[Feedback] First Time Pixel Artist: Frogger Clone

[shponglefan]

I'm building a Frogger clone and am creating all the assets myself.

While I have some art experience (mainly traditional art), this is the first time I'm trying to create pixel art for a video game. Below is an initial mock-up with some sample sprites and background tiles.

I've been experimenting with the best way to make the logs/turtles not appear hovering on the water, hence the light outlines around some of them. Is there a better way to achieve that effect?

I'm sure there is a lot than can be improved, so any and all advice is appreciated!

[shponglefan]

Added various vehicle sprites. I'm going to further experiment with trying to animate them although not entirely sure how yet...  Maybe by the reflections shift as they move?

Any constructive feedback is appreciated!

[xix]

Shadows are the easiest. Reflections are hard, but also great. Your perspective makes depth a little difficult, but I think you can manage it with ingenuity.

[Chonky Pixel]

Your logs are 100% out of the water. Things that float are generally partially submerged.

[Chonky Pixel]

OK, not much time so only a few small edits here. Firstly the grass on the middle bank. I tend to avoid single pixels by themselves as they look noisy and don't convey any shape or meaning. Making all grass shapes have at least two touching pixels helps make it look a little more engaging (to me at least.) I added tiny shadows to some of the blades to lift them out of the screen. Follow the light source in the image and extend the shadow a pixel to the left of the grass.

I chopped the bottom off your logs to make them look like they were in the water.

The left lily pad doesn't take into account the light source direction and puts a ring around a very light pad. I just took the light source into account. It's rough, but at least it's consistent. You could add a shadow from the bank on the right if you liked, to give more depth.

You don't need to go crazy with shadow lengths. I added a couple of small ones to a log and a turtle. Again, take the light source into account.

The turtles on the left have two outlines which seems a bit excessive. If you want to make ripples, I suggest leaving some gap between the item and the ripple. Also extend them out further behind the item's direction of travel.

With more time I'd probably clean up the single pixels around the image (if you're going to draw a shape, mean it! ), and maybe give the frog a bit more definition.

[yosri3]

As a relpy on the logs I feel like they look a little odd since everything in your game has a top-down perspective whereas the loggs look like they're angled.

I've added a picture showing how I would do it and yours next to it as a comparison. Hope it helps and remember this is only my take on it so consider it like me saying, this is how i would do it if you were to ask me what to improve.

[Chonky Pixel]

As a relpy on the logs I feel like they look a little odd since everything in your game has a top-down perspective whereas the loggs look like they're angled.

I've added a picture showing how I would do it and yours next to it as a comparison. Hope it helps and remember this is only my take on it so consider it like me saying, this is how i would do it if you were to ask me what to improve.

This is a very good point, but if nothing else it's consistent with the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNrz9_Fe-Us

One thing I noticed in the original is how long the frog legs are. And frogs do have long legs...

[shponglefan]

Thanks everyone so much for the feedback!  I've started incorporating some of the ideas here into fixing up the pixel art.

1) Chonky Pixel, thank you so much for all the tips! I took your advice and modified the logs accordingly. I also went through some of the tiles and removed single pixels and tried to define things better.

For the lilypads, I had originally animated them (obviously you couldn't see that in the static pic). I was potentially thinking of having glowing objects on them for the player to retrieve, so that may change up the lighting. I'll have to figure out what I do with them ultimately. Your comments about lighting are noted.

Also removed the outlines from the turtles and tried animating them with some water effects.

2) xi, I like the shadow idea although I may use such shadows if I opt for a dusk level. I've been toying with the idea of having levels set at different times of day, so that may work.

3) On the subject of the log perspective, that was intentional to mimic the original arcade graphics. Granted the original game didn't seem to use a set perspective for objects. For this game, I'm attempting to keep things from a top down view for the most part, but I'm willing to break perspective where I feel it's thematically appropriate.

For anyone interested in what things look like now, I have a short video of the current state of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1JoLAt-sEg

And here are a couple of the current sprite maps with the various frames of animation (turtle and frog). Never done animation before, so this is all new to me:

[Chonky Pixel]

Looks like it's coming along nicely. Your changes are subtle, but help tie things together. Good work.