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Messages - Gamer36
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1
Archived Activities / Re: Secret Santa 2013
« on: December 26, 2013, 12:46:50 am »
Thank you sooo much wolfenoctis! I didn't think anyone could utilize two of my likes in a work, let alone three! Those beasts remind me of the cheshire cat. Those bunnies are really cute, too.

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Archived Activities / Re: Secret Santa 2013
« on: December 26, 2013, 12:10:44 am »
Dear Crozier,

I am sincerely sorry that I did not turn in your present in time. I could pull many excuses out of my hat, but I won't. Plain and simple, I kept saying to myself "Oh, I'll work on it some more tomorrow". It happened so much I just stopped thinking about it. Hopefully, if mine isn't satisfactory, Riva can make a piece that you'll love! (Crow probably hasn't gotten around to posting my work, since I sent the PM a few minutes ago, but it will most likely be up soon!)

Have a nice holiday season,

Gamer36

3
Pixel Art / Re: Forest level [WIP]
« on: December 18, 2013, 03:31:41 pm »
It would be very helpful if you provided the raw images, such as the sprite, the jumping, etc. It would be much easier to critique than a screenshot of the game. The waterfall looks more like a tractor beam than flowing water. If you just look at google image results, waterfalls are a lot of lines, because the place the are coming from is not smooth, so the water is rippled.

Here is a low-res example I just put together. The colors are funky because I had to do it on a crappy online pixel art editor (damn school laptop doesn't allow me to install GIMP)


4
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: Avatar Sprite
« on: December 16, 2013, 12:24:06 pm »
The left foot seems top be pointed towards his body in an awkward way (when I say left, I mean left from our point of view). His feet also have no toes :p. I'm on my phone, so I can't show you what I mean at this moment, but I hope you get the gist of it.

5
Pixel Art Feature Chest / Re: Slashing Animation
« on: December 04, 2013, 01:01:20 am »
The second one is much better than the first, it is more slashing, while the first it looks like he is spinning a rope around. I am on my school laptop, and thus do not have a very good image editor, but when the knife is behind his head, I don't think it is long enough that you would see the tip of the blade. (I counted pixels). I'll leave critiquing the colors and anatomy to someone else :P

6
The grass and wood textures in your screen shots are the best of all the ones you've made. In MineCraft, it is very rare to see grass textures without grids. Not sure if it is an aspect of the way it is rendered, but you can see clear lines between the blocks, especially in Super Flat, even with the default texture (which is essentially noise). You can remove that horizontal line of prominent clumps of grass you have in your texture, but if you don't completely obliterate the grid, don't sweat it.

Your wood texture, although probably the best of all the ones you have showed so far, needs a lot of work. Use google images to look at real wood planks (not those fancy faux textures that are a buck a piece). Here is one I found:

http://versporttvonline.com/wooden-plank-background/

Now, I know these are planks constructed for houses, not driftwood, but you get the general idea. There are clear lines that go the length of the wood. You have tried to recreate it, but it looks like Thor just went round and started bashing your walls. Not only do they have WAY too many colors, but you just threw random shadows and highlights. Wood doesn't shine, unless it is polished. Your texture pack doesn't seem to have that vibe. There are some lights and some darks, but these lights and darks are not lines, they are areas. Make maybe a few wood knots or darkened spots, and a few lighter spots. Use the darkest and light shade(s) VERY sparingly, and do not have any colors that looks like shadows or highlights, unless a board is really sticking out a lot.

Stone is not cobble stone, there are not chunks. Stone does have irregularities, but not enough to make it look like tons of small stones, it is a wall of stone. Here is another reference image:

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs7/i/2005/160/a/f/Stone_texture_by_enframed.jpg
(not inserting image because it is huge)

You can see there are a few places that jut out, and the surface is rough. Resist the temptation to go crazy with noise, if you like dithering, go with dithering. Have shadows, but light shadows. Tiling is a pain in the ass, removing the grid, all that jazz. It is hard, it takes hard work, time, and dedication. Make the texture share aspects between tiles. Don't just texture a tile as a standalone, and then try to make it fit. Maybe have a piece that juts out continue on to the next tile. Make sure the elements are even, not concentrated in any one place. Don't make a large thing that draws someone's attention directly to it, make the whole tile equally interesting.

Coal is especially difficult to do. Coal doesn't appear in nature anything like how it is represented in minecraft. There are usually giant deposits of solid coal. It isn't a ore at all, it doesn't mix with the stone like iron and gold do. Some texture packs try to represent these large deposits with just one chunk of coal, but, surrounded by stone, this has the most apparent grid without outlining each block in black. I don't see anything wrong with how you are doing it now, just be sure to fix the stone texture (I know this is not your current stone texture, but, as I stated above, stone is not separated into little chunks.)

Iron is not found in nuggets, and you have done a good job at distinguishing your texture from these "nugget" textures, but this isn't very realistic either, and the grid is horribly obvious. Having these "veins" is good, but try to blend them in with the rock more. The iron is at the same level at the rock, in your texture it looks as if it were a bit receded. Don't make all the veins terminate so close to the edge, maybe make them loop back or fade before they get so close to the edge.

