GR#226 - Snake Curses - Gameart

[HezaKey]

*Rises from the crypt*
I picked the project back up for a bit and tried to tackle that cliff problem.


I keep having the hardest time balancing out the geometric nature of tiling and also trying to make this look organic.  Might try for some unique object (large roots and trees) to try and break it up some more.


Finally settled on a design for the Wolf King.


The Firemancer, who appears later.

I started planning and making notes, so the game now has a basic outline.  It's also a nice way to keep track of all the things I have to draw since some of the areas are going to be very visually different from each other. 

   •   Wolf King and the wolf shrine
   •   Introducing the nature of your curse and meeting the dangers of the woods.

   •   Snake Ruins
   •   Search for clues to the Snakemancer’s spells.

   •   Burning Forest and the troubles of the Firemancer
   •   The Firemancer is burning the forest in an attempt to remove the cursed sigels.

   •   Phantom Lake Cliff
   •   Crossing the uncrossable

   •   Reflections of the Crystal Forest
   •   The Mirror Mancer, and just who is behind the cursed sigels?

   •   Ancient Forest of the Fauns
   •   Discover more in the oldest lands of the endless forest.

   •   Mountain of the Bear people
   •   The land of forever winter and the child of songs

   •   Necromancer/Dead Forest
   •   A glimpse of the end, and the finality of the truth.

The Wolf King and the Snake Ruins are basically the same area, so there's about seven different areas to go through.  So many drawings to do.

[Daimoth]

It's clear you can draw, but your coloration needs some work. Your colors are almost all either very dark or saturated low-mid tones. It gives everything this strange painterly, almost pastel-ey aesthetic.

[Drazelic]

Eh, the coloration's fine, if the intended mood is a dreary, dead forest with little life. Given the title is about curses, I think it's fitting.

As for the cliffs, you don't have to stick to the super-geometrized forms! Take a look at some RPG tilesets for ideas. I'd link some, but I don't know where to find them offhand.

You might even consider something like this- a simple two-tone organic tileset which works by overlapping tiles to imply form by using the tiles themselves as macro-scale pixels.

[Daimoth]

My concern is not the tone of the piece, it's that it reads oddly.

[YellowLime]

The 'landslide' looks very odd... The volume of the landmass appears inconsistent, since there is no clear depth difference between the dirt slope and the surrounding walls. Or am I reading it wrong?

[PsylentKnight]

Yea, I'm going to echo what the others said. As the ramp's current length, its basically a cliff facing. You need to extend some away from the player in the screenshot in order for it to be a walkable slope.

[Decroded]

I thought it was a river bed with fjord crossing first glance

[cels]

Glad to see this resurrected

I think one issue is the lighting on the pathway. From the shadow below the main character, the light is coming from directly above. And the cliffs look completely vertical, otherwise, it's hard to make sense of the geometry. If they're meant to be sloping hills, then the structure doesn't make sense.

Since the cliffs are completely vertical, and the light source is directly above, the rocks should be shaded differently. The rocks on either side of the pathway would necessarily be on a straight vertical line, but the way the light hits them, the rocks all look like they're on a horizontal line, or near horizontal. There are no shadows from one rock, hitting the rocks below. Every rock sticking out from the vertical surface would cast a shadow on the surface below it (I mean both the vertical surface below and the horizontal surface below). Of course, there's no strong sunlight, so it wouldn't be a very sharp shadow. But shadows are important visual cues, even on a cloudy day.

I would also say that it's probably a good idea to stick with vertical cliffs, and then use multiple levels, instead of experimenting with sloping hills in this kind of perspective. Just because people are so used to seeing vertical cliffs in this sort of perspective, that it could be hard for them to wrap their heads around the geometry, unless you have some very clear visual cues.

My humble opinion, I'm no expert.

[HezaKey]

Very work in progress, but I haven't checked in for awhile.  Still pretty messy since I didn't want to polish off anything until I felt good about it.
This time I have tiles for the cliffs and grass edges, another layer for tiling the shadows on the cliff side, and then the stairs and bridge sit on top of that.

Not much to say about it.  Still trying to decide if I should have a third go at it or not.  Most examples of cliffs from other games seem to either be extremely geometric, or extremely stylized, neither of which is what I want to go for stylistically. 

I think these are almost working, but somehow I feel it could be better.

[Decroded]

i still think your forms are confusing.
im squinting on my work monitor (24") trying to work out where your vertial and horizontal planes are.
i think i know what im looking at but i dread to think how this would look to the lamen's eye.

i think you need to establish a light source (draw an arrow and leave it there) first.
i suggest directly overhead and forward a bit so shadows fall behind objects.
this is to reduce the number of shadow tiles u need to render while also highlighting the rim between horizontal and vertical planes.

currently you have a massive lack of rendering and shadows, and the ones you have done seem to work against your forms instead of accentuating them.
once this is done i would trash the minute detail on the cliffs and go for some more structural rock face.
i would be less inclinced to make so many tiles that share the green hue of the main character.
i also think the difference in vibrancy between things like the stairs and stump compared to surrounding tiles is more typical of some interacting objects like enemy sprites rather than inanimate scenery.