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Messages - questseeker
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1
Pixel Art / Re: Problem with additional tileset
« on: September 01, 2021, 10:13:51 am »
Imagining your environment as consisting of 3D "tiles" that extend from the front face to a rear plane, the tiles in the two corners at the bottom of the cliff are completely empty, producing unnatural sharp edges. Instead, they could contain something (dirt and rocks, a small slope...) with a more natural appearance.

Reference: Donkey Kong Country, but many other games do it (at least in strict 2D).

2
General Discussion / Re: Please help me understand these sprites
« on: August 01, 2018, 07:23:04 pm »
The resolution of these sprites is insanely small.
15 pixels of width could be enough for monochromatic or almost monochromatic art (e.g. Atari 2600), but not if you want outlines (see the legs and feet), shading, and realistic human figures in very complex costumes.
You need to choose between a simpler style or a larger resolution; in this case details, shading and recognizable costumes are very important, and an enlargement around 4x should provide enough pixels to do a good job.

3
Pixel Art / Re: [Feedback] Stone statue + moss
« on: July 10, 2018, 07:39:52 pm »
I'm not convinced by the highlights; if the light comes from above, slightly to the front, some are too small or completely missing (e.g. top of the head and wings) and the others are very weak. They also conflict with the black outline; if you want the outline, highlights would look better if you moved the light source (lower front and to one side would be a traditional choice).

The wings are also too flat, they are thick slabs with only the silhouette of proper wings. Good if you want your angel to look like an amateurish statue, but a decent sculptor would make curved wings.

4
Pixel Art / Re: Help with this coloring
« on: July 08, 2018, 01:29:40 pm »
You appear to have picked colors faithfully (maybe too many, but they aren't confused or incoherent), but you ruin them with a bad use of outlines, particularly
  • around the "hands" (at the very least, they should be blue, not purple)
  • at the bottom of the robe (it's ragged, like the "hands")
  • around the head (the "face" has the only outline-worthy proper border in the whole object, while the exterior should be identical to the cloth surface)

Then you have bad shading, some original (like the round pillow shading in the front of the robe) and some faithful to serious errors in the reference (nonsensical symmetry, light on both sides of the head).

Bad shapes are also partly reproduced from the reference (no neck, short robe, short sleeves) and partly new in the pixel version (the out of character broad, robust shoulders and the front of the robe)

5
Pixel Art / Re: House design help
« on: May 09, 2018, 09:36:12 am »
I think the attempt at perspective (the very well drawn shadows of the two front pillars, the stone path) is incompatible with the overall choice of an orthogonal view: the horizon is placed at a bad-looking height (between the ground floor and the balcony) and vague, and the roof (not narrowing in the back as it should, and implying a point of view far above the house because of insufficient foreshortening of the back half) is strongly conflicting.
Instead, you could move the light source to one side (to have pretty shadows without perspective) and add shadows for everything that should have them (upper part of the balcony, roof like in EduardoPras's edit...). You don't need perspective for a good picture.

6
Pixel Art / Re: Tileset woes, my first tileset
« on: January 31, 2018, 04:24:01 pm »
Grass looks good, but there are fairly obvious high-level problems:
  • The rock wall is approximately periodic, and with a peculiar hexagonal layout. It should be more irregular, and variations are probably needed to make it look really good.
  • The transition between rock and dirt should have rocks invading the dirt, not vice versa. Dirt invading a rock wall would be featured in a cave entrance or the like.
  • The upper edge of the cliff is too straight to be natural. Some vegetation (grass, maybe flowers) could be irregularly distributed on the cliff face, and rocks could rise above the grass level.
  • Grass doesn't grow in square patterns: the corners in the top left of the tileset should be rounded, like the complementary ones in the top middle.
In general, transitions between tile types (grass, dirt, rock cliff) should be placed in the middle of the tiles, not at the edges.

