Wow, thanks for that awesome reply!

First of all I would like to mention that I haven't even started tiles yet. I have literly only that environment concept, and I'm now working on my character. I was informed that the character is one of the best places to start from a community member that most inspirational to me 

Changing the resolution is no problem to me, I do see what you mean with a larger resolution though. Perhaps I was thinking that having a bigger resolution would (like you said) somewhat Isolate the player. It was a foolish intentional result that I hadn't put much thought into. Before I create any environment assets this will be something that I will extensively research and test.

I also feel like I should be scaling my assets up in-game... So even at slightly larger resolutions It will still look like decent Pixel Work.

When I say I'm a complete beginner, I literally mean I have never done any Pixel Art prior to starting this tree/tile set (at the top of this post), I have never created a 2D game (besides a brief side-scrolling project for College), and I'm still very new to professional quality Art/Asset production in general. I'm not just whining saying to take it easy, quite the opposite. I'm trying to gather as much information about Pixel Art and Classic RPG style Asset production as I can! 

Honestly I like my Character when he is scaled to a larger resolution (without AA of course).. It feels much more like the style I was going for when I first started

BTW here is a WIP for the run cycle. It is based of a simple run cycle from the animators survival guide. There are a few things I'm not happy with, especially at 1:1 pixel resolution. At higher ratios though it feels much less noticeable!

I'm not happy with the hair looping, it feels a bit to jerky for me
I feel his back leg/arm are not high enough contrast to his front leg/arm, and kind of gives the impression that halfway through the loop he is moving the same arm/leg again haha.
I'm also considering adding more details to his attire, which I feel would aid to the depth of the animation.
And his head turns on the wrong step... DOH lol thats something I intend on fixing later.

I'm not sure if I already mentioned it here, but it is worth noting that there are also 2D side-scrolling-platformy type levels in this game



Again, I don't mean to come off as immature or ungrateful, I'm just trying to gather as much info as I can before I start Asset production for the game - Still continuing to write/refine the story and background story etc... And concepting some more creatures for the game...

... for now though, I am just focusing on Hero, and pre-production 


Edit: Keep in-mind to there will be Hud elements that creep onto the srcreen. I havent nailed anything down for that yet, but there is quite  a bit of into being displayed at any one time.

Thank you!

Ahh cool, thats quite  a bit bigger, The hand movements aren't SO bad don't take it the wrong way. Perhaps try more of Fighting stance, or something like this:



Please excuse my super crude edit :S I changed the contrast a little bit, and tried to change the arms abit. I only used the lasso tool to reposition, so its kinda rough, but you can see how alternating the up and down movements is more like a fighting stance than moving both at the same time.

Again, this is only rough. Ideally you would want to offset the movements so they repeat the loop on different frames for each arm, it looks much more natural. (and this is only two quick frames to illustrate 1 point)

 HOWEVER, the grab-like animation you have there might work very well if he was hunched over abit more, and the grab was reduced to a twich between 2-3 frames, and were offset by 1 frame per hand.

I don't really have the time to do a full edit, but I hope that gives you some more ideas

From a quick overlook I'd say it's RPG-Maker graphic and it isn't neither great from the tiling approach nor from the pixel art - so I won't recommend to use it.
It seems that you can get a lot of the stuff from here:
http://www.tekepon.net/fsm/modules/refmap/index.php?mode=map

Obviously I would be creating my own assets, and I would make sure they tile better and are somewhat unique. And I personnally don't have a problem with those graphics, but I do see what you mean by the tiling.

Also, Are suggesting that I myself use assets from that site? or that they are using them from that site and not creating their own?


Edit: May I ask in your opinion  of GOOD pixel art/ tiling RPG games within the past 1-3 years? and what is good about them?

I'm also thinking about completely changing the setting of the game. I'm probably way too ambitious at this point. I think I should basicaly drop the story, focus entirely on instance crawling... if I knew how to create rougelike instanced levels... I could just drop the Player in the middle of nowhere, without a town, and just go nuts XD

Theres an Android game called " Pixel Dungeon " which is super fun, and has literly no story. You just start off in a dungeon and fight your way through the floors, and its amazing! I'd probably keep my game more open world though.

Update:

I sketched something up... I quite like it, and would sitll be 95% the exact same mechanics as previously, except I have more freedom when it comes to anatomy of vegitation, I already have proceedural lighting engine in game maker for this so thats not a problem . I like the color pallet on this image also. I can still have "Forests" of wierd Teal/Yellow blobby vines, I can still have caverns and cliffs of the offset stones on the surface. Make-believe worlds were always more interesting.

I had planned on creating scenes like this in game anyway, But now the player is dropped right into it... youl find out why if you play the game! ^^ hehe

I suppose in those games the characters are quite large compared to the tree, or else you wouldnt see them. I don't even know where to start lol, where would you suggest?

I do have a character concept, but it is certainly not refined enough to be an asset. Honestly though, the Art style for the game dosn't really matter to me. It's already been changed so many times, and as long as it still works with the story/gameplay mechanics that I have written, and it looks good, I don't really care...  it probably sounds like I'm kind of bypassing the artwork for the game, which is impossible. I suppose I just don't really know what I wan't yet.

Honestly I would be thrilled if my game looked like Ahriman's Prophecy, which was the game I was aiming to compare to:


If i'm not mistaken, the assets are not 1 pixel : 1 pixel ? they are blown up slightly right, should I be doing that too? For example, create 16x16 tiles, and blow them up to 32x32 in-game?

Even in here the trees are tinyy compared to mine... Doh.

This time around, the FOURTH revision of my assets, I'm going to sketch rough templates for sizes/perspectives so it dosn't get out of control. again...

Well. Considering I'm still super super new to pixel art, I've learned an awful lot. And even I was heading in the wrong direction, I can only learn from it in the end.


When I have my tree again, should I update this thread? or create a new one? Or should I start with main character first?

@YellowLime:

Yeah... lol I am not even that happy with the tree honeslty, the more I look at it the more i see the flaws. I'm only happy with time I invested into it, not giving up allong the way. I'l shrink this down and use it as a base I suppose. I have some more planning to do (yaaaaaaay)

I would suggest adding a far background and middle ground, maybe even a far foreground elemt aswell

As to the content, thats up to you, its your piece.

Fantastic start though, good colors and values!