Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: x-death on February 16, 2009, 03:33:22 am

Title: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 16, 2009, 03:33:22 am
hello everyone, i'm starting work on some images but because i'm making a piece that is cartoony/retro with sprites and a background. i wanted to have a decent palette to begin with because that is what destroys my attempts at this everytime i try. so i wanted to egt one first off.

now i've been working hard at this palette, and his is as close as i've gooten to decent. and its crap and i wanted to know if anyone could fix it up for me?
(http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/3226/palettenh6.png)

also now that tocky has posted a good palette down on reply #6. i would appreiectae if people would help teach me how to use it.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 16, 2009, 05:36:37 am
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/x-death-retropal.png)
yours on the left. I think the main problem with this pallete is that the contrast is pretty low, try to get it so that the difference between any two colours is immediately obvious. retro palletes are not generally big on subtlety, but then I guess it would depend what you want.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 16, 2009, 07:19:06 am
thanks that looks really good. so how much consrast beteen that mid tone would a highlight need? because i dought it would go all the way to white.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 16, 2009, 07:58:44 am
I'm not totally sure what you mean. Broadly speaking: I think you want to break your colours up into sets and have it easy to discern what set a given colour is from. (here, you want your backgrounds distinct from your foregrounds, and the light/shadow version of each colour distinct, so that your shadows actually do the job of adding depth to your objects.) But you'd also want, for instance, your yellows to visibly be yellow, and visibly distinct from your greens and oranges. So long as you can tell them apart with ease, that's enough contrast - but you also want them to be attractive colours.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 16, 2009, 08:12:38 am
yeah that is what i want. just want to be able to have light/shadows to my sprites. so i can add depth to them. and i wasn't sure if i wanted them to be visible different colors but i figured it would be best to have it that way anyway. and yes i wamt to visibly see the background from the tiles and characters and stuff i make.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: crab2selout.png on February 16, 2009, 05:38:42 pm
some very valuable information about low colour palettes in the following links
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=1618.0
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=4306.0

Check out the factoids about the 64 palette ptoing posted in hte first link. See how the colours stack together to provide multiple value ramps? It's not just enough to have a light blue and a dark blue and call it done. Those blues need to have a relationship to your other colours or you aren't going to get much use out of this palette.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 17, 2009, 07:19:31 am
I've been mapping old palettes today.
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/rgb-8-bit.png)(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/rgb-16-bit.png)

The most common set up for hardware palettes is just to map out a rgb colourspace with as much precision is required/available. You decide how many shades of red, green and blue you'll allow for, and then you get all the colours you can make with combining those shades. The spectrum uses two shades each of red green and blue (off and on, basically) the CPC uses three, EGA uses four.

When actually drawing stuff, you pick a smaller subset from the master pallete that best suits the subject. For 8-bit systems there's generally some heavy restriction for how much data you can draw on the screen, so you get different screen modes.

The CPC is pretty typical, and especially pretty, so I'll use it for example:
mode 0: 160 by 200 (low-res, wide pixels, 16 colours)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/clash.png)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/02ox9.jpg)


mode 1: 320 by 200 (regular pixels, 4 colours)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/1228485750-00.png)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/1153572601-00.png)

mode 2: 640 by 200 (high res, tall pixels, 2 colours - haven't found examples of this, but you get the idea)

Because we live in the future, you get to make it up a bit, but knowing how this stuff is constructed makes it easier to imitate. I'd recommend just commandeering one of these palettes, and culling the colours you don't need.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 17, 2009, 12:04:27 pm
crab2selout:
thanks for the links but i don't completely understand how they used there colors to achive such perfection...i get the general idea but hasn't completely registered in my head.

tocky:
those are sensational! but my only question is how do i use them so i can clearly show the background from the stuff like character and ground sprite? as i'm making platfomrm screenshot mockups.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 17, 2009, 07:32:16 pm
I feel like I'm kind of flooding you with vaguely related information, you gotta post what you've drawn if you want more specific criticism.

There are all kind of ways to do contrast, like using warm colours (reds, oranges, yellows) against cool colours (greens, blues, purples) or using saturated colours against grayer ones, or varying the level of detail. In the real world, stuff is usually bluer, duller and less detailed if seen from a distance.

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/focuspoint.jpg)
from arne's drawing tutorial: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

All of this stuff is useful in game art, but you can see how it works, for example, in the splash screens for cpc games above - the warm and cool colours, desaturation, value, edge direction. It takes a while to pick this stuff up. Platformers aren't any different, it's just kind of harder because stuff has to tile. Post what you've got, though, you'll get better help.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: crab2selout.png on February 17, 2009, 07:58:29 pm
That robocop is awesome. I assume it's jsut a colour reduced scan, but the widepixels and low-colour palette really give the scan a life of its own.

x-death. I think hte main points me and tocky are trying to put across are to make sure your palette has easily distinguishable colours(your first post's palette looked a bit grey overall) and try to structure your colours so that light versions of say your red for example, can work as highlights for some of your other colours. In that c64 factoid picture Ptoing posted in the thread I linked to, can you see how the c64 colours are arranged like a dark to light gradient?

