Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Luke on December 08, 2009, 11:15:44 pm
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So, I've been working on some road/sidewalk tiles for about a week. After hours and hours of playing around with them, I have to say I'm generally happy.
Although there are a few things that still stick out to me. Wanted to see if I could get some other opinions and advice.
Anyways, without further adieu:
(http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/3540/wayofthepixel.png)
The things that don't quite look right to me:
-1) Crosswalk: While it will look a little nicer when tiled properly, It still looks out of place to me.
-2) Sidewalk-Crosswalk Tile: While this tile looks good to me when rotated to face front or back, something about the side view looks wrong to me.
-3&4)Storm drain & Manhole cover: Tried to get them to look right, but they still look out of place, particularly the manhole cover.
C&C would be greatly appreciated.
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You have a LOT of colors there. You could cut that down to maybe 8 at most. How many exactly do you have there?
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You have a LOT of colors there. You could cut that down to maybe 8 at most. How many exactly do you have there?
I actually really like the texture I've got, I don't see why I would want to reduce colors.
Anyways please continue the C&C.
Oh, and on another note, My next project will be grass/dirt tiles. I've searched your forums but couldn't find anything that helpful. I'd appreciate it if someone could post a link to a good grass tile tutorial.
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I can't say I like the texture actually. The sidewalk tiles are okay at best, and the street is meh. What I'd recommend doing is removing all of those extra colors you've got there for texture, and add a few subtle highlights/shadows here and there. If done right, it should come off as a lot cleaner than what you have now.
The texture on the street lines is also especially odd. Lines don't get worn that way, if they get very worn at all. And when they do, it's also generally in more streaks of color absence than equal distribution as you have it now. Take a look at some streets via google. Texture like that isn't that visible, especially from close up.
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I can't say I like the texture actually. The sidewalk tiles are okay at best, and the street is meh. What I'd recommend doing is removing all of those extra colors you've got there for texture, and add a few subtle highlights/shadows here and there. If done right, it should come off as a lot cleaner than what you have now.
The texture on the street lines is also especially odd. Lines don't get worn that way, if they get very worn at all. And when they do, it's also generally in more streaks of color absence than equal distribution as you have it now. Take a look at some streets via google. Texture like that isn't that visible, especially from close up.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/135918329_120e75f060_o.jpg
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The texture on the footpath is not clear at all. It could benefit from higher contrast. This could be done by cutting colours (yes), and bigger jumps in light/dark. If you put this in an editing program and increased contrast, you would lose colours any way as it gains contrast and loses the less important shades.
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The crosswalk looks off because crosswalks aren't shaped like ladders, they're usually just parallel equidistant lines. But, I'm not exactly a world traveler so maybe there are ladder-walks
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http://la.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/ubrayj_crosswalk.jpg
Using refrences help a lot. I would kill some colours too, though you can still use what you have if you like but bump the contrast up. Do not overdo the worn effect, right now it just looks badly painted.
What I think is a major issue is how many road colours compared to the 1 white paint colour you have. It's like two seperate styles, one on top of the other, therefor making the crosswalk look abstract to the path and road.
Also for the pavers that dip in, both sides are shaded as darker making it look like any light source you have is comming from directly above. Not a great look.
The side view looks wrong because you can't just rotate a tile 90 degrees and expct it to work. because it's at a 45 degree perspective top-down that means that some of the shaded area on the bottom piece will be hidden by the lip (not sure what else to call it) whilst the other top side will look more apparent and larger. Make sense at all? (I hope so my typing and explanation is horrible at the moment)
3&4 is yet again a contrast issue. bump it up!
Also could be considered not a major issue with the tileset itself but try to make an outer corner and an inner corner set of tiles as the outer corner of a turn will have a much larger curve and take up several tiles compared to the inner-turn tile. Hence why your road looks
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@TV boy- the image-linked above (at top of post) is for your sake too. Many parts of the world are different. Ladder walks as you call them are mostly present in Australia and many Asian countries.
ps please ignore spelling, kind of tired.
