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Messages - Tals
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Pixel Art / Re: (Re)starting with pixel art
« on: January 21, 2016, 09:45:04 pm »
You're operating in a bit of a different style than I'm used to, but a few quick things jumped out at me as making him look a little... odd at first glance.

Here's a quick edit and what I changed:

- You are using neither the proportions nor the perspective that he shouldn't have at least some level of visible neck. I only went one pixel higher but it lifts his head from feeling like it sits on his shoulders.
- The shoulders felt way too chunky, even if he's supposed to be a bulky character.
- The legs are the real reason I did the quick edit, I don't think straight legs are perfect, but try standing like your guy is, he's bending his knees sideways. It looks painful.

You're starting in a really good place though, you have great contrast and use colour better than I know I do. Your shoes show a great attention to interesting detail and your light source and shading is consistent across the piece.

This might just be a personal thing, but I'd watch out for the uncanny valley. You've got an interesting mix of styled form with an attempt to throw a bit of realism in there, and I'd recommend pushing a little more one way or another. You can go for further correctness by doing things like putting ears where they should be, rounding out the shoulders more and giving him better posture (I feel like he's hunched forward?) or you can embrace the stylish elements by exaggerating features further. That's all take it or leave it advice though, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing here.

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I definitely always can learn more. The joys of not really being the greatest artist myself, I much prefer the design and programming side of things. That's why I'm enjoying the feedback you are giving so much!

A dash of blue does make it look more natural, but it's meant to have that unnatural black glossiness, the creature is based on a power cable. I could always ham it up by pushing the lighter shade further. I have a lot of trouble with Photoshop showing a lot better range of blacks than you actually get in other applications, which is why the original sprite for this guy was so dark that he looked like flat black.

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Pixel Art / Re: What`s wrong?
« on: January 19, 2016, 08:11:59 pm »
Personal opinion, I think it's the overuse of anti-aliasing. When you apply any level of zoom at all to it it looks really fuzzy and fluffy. You have a really cool drawing style and I think the lack of definition really washes that out.

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Pixel Art / Re: Zombie rat
« on: January 19, 2016, 08:04:59 pm »
There is a real fluidity to your animations that I really love.

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Slight hue shifting looks nice, but pushing it further than that really ruins the readability of battles. I had a look at the pallets of most Pokemon sprites and the hue shifts are generally rather light there too. That Guybrush piece is gorgeous, but also nowhere near a style I'd want to maintain across a game. So I'll keep working on my hue shifting, because I'm sure it's not quite there yet.


I haven't had as much time to put in to sprites this last weekend as I wanted, but here's a complete redraw of one of the more troublesome sprites, hopefully using much better perspective, shading and colour choices. Working with black as a base colour is really hard, but I think it's come through a lot nicer. I had to edit the blacks twice after uploading and noticing it was too dark, it's hard to get it right.

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I messed around with it a bit.
Removed one of the tentacles as I think it makes it clearer.
I also added some protruding facial features.


This is gorgeous, and you really showed me what I'm doing wrong with shading.

i did another edit showing how you might improve all your creatures relatively quickly with different colors.  though some monsters admittedly could use tweaking to the drawing, like the arms of the racoon.

in the pink monster you might better understand my thought process.  i kept the base pink color the same, but darkened the shadow color.  this instantly added more depth.  also introduced a blueish shadow color only to add some hue variation- when every color in a ramp is so linear in hue, it looses a bit of depth as well imo.  :-[
I'm actually not as keen on what you did with the pink one (though I appreciate how well it looks like a retro pokemon sprite with that styling) as what you did with the grub, you really made him feel like a totally different creature with only colour changes.

unfortunately reworking all your sprites would take a big amount of time :<
I'm going to take a stab at it over the weekend, I wouldn't expect anyone else to, that's my job. There are twice as many as you see here too, all drawn over a half a year period, which is why some like the pink ghost look way better than others like the racoon (and a couple I didn't post need redraws from scratch). I've always known I'd have to go back and fix them, and no time like the present! I'll post a before and after when I get that done.

Here are the 4 I got through today, the three you highlighted and a 4th to show myself that I could take those techniques and apply them properly.

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I think you're just used to a very subdued palette.. It takes time to adjust.
It's not only the contrast, but the hues aren't very vibrant.

The edit looks good to me, settling for something in between seems like a step back.
A fair point, and probably an overarching theme amongst my work. I'll perhaps take a look at my colour choices as a whole across the creatures and how I can improve in their application.

i'd say the contrast is still a bit too low, the colors still too murky, but it's whatever looks good to your eye bro  :crazy:  i dont think my version has too much contrast, but i envision your art to be more vibrant


perhaps something like this

i wish i had more time, but i could come back later if you want ^^  it's not really a problem of your base colors but how you choose light tones and shadows that cause everything to be murky. 
I definitely wouldn't say no to a deeper critique when you had the time. You seem to be leading me along a good track. I'm looking through your post history and getting a good idea of what you mean by better contrast and I'm going to take some time tomorrow to attempt to get my colour picking on better lines.

I probably should have noted this in the opening post but in action these sprites spend most of their time scaled to 3x or 4x if the user is playing the game at full screen, so some of the small details that get washed out when dropping the number of colours used (like when you merge the brown midtones) I don't really want to lose. The flipside of that of course is if my colours are looking no good, it's not doing those details any justice anyway.

Thanks for the advice thus far, it's all stuff I can work with which is making me feel very thankful.

Edit: Hows this one looking?

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The platform seem out of perspective.  Almost like it's leaning too far forward. 
It has some awkwardness to it born from the way the squares need to be a fixed size, so it's a forced unrealistic perspective. It could use some tweaking on that front but I'm not really sure how to fix it without destroying it.

Also, some shadows under the creatures would pull it all together.
You're right, and to be honest I'd not even thought about that. I'll work some shadows in to the engine tomorrow.

Nice project you got there.    :y:
Thanks!

creatures are nice.  could all be hugely improoved very quickly cuz the drawing underneath is good.  the creatures mostly suffer from poor contrast and weak shading.  no time to do a complete edit but here r ideas


You're right, shading is a huge problem area of mine. You made him pop way more than my version does, though I look at it and think there is probably a medium that fits better. How's this?

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Pixel Art / [C+C] Pixel art for a Monster Fighter needing some critique
« on: January 14, 2016, 04:54:18 pm »
Hey guys, I've been working on a game for quite a while now and was hoping to get some advice on how to push my pixel art from being merely competent to being decent.

It's a creature brawler, kind of like Pokemon but with much more involved battles. So I have a lot of creature designs that need to be very notable and iconic.
(I also have concept art for all of these but for the sake of not flooding the thread more than I already will be, I'll only provide that on a request basis)

Creatures (I have a ton more of these, but this is a good sample of what I'm producing):
 

A Boss:


Battlefield:


In game screenshot of it all coming together:


Feel free to throw any kind of critique at me, I'm here looking to improve and I'm only going to do that with change. Also let me know if I broke any rules, I've lurked here for a while tried to follow them all but I may have done something wrong, and I'll fix that up if I did.

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