You said the main reason you were making a palette is because you struggle with choosing good colours, right? Have you tried using Arne's palette(the second link and look on the 2nd last page). It should give you some ideas
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 18, 2009, 10:43:38 am
yeah withtat last palette posted up its really good but my ony problem left like i said before i using them together distinguish the background from character and other things i make like the ground.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 18, 2009, 01:30:48 pm
show us what you have.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 18, 2009, 01:42:47 pm
i deleted it because it looked like it was apart of the same image. unless i use visible black lines everything looks joined.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: EyeCraft on February 18, 2009, 02:14:06 pm
I think  you might have the concept a little mixed up. There isn't some miraculous palette configuration that will separate your sprites from your background. You need to employ art technique in order to make that separation happen. Take a look at what tocky posted:

I feel like I'm kind of flooding you with vaguely related information, you gotta post what you've drawn if you want more specific criticism.

There are all kind of ways to do contrast, like using warm colours (reds, oranges, yellows) against cool colours (greens, blues, purples) or using saturated colours against grayer ones, or varying the level of detail. In the real world, stuff is usually bluer, duller and less detailed if seen from a distance.

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/focuspoint.jpg)
from arne's drawing tutorial: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

All of this stuff is useful in game art, but you can see how it works, for example, in the splash screens for cpc games above - the warm and cool colours, desaturation, value, edge direction. It takes a while to pick this stuff up. Platformers aren't any different, it's just kind of harder because stuff has to tile. Post what you've got, though, you'll get better help.

The most important thing your palette needs to have is value coverage. Then hue coverage. I mean, ultimately it's possible to make a black & white game where sprites are separated from bg because there's value-difference between palette entries. This is the biggest problem with your palette at the moment: there's no real steps from dark up to light, and thus, you have very limitted capacity to separate elements from each other because you've lost your most powerful separation tool: value contrast. In other words, you need value-coverage, not saturation coverage.

Both c64 and arne's palette tackle these concerns very admirably. I'd take a little time to look at those palettes and look at artwork made with those palettes to see how people go about achieving sprite-popping.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 18, 2009, 02:21:23 pm
ok well could you guys provide an example for me using the palette ont he right that tocky made. post the palette with example so i know what one you used, because there is so many of them there.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 18, 2009, 11:52:04 pm
At this point I'm pretty sure that this is some bizarre game that x-death has crafted, to see how much response he can get without posting anything of substance.

x: that's not how it works. we can't (or shouldn't) help you if you're not going to post anything. There's plenty of examples for how to do this stuff, in this thread and throughout the forum. If all else fails you can pull apart a screenshot from an actual game where you like the graphics. Why not check out the star ocean critique thread (http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=7930.0)? There's plenty of examples there. But you're not going to learn it without making anything, and we can't give you helpful critique unless we can see what you can do.

To reiterate: everything you should need is already posted. It's not really fair to ask people to make you stuff, because you haven't indicated that you're taking in anything that's been posted so far. Observation is an essential skill for artists (and creative people of all kinds) to use and develop. It's not enough simply to appreciate what's posted, you have to try to understand how it works.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 19, 2009, 04:53:24 am
well this is the best i've gotten. i suck at making charcaters i just can't do them. and backgrounds i'm even worse at. but here is something to give you an idea of were i'm at.
(http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/3552/screenshotqn2.png)
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: Pizza Tom on February 19, 2009, 04:55:49 am
Well, if you want to get good at backgrounds or characters, the best thing to do is practice, right? And if nothing seems to be working, that's what this place is for.  :)

Don't give up on yourself before you've even started!

/cliche
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: Dr D on February 19, 2009, 05:04:04 am
Unfortunately I don't think a good palette is your biggest problem right now.

What you've drawn there seems stylistic or far from realistic and it's hard to know where you want to go with this. The red stuff resembles grass, but it's growing down instead of up, and, well, isn't colored like real grass. The yellow ground, is just that, yellow ground, I can't make anything more of it.

Clarify what you intend to create, and that might help us help you more.

For now I'd say just practice, a good palette to just gran and use for practicing is Arne's palette, and it doesn't have too many colors, so color management is necessary, and you will improve a load.
And, I've learned a lot just reading these forums all day, I've hardly ever pixelled or drew anything.. Yet I can safely distinguish between most rights and wrongs. So just keep practicing and studying.

