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Messages - Tourist
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51
Pixel Art / Re: Dungeon Tileset [WIP]
« on: October 11, 2012, 05:37:42 pm »
Other solutions to tall walls that hide floor tiles:



Ultima IV, with a mixed perspective, symbolic approach.  Walls don't distinguish between N-S, E-W, or corners.  This is a pretty close representation of many roguelikes.




Get Medieval.  Sloped walls, where the base is wider than the top.  Doors in this game are wedges that sink into the floor.  This approach generally requires a more overhead angle.




Hirst Arts dungeons.  Short walls, wide corridors.  As long as the dungeon fits on a single flat level, the walls only need to be tall enough to suggest a barrier to travel.  Also, walls have a volume. This is obviously for miniatures rather than video games, but their website it good to browse for room designs and inspiration. 
http://www.hirstarts.com/dungeon/dungeon.html


Consider dropping in some critters before choosing a tile size.  Critters or characters have much more detail than basic walls and floors, and the tile size will depend more on how they look.

Before deciding on a floor pattern, consider how you will represent range for the player.  A player will need to know if an opponent is in a particular range or area.  A smooth seamless floor will make this difficult, unless you plan on using some other indication.

If you are sticking with a perspective view, why use square tiles?  Rectangular tiles would fit more with the view angle. 

Hope this helps,
Tourist

52
Pixel Art / Re: Platformer Sprites (WIP)
« on: September 22, 2012, 08:03:36 pm »
Here's a pretty good tutorial on making characters seem more massive:

http://brendanbody.blogspot.com/2010/04/weight-problem.html

The short version is that:
  • All things fall at the same rate
  • Not all things are the same size.
  • You can indicate how large or massive something is by changing the rate at which it falls relative to it's visual size.
  • The same applies to horizontal motion.
Hope this helps,
Tourist

53
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP ]Adventure Game mockup
« on: September 12, 2012, 04:39:29 am »
The individual elements are nice.  The composition is weak.

I suggest that the basic setup of a prominent character in the foreground and a larger scrolling background is the same as 2d cartoons.  The primary tools they use are:

  • Framing elements to break up the background and suggest where important interactions take place.
  • Strong depth cues to suggest a large space even if the character never walks depth-wise into the screen.
  • Visual priority to keep the viewer focused on the interactive bits rather than parts of the backdrop.  This is somewhat less important than the first two.
  • Linear elements in the background point along the lines of action, giving subtle cues about what is going to happen next, or where the hero is going to go next.  This might not be all that important for an interactive game if the hero is expected to return to the same location multiple times.

Looking at your image, I see problems.  Placing the background elements (trees, distant mountains) at the same height as the hero is visually confusing - no framing elements, no sense of depth.  Giving the distant trees a similar value range as the hero also kills a lot of the sense of depth, although the new red shirt means he no longer looks like a tree.  Having a dark foreground and a dark saturated background is a confusing visual priority.  It's just a mess.

So here is a link to a collection of cartoon backgrounds.  I recommend taking a look at anything from Brother Bear, and I saw a relevant Donald Duck background too.  Or just browse the site for inspiration.   It's not just nice art, but understanding why these work as backgrounds will be useful to your project.

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/

Here is the link filtered for the Brother Bear stuff.   Probably the most directly relevant.
http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/search/label/BROTHER%20BEAR

Hope this helps,
Tourist

54
General Discussion / Re: Am I going crazy here?
« on: September 12, 2012, 03:46:55 am »
Hue shifting as a technique has been in use since at least the Renaissance.



Look at the clothing on this guy right here, particularly the sleeve and leg.  Yellow highlight to red to blue shadows.  This is from the Transfiguration by Raphael, 1520.   



And this guy, with the nice yellow to orange shading on his shirt?  Sistine Chapel.   I'm just saying that hue shifting has been around for a while, and it's not limited to pixel art.


As far as the original topic, should we have a separate thread to discuss visual priority, and composition for large game areas?  I've got a few thoughts skittering around in my skull, but I'm no expert.  It also seems like a more general art topic rather than anything pixel specific.

Tourist

55
General Discussion / Re: Am I going crazy here?
« on: September 05, 2012, 03:34:16 pm »
For the sake of completeness,

Could you post or link to the other screen shots that you used? 

