16 colors mockup (Arne's palette)

[tomas]

Here's a mockup I made using Arne's 16 color palette. What I mainly want C&C on is the ground (dirt) and tree which are the parts I have been struggling the most with.

First version:


Current version:

[UncleSporky]

Mine is on the right.  I made some very small changes overall.  First I think the highlights on the tree are too solid and connected, I just broke them up a bit.  I'm also not sure if the light would reach to the underside of the right branch.

I darkened the dirt at the bottom a bit to kind of diminish it more as it gets lower.  I don't know if I'm a fan of the two big chunks of dirt repeated over and over, but that's probably more of a style thing.  The bits of black at the very bottom makes me think the ground is floating in midair, so I'd either make it the same dark grey as the rest or show more of the ground to reassure us that it keeps going down.

The blacks in the grass seem kind of harsh, and the grass looks pretty stringy to me, like somebody tossed a lot of vines/green string all over.

The top of the tree needs some help, but I'm not sure what, sorry I can't help on that point. 

Sorry if I sound overly negative, I really do like most of this mockup.  The broken fence, hills, moon and HUD are all great.  I'm not sure what the little guy is doing but he looks fine for being so small.

[ndchristie]

your dark brown and light blue have effectively the same value, if anything, the brown shines a bit brighter.  colors like that you want to use exclusively of each other.  This will probably help you define color regions anyway.

uncle - broken lines are too ugly here.  i see why you'ld want to break them, but it actually hurts the piece.  good idea with the dirt tho

[Arne]

I'm not sure about this edit, I think it's too artsy fartsy and kinda flat (maybe it lacks a shadow part to suggest volume, or there's something wrong with the highlights). Vegetation is pretty hard to do in general I think.

Some more pronounced twisting tree trunk shapes could work if the game has an eerie mood.



Another experiment, but it ended up too far the mood of the screen, so I made it all about dinos. I made the tree from a photo of a bush initially, just to see what my palette would do with it. But it didn't work very well, so I went in and changed it all. Making larger chunks of leafs works better than gritty pixels, although this one is still pretty gritty compared to say, ALttP trees and such.

[tomas]

That's a beautiful looking tree. It looks so... lush. Kinda puts my puny tree to shame. I must say it's maybe a bit too much of an attention stealer though. But I'll definitely be taking some advice from yours when I redesign my tree. Especially the shape of the foliage. Thanks for the edit.

EDIT: Updated the tree:

[EyeCraft]

Great stuff! The tiles seem very eye catching though. Maybe soften the lines of those dirt tiles to push them more into the back? Also the mist around the moon could use another tone to help transition it into the black, perhaps.

Love the tree and skeleton. Though the skeleton looks a little bit like a mummy. I think reworking the skull might help in the suggestion of its skeleton-ness.

EDIT:

Reworked the skeleton, mist and dirt tiles. Dirt tiles look kinda horrifically ugly, though. But just trying to show options.

[tomas]

OK, final update for today. Worked on: skeleton, mist, dirt tiles and tree (slight mods). Check it out: