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Messages - Johasu
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161
Hello, you should modify this message with some pixel art for criticism soon, or I suspect you will be flamed a bit for a broach in protocol.

As I understand the matter, outlines should be used on pieces that struggle to stand out from the background elements a bit.  You want key elements such as player characters, enemies, and interactive elements to stand out to the viewer. If the colors overwhelm these items or blend them in too well, outline borders are sometimes used to make them stand apart a bit more.
Of course many of the older games simply used palettes that were of complementary colors to create the division.  (Blue vs. Orange/ Red vs. Green) and so on.
There are tons of helpful insights on animations and everything if you read through the hundreds of threads and general discussion forum(which is where this should probably be until you get some art up.)

162
Feeling like I have been a bit verbose in my replies and postings so, I'm going to try to keep it a touch more concise.
[First]                [New]                      [Framing]

Started by trying to push wall back away. Didn't like it. Worked on redesigning the layout with a new perspective arrangement.
Testing the layout of the furnace with some bad wire framing technique to see how it lines up. Reworked floor.  Preparing for wall revamp.
Any crits on current layout? I lined up the perspective based on the lines of the anvil base.  It was the only thing I had which was concrete(snicker) in it's form.  I'm no expert on perspective yet so I may need to do a bit more tweaking before I do any heavy coloring such.

163
Pixel Art / Re: Portrait: Looking for a Mentor !
« on: November 11, 2013, 01:43:06 pm »
I am fairly new to pixel art myself, but a few things I can see that you could do right away to fix this some before you get into more advanced things such as your color choices and how to shade and define shape more clearly.

One of your eyes ISN'T lower than the other one. Even in your particular picture the eyes are fairly level. If anything the one you have placed lower should be higher than the other one to match this pose.

You used a solid color for both your hair and the headphones. While you may perceive both to be the same color (black"ish") I suspect your hair is actually a very dark brown. While the headset is actually black. Another issue with this is that one is made of hair and the other is plastic. They shouldn't be the same colors at all.  [If you are going for less detail this could be okay probably but you seem to be aiming for more so...]

The headset itself is completely out of whack. It, like your eyes, is not so askew on the actual image as you portray it here.  Also the side which you have as larger on your image is farther away in the actual image which gives makes it look odd in this image.  The angle feels like it is sticking out from your ear sideways almost.

That super high contrast blue you are using for your background will pull some of the depth away from your other colors as it's so high in value. Use a more neutral color that isn't so deep and strong and you will have an easier time choosing your colors and shaping things.

A suggestion~   Break the image apart and work on separate pieces at a time instead of trying to nail down the entire thing in one go.  Work on your face and get the angle and shape right.  Then work on the headset.  Then the controller.  It will make your time more productive and you will KNOW that the face looks right before you try getting the headset to work and so on.   :)

Edit:

I went ahead and did a small edit. I didn't put much time into it so it's not even close to perfection. As you can see I compressed the other image down and put it side by side so you could see the way I lined up the face to more closely match the image. Don't mind the pixelated mess that the other became, we aren't after a clean image there.  I then drew some lines to emphasize the size and shape of a few things.

The biggest changes I made were to take down the length of your forehead which I think was too tall. I put a new positioning on the eye and a bit of a shape change on them. The nose could probably move up a bit too.
I took your palette and shifted it to a more flushed color as in the image. The big thing to do is to shape the face with contrasts and then move the colors into the place you want them. My super high division between colors is to show the shape of the face. Then coloring, shading, and contrast bridging could do a great job to really fill it in.  I did a bit of highlight work on the hair tips.  As your spiky hair style shows, the light reflects off of the individual hair spikes differently than the thicker bunches. That will give the solid blob of hair a more defined shape as well.
I actually think your nose was a little too wide and sharply cut for the face.

Finally your dithering. I'm not expert, but I think that dithering works better to define texture in this sort of piece. I could see what you were trying but the plane of the face doesn't seem to slope enough to warrant isolated patches of dithering like you were doing.  [Not an expert on this, so I may be wrong]  I think the dithering would work better on parts of the skin that need more of a texture definition, for example the whisker shadows, and more glossy pores that show.

Take what you see or leave it, I tried this out to see if I could. And to maybe help you out in the process.  :P 

164
Pixel Art / Re: NES Restrictions: Survival Mockup
« on: November 10, 2013, 08:22:34 pm »
A lot of the old NES games used a black border and placed their HUD within that. This was pretty common well into the SNES days as well.
I suspect it was because of the color restrictions and it allowed much more dynamic HUD styles as they didn't have to compete with the screen sprites and such.
Maybe this will help you?  Maybe not.  I thought I would put it forward though.

