Hello, Pixelation! I'm happy to see this awesome forum is still around. I really need your wisdom. What do you think is wrong (and right, but I'm mostly looking for stuff to improve here) about this character portrait? I'm going for a cartoony style, so realism and proportions aren't really that important as long as it looks good. I haven't done any serious pixels in too long and I need to get better. Any tips, suggestions, criticisms, etc. are welcome. Thank you!
It's been a while! Thanks a lot again for the help you guys gave me back in February.
Right now I'm working on a set of monster sprites, Pokémon-inspired, and I've decided to use a common palette for all of them. I want a unified feel for the whole spriteset, but at the same time the palette should be varied enough to be able to sprite 151 monsters without the tones getting repetitive or boring. I've already designed all monsters and they encompass as wide a set of tones as you can get.
I think that a palette with no more than 60 colors is reasonable, so I've been working with that idea in mind. Right now I've got a 57 color palette prototype and I've tested it out on a couple of monsters. Here you are: This is the palette: What do you think? Should I change anything in the palette? Are there too many browns? Brown is important in my monsters, but perhaps I've overdone it. Should I add more greens? Am I lacking something essential? I will probably change and improve it as I advance and make more monsters, but the more monsters I make, the more messy it will be to rebalance the palette each time that I modify something, so I'm trying to make it as good as possible beforehand.
Nice to meet you all! This is the first time that I post any pixel-art here, so please tell me if I'm doing something wrong. I've read that it's important to explain as much as possible about the creation process so you can make better critiques. I'll do my best.
Fact is, I'm currently working on the graphics for a 8-bit, GBC/NES-inspired ARPG game, with a gameplay similar to that of the Zelda classics. The graphics themselves are meant to have a style resembling both Zelda and Pokémon, which are my main inspirations, but with a distinct personality (I'm still working on that). I'm using a GB/GBC screen size (160x144px) and working exclusively with the NES palette. I looked around for different variants of the palette that people displayed online and I found this one to be the most appealing to me, so I chose it for this:
I haven't worked much with 8-bit graphics before, I've always been more of a GBA-SNES kind of pixel-artist, and that's mostly why I thought that it would be useful to post some of my works here and see what I can improve on them.
Right now I'm mostly working on tilesets and sprites. My palette concept is relatively loose: sprites and transparent tiles have 3 colors + transparency, and background tiles have 4 colors, but I don't limit myself on the number of layers that can be used in a map. So the raw graphics themselves are meant to be a faithful 8-bit imitation, but the engine is not. I try to limit myself as much as possible, though, using as few palette variations as possible in the same tileset, so it looks more authentic.
I do the graphics by mouse directly on the PC using Aseprite. The eventual game will be meant to be played at least at a x2 scale, probably more, considering the small resolution of the screen and graphics.
And that's about all the relevant background info I can think about at the moment. If you want/need to know something more, just ask
Now, to the pixel-art! The game is divided in a Light World and a Dark World, such as some of the Zelda games, and each World has 10 different areas with different tilesets. The tilesets in the Light World will be more vibrant, obviously, and the ones in the Dark World will be darker and creepier. I'm currently working on the Forest tileset (Light world) and the Mountain tileset (Light world). Here you are:
Forest tileset (WIP):
Mountain tileset (WIP):
That's what I have for the moment. And here you have some test maps in-game, so you can see the tiles in action, as well as some of the hero sprites:
What do you think I should improve? Is my technique OK? Do some tiles have a wrong perspective or size compared to others? I've been wondering about it, but after looking at them for so long I kind of not notice those things anymore, haha.
By the way, the big strange tree-with-a-face thing is based on this creature I made, so you see more or less what it's supposed to be like:
The last thing I should probably point out is that the use of black outlines for tiles and sprites is kind of a stylistic choice, so I'd prefer not to change that. Any other suggestion or correction or edit or anything is absolutely welcome I want to learn and do this as well as I can. Thank you in advance for your help and congrats on the awesome community!
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Thank you!