Quote from: tocky
At this point I'm pretty sure that this is some bizarre game that x-death has crafted, to see how much response he can get without posting anything of substance.

Looks like you were right.  :D

-EDIT- You know, this might not be so bad, there are few successful games with similar art styles.. But, your mockup/screenshot wouldn't convince me that it is.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 19, 2009, 05:09:57 am
well by this point i would think it was obvious i'm no professional artist but i do try.

this tileset is ment for more of a wasteland level, hence why the grass is red. and my style for this game i wanted more of a yoshi island kind of feel or one of those really styleized games were the graphics sure aren't perfect but they still manage top look awesome never the less.

that is what i was going for.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 19, 2009, 06:47:15 am
I suggest a greener sky colour (to compliment the orange foreground stuff), and that you limit yourself to four colours per tile for the backgrounds (because it gives a more neslike look and, incidentally, because it forces you to unify your palletes, here I've used the same brown for dark red as dark orange - it helps it all look selfsimilar, like it belongs in the same space). Everything else is just nitpickery, pixel placement - I could nitpick this sort of stuff for ages - but I think that what you have is pretty attractive. Keep adding stuff.

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/x-death-platformer-background.png)
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 19, 2009, 07:07:21 am
what do you mean make a greener sky color? i used the palette you gave me...and i picked the only two that i felt actually worked, well together for the sky.

ahh welli haven't done half bad so far...
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 19, 2009, 07:46:00 am
You're using EGA colours? okay:
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/rgb-16-bit-x.png)

this map is four different ways of displaying the same 64 colours.


(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/rgb-16-bit-x1.png)
sorted roughly for hue, luminance and saturation.

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/rgb-16-bit-x2.png)
this is pretty similar to the previous one, just a sort of skeletal display of the same data, to show the most obvious ramps.

(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/rgb-16-bit-x3.png)
these are colour cube slices, which are harder to explain... basically it's a map of how much red, green and blue makes up each colour. the second one is more or less a flipped and rotated version of the same cube, to show some different ramps.

I've picked out the sky colours you're using, in white. You can see how - using each map, you could find a slightly greener shade for these colours, right?
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 19, 2009, 08:13:53 am
ohh is ee. so the rectangle on the top shows them all listed by color. and thye one on the right shows more color values on one of the above rectangles?

and then one down the bottom shows then listed in colors so we can shaw in what ever direction i want to go. but for what one of the above rectanges does it show both of them?

i'm sorry if this is seeming a bit repedative i'm just having trouble getting my head around it
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 19, 2009, 08:15:36 am
okay, edited my previous post to clarify that stuff a little.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 19, 2009, 10:59:07 am
look at this image below, look at how they use there colors to show what is in the distance. hence being a background. and everything is so obvious you can see the background and the ground and the character.

image: http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/winter1.gif (http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/winter1.gif)

also look at this image this is another one i found which shows this pretty well.

image2: http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/rock.gif (http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/rock.gif)

and yet another...
image3: http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/adventureroom.gif (http://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/adventureroom.gif)

this is what i'm trying to achieve but all these attepmts aren't coming close...do you guys thing you can lend me some more help to get this right. and sorry again for all the trouble.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: Dr D on February 19, 2009, 10:24:11 pm
This might not be the best advice, but I don't usually use premade palettes, I just pick a color that's close to what I want, and keep going with it, after I'm done, I do a little adjusting with colors as necessary.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: balls01 on February 19, 2009, 10:39:47 pm
i also feel the same way as Dr D, i feel it restricts me and i can never really just get it right. i also feel about premade palette's that they never work out, i always find a redundant color somewhere.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 20, 2009, 09:02:00 am
i feel the same way, but i just suck at sseperating everything from everything else.
that is why i asked for premade, but even that is causing me problems. maybe me and good art just weren't suppose to happen...ahh well at least nobody can't say i haven't tried. lol i have been trying to achieve this and great quality for about 3 years now.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: Dr D on February 20, 2009, 03:29:05 pm
Most people aren't just naturally good artists, it's something you have to work on, and you'll only get better through practice, so if you want to get better, don't give up. It's these kind of issues and challenges, and learning from our mistakes that helps us get better.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 21, 2009, 01:20:51 am
i've been at it for three years, now much more patients do i  need?
i'm a very patient person but when something jsut doesn't happen over that period of time i can't help but be annoyed.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: tocky on February 21, 2009, 02:02:30 am
to get really good at something, anything? takes about a decade (http://norvig.com/21-days.html). don't worry about it. Just keep making things.