Edit:  If you made your transparent the black for the border?  Another thought.  :huh:

165
 :lol:  That's sorta where I was taking this but I'm working on the individual components a bit first. I found an image of a smithy in an old castle and was trying to use it for reference. I'm not very quick, as I still take quite a bit of time selecting my colors and tweaking them back and forth. I will get a rudimentary update of my version of the scene up sometime soon.

These are super cool.  I hadn't even considered the idea of placing more body hair on him. I love the way different takes on his eyes and nose can completely change his face in a way that gives him an entirely different personality.  Pixel art is so fun.  :y:



[[WIP WARNING]] This is what I have been working on now. I realize that I am going to have to alter the lighting angles on everything as I place a fire in. I'm posting an update to show where it's going and maybe get some critique on the overall layout. Making silly mistakes that just don't seem congruous after I look it over.
Questions:

1: Does the angle of the tiles on the floor (they aren't finished at all) look odd when lined up with the furnace/wall.

2: Does the furnace to wall angle seem a bit awkward?  Should I angle either one away?  I wasn't really going for a smooth quadrangle room, but are the odd angles off putting enough to be bothersome?  I'm thinking about turning the furnace more downward or laterally to match the wall or feel more apart from the wall.  ~It might be easier to angle the wall away though, not that easy was my goal.~

3:  Finally any advice on color palette shifts for the wall and/or advice on how to do the stone tiles on the floor.  I was aiming for a sort of diagonal layout of offset square tiles to challenge myself.  [Maybe bit off more than I was ready to chew there. :'(

4: Does the off center placement of the character force more attention on the furnace layout?  Should I move him back to the center by widening the shot or cutting off the edge of the furnace?

Anyway, my thanks for any comments or critical assistance on this. Advice is greatly appreciated and I'm really looking to push my limits to new levels with this new layout.

166
Thanks for the input. My progress has been at no small expense of time and effort. I have been using this particular piece to basically ram in dozens of hours of pixel/art study. I decided I wanted to learn so I'm giving it my all. The guidance of others has helped me to grow in ways I never could have managed on my own.
I will get an edit up shortly taking into consideration your pointers. I doubt I will play with the orange/red lighting from the bar too much at this point. I have previously, but everything I came up with felt far TOO orange and I couldn't seem to get it to work right. I'm just not good enough with the palette choices yet.
Thanks again for your help!  I really appreciate it.   ;D


Played with the right and left arms some more.  Worked his waistline some and took that advice on dimming the contrast line in his midsection.
I'm feeling fairly good about it at this point. Although I have yet to find a way to create the light effect with offset colors. ~Still trying~
If anyone has some more feedback, I would love to hear it. I'm looking for new ways to challenge myself with this piece. I've started another major edit but haven't yet brought it to a level I feel comfortable showing as it is still heavy [WIP].

167
 :P Those were my exact thoughts when I posted it. That I should probably find a way to pull that arm back so it doesn't look so straight. Give some depth shading to the elbow and pull it inward some so it looks bent more. Edit will be coming along at some point later today.



Attempted to bend the arm some. I keep fiddling with it more, but this was the closest I came to being satisfied with it at so far.  I'm switching over to something else for a few hours and hope that when I return to it that something clicks for me.
Any comments or assistance are, as always, greatly appreciated.   ;D

168

Spent some time reworking his arm and hand.  I'm not entirely content with how it turned out yet.
Moved the anvil some, but again not sure how I feel about it yet.  I almost feel like I need to alter the angle of the anvil to pull it more level with his  stance and positioning.
I tried angling the bar a bit. Found that I didn't enjoy pulling it away from a straight edge to angle it.

Let me know what you think. Feel free to C&C some more on the stance and his build. I am beginning to feel more comfortable recomposing his stance as I improve with my ability to draw and color.  :crazy:

169
 ::)  Thanks.  I'm still monkeying with that hand a bit. I feel like it's more a matter of the angle of his pose than anything else causing the problem. Artistically I wasn't good enough to set it up with the correct angles and found myself struggling to get it to come together.
I'm a little too stubborn to accept a need to simply redesign the whole arrangement to get them to fit better.  So at the moment, I am still fighting the hand.

170
The texture of your grass will feel differently depending on what you place on top of it.
The first version you had was large textured implying a much closer view of the grass blades.  This works more on games with large close up sprites.

The more "noisy" grass tile would look much better with sprites that are much smaller scale, as if from very far away.

Also, you will find that a lot of the definition in a grass tile comes not from the actual texture and color but the separation of the grass with other terrains as well. Are you going to use simple square tiles to link the grass with soils, roads, water, and so on?
Or are you going to create more defined borders and transitional edges?

I am far from an expert on these things.  I was just putting forward the ideas because you haven't really clearly expressed your purposes and your end goal does have something to do with the style you should aim for with your terrains.

~Things to think about~

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