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Messages - Lukkas
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1
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Tileset
« on: January 21, 2011, 09:13:02 pm »
I don't think your palette is half bad, but I took a crack at making your colors ramp more naturally. Generallly speaking, when you're making a color ramp, as your color goes from dark to light, the hue should increase. The saturation should decrease. And the brightness should increase. Likewise, when going light to dark, your hue should decrease, saturation should increase, and brightness should decrease. These certainly aren't hard, set-in-stone rules, but they make for a good guideline for discovering a good progression.

This was my result:


It actually doesn't look as good as yours, but I think that's because I may have misinterpreted a few of your colors. It makes the problem with the way you've just filled in some of the smaller spots with single colors more obvious though.
 
I think you have several unnecessary shades. I think you should try trimming 2 shades each from your shadow colors, your green colors, and your brown colors. I left your flowers alone because I really like them :)

2
Pixel Art / Re: Help with shading helmet
« on: January 20, 2011, 01:03:40 pm »
I actually really like what you have so far.

But, you are right that the shading isn't quite realistic (though it is still visually pleasing, at least to me.)

Here's a good reference image for you.

You're not that far off, but I think your colors on the ridge need to diffuse and meld a little more, and you should perhaps try fewer bands. Maybe have four bands total of dark/light/dark/light.

Also, I don't think the very back should be in the dark sort of shadow that it is. Metal is highly reflective, and with light casting onto the top of the helmet and ridge, I imagine that light would reflect back onto the back of his his helmet, even if it's not in direct light.

3
Pixel Art / Re: Help with perspective and general critique [NEW]
« on: January 18, 2011, 08:13:34 am »
I made a proper mock-up of what I have of the character sprites, with some Doric and Ionic pillars I set up to test perspective.



And here's another version I did by messing around in Photoshop to make a shadow. More of a technical test than anything. Looks a bit crap - I was just experimenting. Eventually, we're going to have an engine that will dynamically scale and skew a shadow map according to time of day, and render that at the feet of any game object.



I'm open to any and all critique. :) However, the main sort of criticism I need is on perspective of these sprites compared to the pillars, and I also really need help converting the back frames to the new perspective. I really don't know how to do that. A quick edit, if someone could spare the time, would be a godsend. If not, just some advice would go a long way. I can't figure out how the arms and legs should translate. In my original, full-frontal animation, the pixel placement for the arms and legs were exactly the same, in an attempt to keep consistency. However, any attempt to do that at this perspective seems wrong. Am I right in needing to discard that rule? How much of the bottom of the foot should be visible when his leg kicks up in the back animation?

Help with stuff like that is vital. I'm kind of lost.


4
Pixel Art / Re: Smiley Pixel Art!
« on: January 08, 2011, 11:47:51 am »
there isn't anything wrong with the jpeg :-\...

Comparison 1
Comparison 2

Did you load up your own image, already saved as jpeg, and then just re-save as png and gif? If so, that's why you don't notice a difference. The compression already happened.

jpeg uses a technique called lossy compression to reduce the file size. It's called lossy because integrity is actually lost in the process of compression. This means pixels might not be where they were before, or may change color, to reduce the complexity of the image, thereby decreasing filesize. This is bad for pixel art, or virtually anything that isn't a high-resolution photograph.

png on the other hand uses lossless compression. The algorithm attempts to reduce filesize only by using means that do not affect the fidelity of the original, raw data.

5
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Tileset
« on: January 08, 2011, 06:06:28 am »
I like what you have so far.

I would recommend that in the gaps between the rocks, choose a darker color, and maybe shade those areas too, so it looks less like you drew random rocks and filled in the small spaces.

I also think the bush could use some shaping. It's a near perfect circle. Try giving it a little bit of root to the ground, and make leaves in groups. This will break the circular edge and make the bush look more bushy.

I really like the vines and the flower. Those are very well done. :)

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Pixel Art / Re: Help with perspective and general critique
« on: January 04, 2011, 04:51:54 pm »
Thank you for that recommendation, Glak. I experimented with some doric pillars and arches, just fairly rough sketches, and tried making a cylinder in the same perspective, of the same size as a character. I clearly marked the centers (vertical and horizontal), and tried placing the pieces of the sprite into the cylinder, seeing which individual pieces needed what changes.