We've sort of dodged the question, "how can I learn to colour like Fool or Buloght", which deserves some answer, but I'm not really qualified to provide it.

Lollige's interview with Ilkke (http://pixeljoint.com/2009/02/20/2758/Pixel_artist_-_iLKke.htm) hits some similar themes. (I'm hoping it's okay to repost this section.)

Quote from: ilkke
As for color conservation, there are a number of methods. Sometimes you want to lessen the gap between the indexes so you can just lower the contrast of the entire picture, like on that giant mushroom thing. Sometimes you just get lucky, like with that disco dimension pic. I use color intuitively and mainly based off the atmosphere I want to get, so I guess I'm not that advanced in that department.

My favorite color conservation trick is global hue shift, which is really a great practice even when you don't want to save colors. Just consider that light and darkness have their own color, instead of being black and white. Let's say that darkness is brownish, and that the light is yellow, for example. Then whatever colors you have in between will darken and brighten towards these two colors, and you'll be able to reuse several of the darkest and brightest indexes no matter what color ramp they are in. This looks much better than having separate colors for every ramp, and it also uses less colors. On the mushroom pic, for example, there is only one green.

he's referring to this picture (http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/31473.htm) and this one (http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/33605.htm).

I'll post something more about hue shift, I think. It's fair to add that people rarely use master palletes like the ones I posted, anymore - I posted them more as examples for the kinds of colours you'd get on an old system. But also, those times that I have used one I've found the restriction useful rather than damning. It is a worthy excercise, forces you to learn how to use your colours and how they relate to one another.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 21, 2009, 06:01:46 am
here is something i have tried to continue with i accidently swaped the colors around on the background so its back to front. and you can see my spikes and character as i wanted it to be an alien. but as you can see it is to small and doesn't really catch your attention at all. so if you guys wish to help me out a bit then please do, this was like 2 hours of work. and i've been trying to fix my problem for like an additional hour but faiiled miserably.
(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/670/screenshotp.png)

also my spikes don't fit in with the style i know! but i can't improve it any more and i make it to fit the style.

so if you guys want to help me some more feel free to other wise i guess its some long hours hoping what ever i do actually works.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: Pizza Tom on February 21, 2009, 06:12:12 am
I think the reason that the spikes don't fit in with the rest is that everything else has a bold outline, and looks almost cel shaded. The spikes are a little more uh.. intense? xD I dunno what else to call it. Also, they look more like trees to me. :B Maybe ditch the dithering?
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 21, 2009, 06:23:27 am
thats the thing, if i get rid of the outline and dithering then it just looks shit.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: surt on February 21, 2009, 10:30:13 am
If the spikes are meant to be a hazard, and the green guy is the player, then you might want to make the spike narrower. As is they look more like they would make an uncomfortable seat rather than a threat of impalation (that even a word?), nevermind impalement. If they are narrower you may also find them easier to shade without the dither.

Their colour is also confusing, until I read the text I thought they were the tops of trees in the background (the dither doesn't help in this regard either). Consider what material they are, standard metal death-spikes, woody thorns, whatever, then colour and shade accordingly.

In regards to palette, I'd recommend you not start with a premade palette unless for some reason you must, but pick colours as you go, using existing ones where you can and creating new ones as you must, then performing a consolidation pass at the end.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 21, 2009, 10:49:41 am
i posted the spikes here because i new what the problem was already i just couldn't fix it...
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: surt on February 21, 2009, 12:05:37 pm
Here's a very simple example of some metallic spikes:
(http://surtspixels.googlepages.com/x-death_mockup_edit.png)
Tried grabbing the colours from the EGA global palette and they're a bit iffy.
Title: Re: help with this palette
Post by: x-death on February 21, 2009, 01:59:56 pm
you can use what ever colors you want, yyou don't have to keep to the palette. i haven't been i was just using it as a rough guide. also thanks for the attempt on the spikes but i shaded mine the way i did because it helped bit in the style more then when i tried finer lines like you did. olus i feel they are to smally. the charaxcter is going to be bigger. it will be approx 40-45 pixels in height when i fix up my character. so yeah.

hopefully this will help you guys, to help me.
Title: Re:
Post by: Fidsah on February 25, 2009, 01:56:46 am
One thing you might want to consider if you're trying to give this a true game feel and style is to pick a tile size. 16x16 per tile might help you get a good feel for size and detail. It will also help you scale things easier. If, for example, your character is two tiles high, then the spikes could also be two tiles high to make them as large as he is, or one tile high, to make them half his size. If you want tall, but narrow spikes, you could have spikes that are two tiles high, and two to each tile.

I personally find that when working with a known tile size, using a grid set to that specific setting helps me keep in mind how much space I have to work with, and helps me scale things to each other much easier.