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Thank you for the enlightening photo. In any case, the op's white lines are spaced to far apart In his crosswalk.
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I would kill some colours too, though you can still use what you have if you like but bump the contrast up.
Is there a program I can use to automatically change one colour for another, or to automatically bump up the contrast of all my colours in my image?
It will be kind of tedious to manually have to go around and do this for each colour. (photoshop can probably do it but I can't afford that)
What I think is a major issue is how many road colours compared to the 1 white paint colour you have. It's like two seperate styles, one on top of the other, therefor making the crosswalk look abstract to the path and road.
Yes I can see your point.
Also for the pavers that dip in, both sides are shaded as darker making it look like any light source you have is comming from directly above. Not a great look.
This is very try, I considered this while I was making the tile. Technically this would be the right way to do it, but I just found it looked better with both sides dark.
Also could be considered not a major issue with the tileset itself but try to make an outer corner and an inner corner set of tiles as the outer corner of a turn will have a much larger curve and take up several tiles compared to the inner-turn tile. Hence why your road looks
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Yeah that makes sense, I'll give it a shot.
@TV boy- the image-linked above (at top of post) is for your sake too. Many parts of the world are different. Ladder walks as you call them are mostly present in Australia and many Asian countries.
I'm Canadian and all of our crosswalks look like that, I think I remember seeing them like that in places in the US as well.
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I would kill some colours too, though you can still use what you have if you like but bump the contrast up.
Is there a program I can use to automatically change one colour for another, or to automatically bump up the contrast of all my colours in my image?
It will be kind of tedious to manually have to go around and do this for each colour. (photoshop can probably do it but I can't afford that)
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Color replacement is possible in paint by right-clicking with the eraser tool. Just figure out how to set up your selected colors correctly (right-clicking the eraser looks at both your left- and right-click selected colors) and you're good to go. Ofcourse you could always adjust the contrast in a free program like GIMP.
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I'd honestly ditch the dithering on the street lines. It looks very dirty and messy, and honestly looks more like someone was fiddling with the spray tool. I don't think it reflects what you're going for very well at all.
I'd say you're better off trying to portray the texture with more structured techniques, maybe something like this:
(http://i48.tinypic.com/2a9rwv5.png)
Also, I think the colors need to be worked with as well. I see you're working with pure gray shades, and it might help to add just a hint of color to your colors, even the road(I gave it a purple shade, as I believe roads are mostly seen as such), to give it a little life. I also think it may help to up the contrast/brightness of the overall colors, as right now it looks very dull and boring; the white and orange being so dark, beyond even something post-apocalyptic.
I would kill some colours too, though you can still use what you have if you like but bump the contrast up.
Is there a program I can use to automatically change one colour for another, or to automatically bump up the contrast of all my colours in my image?
It will be kind of tedious to manually have to go around and do this for each colour. (photoshop can probably do it but I can't afford that)
...
Color replacement is possible in paint by right-clicking with the eraser tool. Just figure out how to set up your selected colors correctly (right-clicking the eraser looks at both your left- and right-click selected colors) and you're good to go. Ofcourse you could always adjust the contrast in a free program like GIMP.
To expand, I recommend checking out this site: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/tutorial/mspaint
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Dusty! Did you figure out what game, or should I say server I'm using these for?
If you didn't I'll give you a hint: look at the manhole covers : )
I'd honestly ditch the dithering on the street lines. It looks very dirty and messy, and honestly looks more like someone was fiddling with the spray tool. I don't think it reflects what you're going for very well at all.
Really good advice, your edit helped a lot.
colors need to be worked with as well. I see you're working with pure gray shades, and it might help to add just a hint of color to your colors, even the road(I gave it a purple shade, as I believe roads are mostly seen as such), to give it a little life.
When I set out to make these tiles, I thought exactly the same thing. They are gray now because the powers at be told me: "Sidewalks aren't cream colored, they're gray god damn it, fix it.
Damn, I wish I had another GFXer to work with on this. Sales told me he asked for your help and you declined? Any chance you'd change your mind?
anyways thanks for the post, extremely helpful.
-Luke