Hey all, this is a piece I'm currently working on, based off of the temple of time in Zelda Ocarina of Time. I'm having some serious problems with the area circled in green. I'm trying to recreate the same angle and look on the other side, should be fairly symmetrical. I can't seem to get the angle or the intercept point or something right when I try to make the roof pieces. I would greatly appreciate any help you are able to give me on the subject!

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.

I don't think your floor tiles look odd when they are lined up with the furnace or the wall, however, they do look odd because the left side is much more angled than the right side.

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.~

You should definitely pull the furnace off of the wall. It's a decent position, right behind him, but there isn't really anything to indicate that it is closer than wall, which it should be. I'm not sure how to explain this exactly, maybe all it needs is shading on the wall, but it should be a separate entity, rather than like a part of the wall.

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. ] 

I think the diagonal offset could work out fine, but you might try using a color closer to the stone that the anvil is sitting on, rather than the blue thing you've got going on there. I think the bricks on the forge could stand to be a bit darker/redder, but I'm not exactly certain what effect you're going for 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?

Are you familiar with the rule of thirds? I don't think that the off-center hurts necessarily, but you could definitely widen the whole shot if you wanted to create a larger scene. I wouldn't cut off more of the furnace, but maybe if you widened it to show the sides of it as well, possibly shrinking the whole thing by a bit it could help.

Another thing I just noticed, it looks to me like the forge is slanting downwards. The line on the bottom of the opening should be parallel to the floor line, but it looks like they get narrower as the go to the left. Maybe I'm just seeing things, but it also feels like the bricks on the bottom half which should be farther away (on the right) are bigger than the ones that should be closer (on the left).

These are just my initial thoughts as a viewer, I'm certainly no art critic; I just wanted to give you a different perspective, since you've probably been staring at for awhile.

I did some edits a few posts back but forgot about them.



Sorry no time for text.

I love the ones with super manly chest and armpit hair. Very manly.

Although I'm newbie myself, I think your last tile look good, except I think you can reduce brightness in some areas(so the distance between the ground and grass will be more). I think Secret of Mana 3 is really good example, if you want to go for better grass tile you can look at it's tiles. ~snip~ (Image from this tutorial page)

Thank you for the suggestion. I went ahead and tried just switching the major background shade with the darkest shade, and it actually worked out rather well. I didn't think I was going to be much happier with it than where I was, but this has a good effect, and I think helps lift the grass up of the ground a bit more.

Hey dude, looking at your first and last pictures, you have really done some impressive work here. As I'm quite new to pixel art myself, I can't offer you any advice on the pixels themselves, but I would like to comment on a few things.

While I'm not 100 per cent sure how to fix it, his left arm does look just a skosh too long, and his bicep up there looks a wee bit big to my eye. Please take that with a grain of salt, as I'm certainly no expert on proportions.

Your sledge is pretty good, as is your sense of where shadows would fall. Just a sidebar here, I worked as a blacksmith for awhile, and you might be surprised by how little light hot metal actually puts out, particularly at the color you have it, which is probably around 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, assuming it's iron. It is often exaggerated, like so many things, in movies and pictures and such.

A word about the right hand, if I may. Your biggest problem is that his hand (and the anvil) are at a really unnatural angle to his body. You might try bringing the anvil in a bit and more towards the center of his body, and then you could bring his right arm out a little and make his hand wrap around the piece of metal (don't do that in real life) instead how of right nowit looks like he is barely grabbing it with his thumb and forefinger. Don't forget to adjust the angle of your metal as well, it should probably be a bit closer to parallel of his shoulders.

Some of these are definitely style choices, so feel free to ignore whatever you wish, I am excited to see this guy finished.