are lighter and then the 90 degree walls that Conrad looks at are darker. Not only the vines and shit, look at the door mechanism. Straight ahead, lighter, side, darker. This is how they wanted this level to look and they're consistent about it. Also my theory is this: this level was the first  they did early in their development process and besides being amazingly well-pixelled, it's also a little different from all other levels of the full game. Let's look at a screenshot from one of the levels that looks more like yours:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/flashback-the-quest-for-identity/screenshots/gameShotId,117907/

and perhaps

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/flashback-the-quest-for-identity/screenshots/gameShotId,2986/ and

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/flashback-the-quest-for-identity/screenshots/gameShotId,322652/

Here we see the reverse. All front sides are pure black or very darker and the sides that Conrad sees directly are brighter. There are various practical advantages to this method, a big one is that the developers didn't have to make tiled 'brick' or similar walls to put in the black spots and there's also visibility concerns, generally it's a better idea than frontbright in my opinion.

Either way you go, you have to be consistent. Right now you have the black fronts on your platforms, but on your door mechanisms and the like the lights are reversed!. This breaks persepctive and makes the mechanisms look as if they're 'floating' in front of the game plane!

So my suggestion is to reverse the lights on the mechanisms. I know it's a lot of repixelling and I'm sorry I didn't spot it earlier  :-\ But trust me, once everything is rational-correct, your image will look much, much better.

Also here's a total color revamp to study.

(http://www.locustleaves.com/fbgif.gif)

also main character relaxation pose. Flashback has such a stick-up-ass main pose because of rotoscoping more than anything, they needed all the animations to revert to a standard idle frame that the actor could resume clearly every time. Since you're not rotoscoping... keep this (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/tuts/construct.jpg) in mind.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: TrevoriuS on November 21, 2008, 10:34:42 am
The colour changes seem to go alot more into the general 'feel' the entire flafshback game had. Very good edit. Are you actually gonna build this into a game by the way?
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 21, 2008, 03:42:07 pm
Thanks for the continued feedback, I'm learning a lot from this!

New version is up: for now I didn't worry about the main character, just took your version (I actually drew my own one in a more relaxed pose but then overwrote it on accident). Also took your colors from your color-edit but tweaked some a little bit more (as I said, I'm especially lacking in the color picking/theory area - I think with my new version, the bright blue kinda sticks out, I tried to lessen that effect - not yet very successful though).

I have also taken your lighting advice to heart and reshaded all surfaces. You were absolutely right about your observations, makes much more sense now.

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver6.png)

I might use these tiles for a game I have in mind, btw, but I'm not sure when I'll get to develop the code because I have lots of other programming jobs, some commercial that will probably keep me occupied till 2012 or something. ;) And I'd also make sure to change them around much more because it's still pretty similar to Helm's original piece.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: TrevoriuS on November 21, 2008, 06:42:28 pm
Well what you could do to avoid similarities with Helm's piece is: Add more of your own. The game needs more than one area, so what if one of them is partially designed by Helm? All the others are up for you right? :P Now just lower the saturation on that bright blue by a bit, and dturn it a bit more greenish and your problem is solved, but that may already be too much for some of the other detail it's used in. On the other hand, there's this screen hanging on the wall next to the text 'sector II', there's some colours in there that could apply to replace it, but I suspect that monitor is just still there, uneditted from the previous version?
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 22, 2008, 03:05:41 pm
Trevorius: Well, for the moment this is just a study and I'm trying to improve my pixel art skills, if I ever get a chance (time-wise) to produce a game in the nearer future, then I'll worry about the rest, I guess.

Anyways...

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver7.png)

Minor updates, fixed the monitor, changed the vertical lift bar colors, realized the bright specular highlights on the foreground monitors, boxes etc. were too contrasty and fixed that and tried to tweak the brightish blue color.

Going in the right direction, still?

EDIT: another minor update, some more pixels, mostly worked on the colors though:

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver8.png)
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Crow on November 23, 2008, 09:09:08 pm
Made an edit to the radiator, I don't think it really worked with the rest.