Did you present the lower resolution images at a smaller size (1x), or did you present all of the images at the same size?

edit: I suppose info about the age and gaming experience of the surveyed group would be useful too.  But others can repeat your survey without that info.

Tourist

56
Pixel Art / Re: New Game Character
« on: September 03, 2012, 05:33:47 am »
Here is what I see:

Eye line is horizontal.
Shoulders are horizontal.
Waist and hands are horizontal.
Feet are .... ?

The lighting on the arms and hands does not match the light direction.

The general thrust of the the belly/hips doesn't quite match the line of buttons on the shirt.  Something needs to change here.  I recommend going with a wider shoulders and ribcage, and a narrower belly, or else an exaggerated round belly, whichever fits the character design more.

The middle blue color on the shirt is invisible.

Going from darker legs to lighter upper body to high contrast (blue/orange) on the head is a good design.  Good choice on that.

Tourist

57
General Discussion / Re: pixel art at 2x view
« on: September 03, 2012, 04:59:48 am »
Here is a failed attempt to build a scaling algorithm, but maybe relevant to this discussion.



The faces (originals in the upper right) were scaled to 3x, and I tried working out the math for the smoothing on half of each of the faces rather in order to have an easy comparison.   The faces on the left have two additional colors inserted between each value step, the two large faces on the right only have one additional step added.  And they look about the same to me.

This suggests if you scale up pixels by 3x, the color ramps don't need to have more than twice as many steps to appear smooth.  Conversely, if you reduce the size of your pixel art by 3, like when you go from a 320 pixel screen to a 1024 pixel screen on the same physical display, you should roughly double the visual distance between colors in your ramps in order to achieve the same level of visual impact.

I say that with plenty of caveats.  This is only based on this one gray scale image, so the ratios are probably wrong, and it may not apply to hue shifting.  This was also done with RGB light values, so that's going to be a wonky scale.

I imagine that while modern monitors may have a greater range of real values (light output) than older models, the difference is not all that large.  Which means the maximum effective visual distance between two pixels is a net decrease on modern higher resolution monitors.  This supports the original assertion that pixel art looks better at 2x.  Someone could do a school science project on this sort of thing, I imagine.

On the other hand, if retina displays (200+ dpi) become more common, a lot of this is moot.

Tourist

58
My apologies, I read your post incorrectly.  I agree with your analysis of the hips and legs in the source image.   I also think the legs could be a couple of pixels longer, to be in better proportion with the arms.

Tourist

59
Ouch.  You have my sympathies with regard to the character design.  Animating all those tiny bits of costume?  Yuck.  Using a full body image just for displaying status?  Ugh.

Your latest version is better.  PixelPileDriver's edit incorporates an exaggerated hourglass figure which works well for the broad shoulders.  Another option would be to squeeze the shoulders and torso a bit.  Maybe erase 2-3 pixels from the back of the ribcage and move the shoulder in a pixel or so.  This would give you a small but fit frame.  Something like:



It's an option. (Pic is from a fitness blog, not mine)

I think the forearm is a bit too round.  Usually the muscles are bunched up near the elbow, and the half near the wrist is fairly straight.  Women don't really ever get Popeye forearms, even the bodybuilders.  I think it would be enough to straighten the parts covered by the wristband.  Maybe shrink the width by a pixel.

Grimsane: I don't quite agree with your critique.  I think the legs could be a couple of pixels longer, but any attempt to add tilt to the hips will probably get lost under the layers of clothing and the lines of those extra belts.  Twisting the hips would be lost with the shading of the skirt.  I don't think that sort of contrapposto would work well.  Maybe a dynamic pose with a strong line of action instead?

But really, if this is just for status, see if you can draw it from head to waist rather than full body.  You get more pixels to add an expression to the face, you can still show some cleavage if they want the titillation, and you don't have as many elements of the costume to worry about.

Tourist

60
I kind of like the colorful skirt.  It breaks up the drab dark and brown of the rest of the clothing.  Not every assassin needs to be ninja McBatman.  It depends on the context, and we have no context for this character.  I might not use the same style of skirt, but I think the colors are ok.

But I agree Mr. Beast on the need for both style and purpose in the design.

Tourist

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