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Messages - Arachne
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41
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Crystals and undead geologists! (EGA mockups)
« on: June 30, 2010, 01:03:03 pm »
It's been a while (actually, I had no idea it had been this long :crazy:), but I'm still working on this. I've had a lot of practice working with limited palettes in cramped spaces, so now I have a much better grasp of this palette as well.

I've decided to stick with rocks for tiles, but I'm going to try to add some variation with crystals, bones and the like. I might still need to adjust the tile crystals a bit for consistency.





Some of the items are supposed to be dark, but that also makes them harder to spot. My solution for now is to put them in open, uncluttered areas with a brighter backdrop. I've experimented with adding a cyan outline, but I would prefer a consistent style for all the crystals.



What do you think? ;D

42
Pixel Art / Re: (Wip) A Tree
« on: June 21, 2010, 02:18:59 pm »
The tree you have now looks a bit like a neatly trimmed garden bush. If that's not what you're aiming for, I would consider drawing larger, more pronounced leaves arranged in a more chaotic fashion (though still clustered around the branches). I would also add more saturated greens closer to yellow, and a hint of sky blue will make the leaves look shinier. I would go for a smaller trunk for a tree that size, and I suggest looking at some pictures of actual trees to get a better idea of how to arrange the leaves and how to shade them.



Hope that helps. :)

43
Pixel Art / Re: wip face
« on: May 13, 2010, 10:20:16 am »
It's looking promising. :)

Basically, what Larwick said, plus a few things.



The shape of the lower lip isn't very well defined right now. Using only that bright shade to define it makes it look flat. I would also be careful with using such dark lines, like under the lip and nose. This makes them look very sharp compared to other features and draws a lot of attention to them. I think the part of the nose furthest away needs to be foreshortened more, and I also moved the right eye further to the left. I shrunk the left shoulder and tried to give him a more obvious adam's apple. I should probably have put a little more thought into the neck area, though.

Overall, I'd go with more blocky facial features. Feminine is softer, masculine is sharper. Perhaps a little too sharp in this edit compared to the style you're going for. Don't be afraid to use reference to get a better idea of where to place the facial features and the facial planes. The area around the eyes seems a little sketchy at the moment. Keep in mind that the eyes is perhaps the most important part of the face to us, so I think this is a place it would be wise to put a little extra care into.

Hope that helps. :)

44
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Ninja Jam platform game mockup
« on: April 27, 2010, 04:05:31 pm »
I love those clouds! :D

I would stay away from dithering as much as possible here. Texturing is fine, but with such a limited palette and small object sizes, I think it gets too noisy in this case. Single pixels don't really say much on their own. If you try to add texture with lots of single pixels, you'll end up with varying flavors of sandpaper. Sandpaper trees, sandpaper grass, etc. I think it'll be nice for rust, with the two darkest shades, and of course for the sand, where I suggest adding more of that dithering to make it look more like sand. For other surfaces, I think you need more information than that single pixel. Putting a few together in a line will indicate cracks, a few in a tiny cluster makes a leaf, and so on. That way you should be able to add some interesting details without making it too noisy.

The thing I'd worry more about, however, is where you use your colors. By adding highlights and the dark shadows to everything, you lose depth. Everything seems to be on the same level, and nothing really stands out as more important than anything else. You've done well with the forest area where you have the faded, blue background elements, but I think the color usage in the ground tiles could use some adjustments.



I managed to misinterpret your sand as grass, but oh well. :crazy: It makes for one more texture example, I guess.

For instance, you can cut down on the use of black lines to separate brighter areas. If another, brighter color serves just as well, there's no need for such dark lines. I would save the use of bright and dark colors together for things that are really important, like the player, enemies or power-ups. I also removed highlights from tiny things like the smallest bricks to make it look a little cleaner and most of the highlights on the darkest ground tiles as well, since I thought they were attracting more attention than their purpose is worth.

I also decided not to mirror any tiles since I think it's well worth the extra effort. It's easier in some ways since you don't have to worry about the direction of the lighting being inconsistent.



Here's some sand too. I recommend adding some kind of sign of danger to the sand tiles, like some skeletons or skulls or something. It's not easy making them read well at that size, but I don't think much is needed.

I hope that's useful. :)

45
It fucks up my brain in a good way and gives more feedback than what is needed, and thus makes me see things beyond what I'm actually seeing. I think it's part of the 'video game magic' I could clearly experience as a kid.
Yeah, it's not quite the same on an emulator. I used to think the blue dragons in Super Mario World were carrying suitcases, so clearly they were on their way to work! :D


46
Pixel Art / Re: harmonious world
« on: December 02, 2009, 10:41:54 pm »
Nice progress so far. :)



Not much in this edit that hasn't already been mentioned. I tried to simplify and get rid of jagged lines and near-black lines to clean and soften. Polish, polish, polish. ;D His glasses made it look a bit as if someone had just punched him in the face, so a bit more symmetry there would be nice, I think.

47
General Discussion / Re: Board activity
« on: November 22, 2009, 03:26:58 pm »
I agree with Helm. I still pixel a bit every now and then, but processing critique usually takes me a while, so I wouldn't be able to put advice to good use now and the thread would effectively become a showcase thread. There would be more stuff posted, but I don't think it would encourage anyone to give or ask for critique, which would be very anti-Pixelation.

That being said, I think it might be easy to get too focused on the critique part of Pixelation. If you don't have time to give or process critique, maybe there are some other ways you can get some learning/discussion started. Maybe there's a technique you're unsure about or a neat tool you'd like to teach others to use. There should be plenty of other ways to spark some activity even if you're busy. I think the donation drive shows that there's definitely some interest there, it's just a matter of finding an outlet for it that can be wedged into people's schedules.

I'm hoping I'll get to post more interesting stuff closer to Christmas. ;D

48
General Discussion / Re: Pixelation Blog [Opinions needed!]
« on: November 17, 2009, 02:19:33 pm »
I think the effort might be better spent within the forum, like on activities and such, and that the news box already does a good job of pointing out threads of note. It would have made more sense if we didn't have PJ for gallery purposes and if Pixelation had been a big board with enough posts and subforums to be difficult to navigate. It's not a bad idea, and has been done nicely elsewhere, I just don't think the benefit is that great here.

49
Archived Activities / Re: HEXQUISITE CORPSE COLLAB II
« on: October 17, 2009, 07:56:31 pm »
40! Done! ;D

50
Archived Activities / Re: HEXQUISITE CORPSE COLLAB II
« on: October 11, 2009, 12:32:49 pm »
9 is mine! ;D DONE

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