Your cobblestone is excellent, nice variation in length, I like how some seem to be pushed out a bit. Maybe do the opposite on some, making them look pushed back (add a shadow to them). The moss seems a bit to green to me, as it occurs in dungeons, not exactly full of lively bright green moss that has tons of sunlight. Tone down the brightness just a tad. I can't tell with this little amount of bricks, but it seems that there might be a grid problem with this moss. Again, use the premise of spreading details among multiple tiles, not just one.

Just like the stone on the coal and iron ores, the dirt suffers from gridding, and smoothness. It looks to me as if it was a simply hue change and copy paste. Dirt is rough, it has clumps, tiny pebbles, etc. Again, don't draw attention to one particular space, spread the details out across the tile. The roots in the side grass tile are ok, but seem beveled (highlight all on one side shadow all on the other), and plastic. The grass also suffers from this plastic look. Just putting lines of highlights and shadows doesn't convey "grass", it conveys "green substance". Try doing something like your top grass. Also, the colors don't match, this side grass is bright and green, the top grass is slightly saturated.

Sorry for being so nitty-gritty, and some of my answers don't help much in how to fix it. Trial and error is key, try different ideas. If you don't think it looks right, don't settle. Keep working at it till is does. And that wall of text wasn't meant, it just kept pouring out.

Credit for Images

Wood Plank: http://versporttvonline.com/

Stone Texture: http://enframed.deviantart.com/

7
Pixel Art / Re: City Street (Very Early WIP) Perceptual phenomenon?
« on: November 25, 2013, 11:10:53 pm »
I'm not pixel master, or a very good artist, but from looking at plenty of bright lights, I can see that your "flares" in the back aren't very accurate. Here are two references I got off the Internet, credit to http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/morton/ and http://maradong.deviantart.com/, respectively.




(oops... just noticed how big that image is. not sure if I should leave it, or link to it off site. is there a spolier function?)

In the fist image, you can see that there are many light rays coming off the light, like in yours. Just like yours, there is a light glow around the light source as well. If you pay close attention to this image, though, you can see the lack of symmetry. Some light rays are thick, some are thin. They also vary in length (how short or far away from the source they start to fade), and angle.

The second image will help you with reflections. In your artwork, the reflection goes the length of the road. As you can see in the picture (most evident with the left-most lamp), this is not always the case. I assume this is a wet road, due to the shiny reflections. Just re-read the OP, saw that it is a rainy road! If the road was flooded, it would make sense to have the reflection be equally bright the length of the road. Since the reflections are at the edge of the road, it is plausible that the sides of the road are covered in water (roads curve downwards at the edges). Also, why do the farther back lights have "flares", but not the front ones?

About the figures in the middle of the road, I'm assuming they are some being that stands on two legs, no? The reflections closer to us seem to be around the figures' waists. Was this intentional, to show that the road was flooded? If so, maybe put some disturbances in the water around them. If not, raise them up a few pixels, so the reflections don't seem to be floating.

I apologize for the long winded reply, hope it helps!

8
General Discussion / Re: Zooming of images
« on: November 25, 2013, 01:23:24 pm »
Thank you for the replies both of you. Oh well, I guess we must wait. That extension that you linked to is very helpful though.

9
I found a thread online, and it seem that someone was able to boot the tablet into Linux. http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/292341-wacom-cintiq-companion/ I don't understand much of anything about how you boot up Linux on a computer, so I might be completely wrong, but it's worth checking out.

10
General Discussion / Zooming of images
« on: November 25, 2013, 04:21:47 am »
Dear Pixelation (more specifically, whoever handles the coding of this website),

I recently started being active again on these forums, and I must say, it is a wonderful place. I love the feature that we can just click on an image to zoom in. But, for many people using many browsers, the zoom function could be a lot better. Many browsers use smoothing algorithms to make large photos look good when zoomed in, and, for the most part, it improves their look when zoomed in. When you are dealing with pixel art, however, this is not so. The blurred lines between pixel make it not only unsightly to look at photos zoomed it, but hard to critique it accurately. One fix to this problem is to use a browser that doesn't do this (I have tested, and I know for sure that Firefox 25.0.1 doesn't use these algorithms), but this is an annoyance, as many people prefer other browsers that they are used to. Luckily, there is a solution. I did a quick Google search, and found this link to a Yahoo Answers type site http://superuser.com/questions/530317/how-to-prevent-chrome-from-blurring-small-images-when-zoomed-in that explains how to fix this with CSS. The only reason I see for not implementing this is if you do not have access to the CSS. Pixelation runs on Simple Machines Forums, I gather, from the footer. I have no idea about how this works, if it is a complete forum management system, website and all, or simply a database for storing posts. If you do have access to the CSS, and can implement this, I'm sure many members will appreciate it.

-Gamer36

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