Hey guys, I really need your help.

For my game I sprited some black fading sprites so that the game areas would fade to black so that the border looks better in the areas.



But in all honesty they suck. They drastically need improvement. But I can't get it right. Every method of fading with pixels I know has failed. I am lost as to how I can improve them to a sense of quality.

Can anyone help me improve them? I don't know what to do.

Hi guys,

For the last year, my pixel art abilities have vastly excelled. But there has been one problem. Shading. I know of the techniques like pillow shading, spotted and all sorts.

But when it comes to the colours, it can sometimes lack a good feel. Take my current project. It's using a custom 9-bit palette (the RGB increases/decreases by values of 32). So naturally I decrease the values by multiples of 32. This does work on some of the colours but for some of them it doesn't look right.

So I thought I'd come and ask your advice. How do you approach picking colours for shading? Do you decrease the rgb? Decrease the hue?

I'd really appreciate it as this has always been a problem for me so I'd really like to nip this problem in the butt.

the colours you're using for your grass create quite some noise by being so saturated and using high contrast compared to the characters and monsters.

I suppose the pink thing in the bottom-right corner is some "translucent" color to let some other layer show up. I don't know why I'm seeing a miniature boat over there, nor what those pinkish things (blades and worms ?) actually are, but I'd avoid contact if I was to play the game.

All I can tell about the brownish part in the upper-left corner is that it doesn't look like I could walk there. It doesn't suggest any precise volume or texture, imho.

Ah brilliant, some crits! How would you fix the problem? (Imagine I know very little on art terms. Because I don't XD)

EDIT: Btw, the graphics you're seeing in the scenario are overworld tiles and characters. So be sure to take that in mind!

EDIT 2: Ok I really see what you mean about the grass and I fear that it will be the case for all the floor tiles. How can I tone down floor tiles?

That's a good start! There is no true way to master 2d grass because grass is part of nature.

This is where almost EVERY 2d game has problems with. Nature is IMPOSSIBLE to sprite properly because it naturally grows and moves. Unlike say a building that is man-built.

The best way to do it is to make the grass reflect YOUR style. Don't let the your style reflect the grass. For instance, in my RPG. Because I wanted to make the graphics like a 16-bit rpg, I sprited all the graphics like you would in say Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger.

Perhaps if you showed us more graphics then I could help bring the grass to your style.