I dropped the eyes by a pixel or two, added two pixels to his shoulders (looks like you're seeing the top and a little of the back of the torso), changed the perspective on the back-arm so that it's shorter and that shoulder raises instead of being equal height.

The legs took the most work. They had to be almost completely redrawn.

Here's what I have for the first South frame, after doing this evaluation.


Did I get it right? I just want some input before I commit to transforming the other 23 frames.

If it helps, here's the perspective pillars and arches I started on as reference. It's a dirty work sheet basically. Those pillars will eventually be expanded upon and polished into something worthy of being in game.



7
Pixel Art / Re: Trying to animate (need little help and criticism)
« on: January 02, 2011, 12:52:40 am »
These aren't bad.

However, in the walking animation, you should try to give him some "bounce". At the high point of his step, he should probably be at least 3 pixels higher than at the recoil stage of his step. Make his leg extend as he goes forward, and crunch as his foot hits the ground.

You might also want to make him lean forward a little bit, as this lends towards a more believable stride. Each step one takes, one is essentially allowing themselves to fall forward, only to catch themselves with their feet.

I think the arm movement is a little weird, but there's nothing technically wrong with it, and it's hard to critique without knowing what kind of personality you're trying to convey.

The punch looks a little weak, you might try twisting his torso a bit as he punches, otherwise it looks like a little rabbit punch.

The kick isn't bad honestly, though more frames might do it better justice. You should also change the timings on the frames. The frames as he is striking should be fairly quick, maybe a 70ms delay at most, and the ones where he retracts his foot back to the ground can probably keep their current speed. The idea is the actual strike is fast, otherwise it conveys no power. Post strike, speed is of less importance, and can afford to be slow to conserve energy.

These are pretty good rough drafts, and I can see them being great with the appropriate tweaking and finishing touches. :)


8
Pixel Art / Re: Help with perspective and general critique
« on: January 01, 2011, 08:20:21 am »
Thank both of you very much for your insightful critique. It is as I feared - the perspective is certainly off.

My problem is that I do not have a very clear reference to go by and I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to best convert what I've done to a useful perspective. I feel like I need to draw myself some guidelines... zeniths/vanishing points, etc, but I really have no idea where to start.

Any hints as to how to set this up, or if anyone has the time, an example of what I should do to my sprites, please help me. Perspective is probably my greatest weak-point artistically, of all the flaws I possess (Anatomy being a close second :P).

9
Pixel Art / [NEW]Help with perspective and general critique
« on: December 31, 2010, 09:24:30 am »
I have this so far, for my male walking animations. This is the template that will be used for male characters walking in a game I'm developing with friends. The game is a traditional J-RPG type thing, and should use the perspective typical of that genre. I'm not sure what the word is for that perspective, but think any SNES RPG, like the Final Fantasy or Secret of Mana series.

I designed these walking animations with that perspective in mind, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out walking animation, and I used a lot of references that were probably meant for side-scrollers. (You may notice a lot of the frames in the side animation are actually inspired heavily by Ptoing's awesome tutorial) I worry I may have tainted my perspective, and if you believe I have, could you please recommend how I could make these animations better fit my desired perspective?



I'm also open to general critique such as animation quirks that should be corrected, shading errors, and palette choice.

I realise this animation probably looks a bit soulless or generic, but this is somewhat intentional - it's a blank template, and individual characters that have any sort of personality will probably have a modified stride derived from this sterile template. Also, for the sake of shading critique, the desired light source is supposed to be top-down, straight down.

Thank you in advance for your input. :)

10
Pixel Art / Re: Three Blind Mice game project [WIP]
« on: December 21, 2010, 11:18:24 pm »
Pastels are fine and dandy, but even if your textures and palette are supposed to look subdued and mild, shadow is still supposed to be shadow. Your mouse holes are being subject to the same lack of contrast as everything else in your tileset, and unfortunately that just doesn't look that good with things that are supposed to represent a "void". Try upping your contrast on your mouse holes so they read better.

I also recommend doing the same with your cat, or perhaps giving him a bit of a bluish-purple hue. Right now he reads poorly against the holes.

I like the concept and the pixelling is well done, but you really should reconsider your contrast and saturation in a few areas.

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