7
Pixel Art / Re: Stage Mock-Up (Feedback, Critique)
« on: January 10, 2018, 10:26:02 am »
Of the two layers of platform-like dirt tiles, the foreground one is so much simpler and more primitive than the background one (strict squares and flat platforms vs. continuous surfaces with slopes and semi-natural shapes) that it doesn't belong in the same game. I don't know what character movement are you planning to use and whether you want slopes or staircases, but you shouldn't use both.

In many platform games there is a functional second layer of platforms above the ground plane, often special objects like buildings or trees (e.g. Metal Slug); in many games one homogeneous layer of platforms is enough because platforms are placed at any height and above one another (e.g. Bubble Bobble, New Zealand Story, Boulder Dash).

 The simple square tile style can be enhanced with variations and decorations, with vertically linked grass tiles for the common configuration of stairs with grass above grass (it shouldn't look discontinuous), and with softer edges in the dirt part, but eliminating the sloped tiles that make it look cheap by comparison would have the greatest benefit.

If you choose the sloped tile style instead, I think you should improve visibility of the platform profiles with thicker grass and undergrass borders, up to the size of the exaggerated ones you have on the square tiles.
 

8
Pixel Art / Re: Stage Mock-Up (Feedback, Critique)
« on: January 05, 2018, 09:40:41 am »
The distant background layers could be made more interesting by having parts of the further layers dip behind the nearer layers so they don't all form continuous bands.
This is a particularly unrealistic aspect of the scene.
In particular:
  • The solid grey band at the base of the closest mountains layer should be shaded like the top and interrupted by valleys, showing other mountains behind them (probably a layer of the same tiles).
  • There should be at least one additional layer of greener mountains or hills, maybe even 2 or 3 layers, closer than the currently first one, which is blue enough to imply a lot of haze and therefore a great distance.
  • Far mountains have no reason to be taller than close ones; in general, the curvature of Earth surface makes them appear slightly less tall on average. They should be visible between the peaks of closer layers.
  • Clouds are layered vertically, not horizontally like mountains. If the sky is cloudy, put them at the top, possibly obscuring the top of all mountains, with holes of blue sky at low altitude (possibly near the horizon, visible through aligned gaps of all mountain layers); with less clouds, put them between and/or above the mountains at all distances.

9
Pixel Art / Re: Building for an RPG
« on: December 25, 2017, 05:54:10 pm »
Assuming you are imitating the style of traditional Dutch city houses, as found e.g. in Amsterdam, the design of the building might be improved:
  • In the back, the roof should end against the red wall: lower it below the white decorations. Such ornamental elements either follow the roof shape (from the outside) or, like in your case, are applied on top of walls that cover the roof completely.
  • The flag shouldn't be aligned with the roof centerline. You might place two flags on the two pyramid-shaped ornaments near the top instead.
  • The front and the back of the house are not likely to be similar. The back should be less ornamented.
  • The iron ornaments should be on the ground floor only, at an easily reachable height, and presumably only left and right of the front door. What are they meant to be?
  • The red brick window borders are hard to distinguish from the plain wall between windows. What about white stone borders in the style of the main door border instead? If they turn out too heavy, you can switch to the simpler and very common window style of significantly thinner plain white wood frames.
  • You have good horizontal and vertical frames, but you use them only at the top of the building. Consider adding horizontal bars, between floors or in a denser horizontal stripe pattern, and more importantly vertical bars at the left and right edge of the building (windows would need to be narrower, or the body of the building wider).

10
Pixel Art / Re: who is this pokemon
« on: December 20, 2017, 10:17:08 am »
I know it isn't useful advice, but have you considered applying this complicated and weird style to something similar to Rorschach ink blots, making lack of understandability a strength?

Regarding corrections, the only unambiguous problem I can see is the incoherence between shading the purple and pink widest part in the middle with a light source from the top but leaving everything else strictly symmetrical and flat.
Shading with consistent light sources would be appropriate for large and natural shapes (probably the better choice if you target pokémon-like creatures), and flat symmetry would be appropriate for small and abstract shapes.

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