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Topics - Geti
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Pixel Art / 32x32 Topdown
« on: March 03, 2011, 12:55:43 pm »
This is a weakness of mine that I'm going to have to address in a coming project. As such, time to start practising!

Tonight's effort:

Quite happy with the stone squares, less so with the grass tile. I'm not sure whether to revisit it or move on with lessons learnt which are:
  • The grid is tricky to get rid of at 32x32 (something I'd forgotten after doing so much small scale work). I'll have to explore some more reliable elimination strategies.
  • Drafting first is still handy - scribbling details at 4x scale and then scaling down still works wonders for getting the initial form working right
  • Making "sub tiles" is a great idea for inorganic stuff. I made a few smaller chunks of stone and tweaked them in some of the larger tiles, adding moss and whatnot. This is very handy because it provides some semblance of structure as well, but does cut down variation. I should rework the lit edges at least.
  • More colours help a lot at this scale - I was endeavouring onwards with my usual 3 tones but adding colours for highlights helps details pop a lot. Hi res tiles do well with a hi res palette

I'd love some criticism. What works, what doesn't, what should I bother fixing in this piece. Are there some clusters that really bug you? Are the tiles arranged stupidly? Should I get some unifying greys into the grass tile?

Edits appreciated, I'd like to get more adept at this size as I'm not as quick as I'd like to be (yes, I'll eat my words from the payment thread soon enough.) These were done in ~2 hours for what its worth, with half an hour or so wasted at the start.

I await your critique.

2
Pixel Art / Terrain and House - "Sidescroller" style landscape.
« on: January 27, 2011, 09:31:09 am »


It's a work in progress. It may be part of a much larger scene for a game of picturewars if I can muster up the motivation for so much detail work, but truth be told I might keep it this size and just add some characters to spice it up and keep it as a portfolio piece.

I'm happy with most of what's done but need some way of adding more detail to the backgrounds inside the structures without losing the definition between foreground and background. If I get around to it I'm hoping to finish it off tomorrow, but thought I might post it here for some criticism, you guys are a much better catch of the various possible idiocies than I.

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Pixel Art / MineField - Game art and mockups [WIP]
« on: December 06, 2010, 05:30:08 am »
As a bit of backing, I've been using a palette Arne used for his gameboy mockup here quite a while ago to work on a 4 colour, gameboy resolution game (without spriting restrictions beyond 1 bit alpha) in Flash.

The most recent mockup:


This is working on 5 layers:
    -Foreground decor - the grass mostly, but anything in front of the terrain tiles goes here (so large underground flavour decorations might go here later.)
    -Foreground tiles - what it says on the tin. 10x10 tiles on an 8x8 grid, so 1 pixel of overlap. Rendered left to right, top to bottom. I'm only making use of the overlap on the top of each tile, for things like the rocky surfaces.
    -Objects - everything that does anything interesting. The player, mines, crate, fence, all of these are objects, and some are animated.
    -Background decor -  mostly vegetation but also the road sign.
    -Background tiles - currently only the cave tiles, this will likely include pipes and buildings later on, unless I make them out of decor.
The HUD is still entirely work in progress, I've only started mapping out the elements now. I'm unsure of whether to go for mixed width 6 high gliphs (including shadow) or fix the size at 6x6 per gliph for monospacing. I've never been able to get a 4 pixel wide M or W to work, and it'll be even harder with only 4 colours to work with because of the lack of any multi-colour AA trickery. That said I'm interested in your suggestions here.

I'm aiming to keep content production time as low as possible on this title, but I also want it to feel polished. I figured you guys would be able to identify all the clustering and banding issues a lot better than I could.

As a note, I'm fully aware of the banding of the mine lights (most notable on the underground landmine to the right and below the centre of the piece) but I need the sprites for all objects to be compatible with light and dark backgrounds so I've resorted to outlining on the full light and full dark elements. Alternative solutions are also welcome.

I'll post some of the animations soon, I've got to run now and I'm hungry for some feedback.

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