(http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4913/flashbackzo5.png)
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 24, 2008, 03:34:42 pm
Thanks for that edit, I didn't really touch the radiator in the versions before (forgot it like I kinda forgot that TV screen). In this next version, I've only had time to play around with it a little, I like your version better though (what I have there at the moment really sucks :P), I'll see what I can do.

(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/dkh2/helm_style1_ver9.png)

What I'm looking for right now the most is really information on whether what I have there is "okay" so that I can keep pushing new tiles and stuff or whether there are still fundamental issues or whatever and all new stuff that I'd create would be wasted.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 24, 2008, 03:38:18 pm
I'd make more wall decals of scratches and stuff, perhaps more panel segmentations etc otherwise it looks great to me!

Please remake the main character according to your skill though and don't use my edit :)
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: ndchristie on November 24, 2008, 05:09:12 pm
I don't mean to pop in with vague and potentially useless criticisms but to me this doesn't "feel" like flashback much.  Nice piece, nice atmosphere, but not really what i understood your goal to be (to echo the original game).  There's something, I dunno, both too plastic and too dingy about it at the same time.  Sorry to be so unintelligible on this.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Helm on November 24, 2008, 09:59:34 pm
It lacks the coherent design acumen of the Flashback art people, which doesn't say much since none of us are these people to help him. Also he's referencing my inferior old art more than he's referencing the actual game which while maddening also might explain this 'not flashback' effect you're getting a bit.

I think that even if it's not as close to flashback it's good art, a good tileset. It looks convincing to me.
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: ndchristie on November 25, 2008, 02:47:36 am
yes i should mention again that i think it's quite the set.  the only thing that bugs me (if i clear my mind of flashback) is the bars on the gate, i think they could be less bandy (maybe lighten towards the foreground?)
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: Dex on November 25, 2008, 05:36:00 pm
Lovely tiles! As ndchrisite has pointed out, it's a bit far from flashback, but over all I like how it looks. I also agree with Helm's advice on the walls- make them more interesting to look at.

You might also want to put more "action" into your characters. Right now, they're just standing around. Could the main character be walking? Jumping? Anything to give the scene more flow and motion.

Good job and good luck!
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: dkh on November 25, 2008, 09:17:23 pm
Thanks for the positive feedback on this! :)

I'd like to clarify that I'm not really trying to get all that close to Flashback, the title says it as a joke (heck, I haven't even finished the game) - I was studying its style (or rather, Helms work from years ago) not to recreate it or really try and capture the feeling, I was doing it to become a better pixel artist. This may sound obvious but maybe I haven't made that clear before! As long as it's nice and people like it, I could give a rat's ass about whether it feels like Flashback or not! :P

I will work over the player character, Helm, no worries. Haven't started working on him at all (apart from trying out giving him those shades, that is) - the way I do these things is start out with a non-shaded version, then I work out the frames for the main animations (including idleing [breathing for example], running, walking, jumping etc.) and THEN I'll refine the shading. This usually shifts the focus from the single sprites to the animations, somewhat like Metal Slug does it, hopefully resulting in fluid animations rather than extremely well worked out single frames. Of course, for those frames that the player will be looking at un- or barely animated for a longer time, I'll actually make sure these look adequate (such as the standing frame).

More wall stuff (segmentations) is planned, I will draw the tiles in-game (if it ever comes to this) in three layers, one background (for the walls and everything far in the back), the object layer (which is still drawn behind the player, but in front of the walls [for the rails that are further away for example]) and the foreground stuff (which will be drawn in front of the player [for the rails in front of the player, the "front" parts of the gates etc.]). I was just too lazy to work these segmentations into more parts of the mock-up because I work with Pro Motion which doesn't support layers and I'd have to shift a lot of pixels.

I will work on the bar colors some more, I agree they're not perfect yet, thanks for the input there! :)

Dex: This is intended as a mock-up, not a stand-alone pixel art piece/scene. The enemies are all standing around there but they will be animated in the game, just don't have them that far yet. Hope this makes sense!
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: tocky on November 26, 2008, 07:31:54 am
Aren't you still using helm's doorframe, though?
Title: Re: Remaking Flashback...
Post by: TrevoriuS on November 26, 2008, 08:04:03 am
Probably the design and not the pixels.

By the way, I just noticed: At 2x (with the firefox failfiltering) this piece is very interesting to look at.