I often read threads and maybe give feedback, but I don't create threads here enough. I'm getting at a point that future points of improvement are becoming less obvious

So, I did Ludum Dare and I REALLY wanted to have a game where my environment art is emphasized a bit and have significant effort put into it. This was what I made in three days, while juggling the programming end as well.

My game is posted here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=23547




^and a copyright shizz in case people find this via google images or something

And I would especially like feedback on these environment assets, which admittedly suffered from a rushed workflow that did not get the justice of having extra time to think it through.

Obvious issues are grasses not tiling that well, cliffs aren't finished, and the base of the tree isn't properly unified with the grass. Anything else I might be missing?

Was thinking of writing something to possibly save myself some future trouble if I continue working with concept artists who may or may not have much of an idea of what the final assets would look like, though I have to remember that I'm not the biggest expert around.

How have your experiences been with concept artists, with those who do and don't know what to expect from pixel art?

The stuff stuck to the bottom-right corner was stuff I was saving in case I might wanna look at that later. Forgot to remove that to make this more presentable on the forums but what the heck. The random rectangle which our character is sitting is gonna be one of those fancy armchairs.



So, I'm looking to improve on my craft of tilesets. This is not made for any particular game project. I would like to make a Victorian-inspired living room with a character quietly reading a book. I also intend this to be as well-rendered as what I manage to do with this earlier experiment:


(Canopy tiling sucks but I learned a lot from it seeing how SD3 is better at the same tiling approach I copied.  )

I'll be posting my progress as I go.  Let me know if there's anything at this early stage that is worth pointing out. Color scheming, proportions, perspective, interior design, stuff about the big picture. I feel a bit clueless with the couch as I'm noticing that RPG perspective looks weird with vertically-elongated forms like the sofa. I haven't studied Victorian/steampunk stuff enough but it's a setting I'm interested in gaining a bit of familiarity.

This was made just for practice for a coming Ludum Dare Jam. A friend and I, both part of a team for that jam decided that we should make a random mockup with music that goes with it. I found some random noun generator and three of four words it generated were "mechanic, clock, and tower".  I went in a direction of a steampunk setting. This was an interesting challenge since I've never took a shot at a steampunk look. I can be better at this if I do and study steampunk settings more, but otherwise I'd consider this beginner's work.

So, I end up making something that might look like a puzzle platformer... valves and clouds of scalding steam and such.

I wasn't necessarily aiming for perfection and there are some mistakes I'm aware of. Clock face is heavily unfinished but left it like that when I realize there's more important stuff to focus on. Legs are under-rendered, and for some reason I'm having difficulty coloring the handwheel. The random circle on the tilesheet was supposed to be a gear but gears of this size seems pretty annoying to do.   

Anyways, I wouldn't mind having pointers to where my abilities with environments are at this moment in time.