Gypsy Forest (RPG tiles)

[EyeCraft]

You've got some delicious pixels brewing here. I think you should have a session of just purely playing around with the palette. Go crazy with it. Slide those bars everywhere.

I think you should go much more towards dusk with the lighting, get the secluded, mystical atmosphere to it:



Right-most head is a little more realistic, lighting-wise.

Low key lighting is your friend. Lamps, camp fires and brightly lit windows will contrast great with a deep blue forest.

[TheInquisitor]

I've seen what you've done with adding more depth with that reddish tinge, Eyecraft. It works well. The one problem I have with it is that it loses much of that deep blueness, a colour I really want to push for on this set. When I next get chance I'll have a play with the palette and try and mix some of your colour changes in whilst trying to keep that blue element still very clear. Although I thought I'd done a solid job of colour mixing, your example does bring it out a lot more.

Yeah, I can't wait to get onto more of those windows, camps and lanterns. I'm also planning to make little animate dots of light for fireflies and things that'll really give the deep dark blue forest some exciting variety. 



Thanks, Jakerpot. Glad you like those other tilesets too. I'm pleased with how the trees have come out for the most part, but as usual for me, each successive tree of the same type gets worse and worse. Not sure why! 

[TheInquisitor]

Shalom, comrades! A little more progress! 



I've been adding more rocks and broken statue pieces to the tileset. For the moment I've preferred to stick with my original colour palette, Eyecraft, as I feel the deep blues better convey the atmosphere I'm going for. Blue is creepier. Perhaps I'll come to regret this decision, I don't know. I'm trying to create quite a spiritual, stonehenge like area within the forest. Lots of big stone heads sticking out of the ground and other things to that effect. If you guys want to provide any tips or inspiration for shapes, do pipe up! 

These rocks have got more significant shadow on them which match the work in progress boat. Unfortunately the old trees I did will now require a spruce up because their lack of deep shading clashes quite badly. I should plan these things out more thoroughly instead of just jumping straight into new pieces!

[st0ven]

Your rocks are so dark i can hardly see them. :/

palette wise -> im not sure you are thinking about how light hits rock surfaces when coloring. all of your values are in the same area of hue, which would indicate that your light source is of the same nature as the twilight ambiance, Ive thrown in some values that are far less saturated and closer to the yellow hue range for the highlight regions, and let that progress towards your blue/greens as the values become darker. It allows you to keep your strong blue hue influences without sacrificing the natural hue of the object being lit.

Also, i would suggest to pay attention more to the light source angle and how it fills out the shape of the stones before worrying at all about the very indepth amount of anti-aliasing youve got going on (which makes it look impressively smooth). I fall prey to this often, but step back and figure out the shapes before going nuts with the detail. For the face/rock thing on the top in particular ive tried to push the highlights so that they hit more topdown from lets say a moon light source rather than what looks like a spotlight angle that looks like it might be flattening out your forms a little.

also remember rocks have sharp edges, and the harder you hit that highlight the sharper itll look. also remember if there is a sharp edge, that whole face of rock is probably nearly equally as light, or else it kills the illusion of its geometric faces. (aka rocks can be tricky )

One comment i had about your trees, why do they all slant in different directions?

[TheInquisitor]

Thanks for the feedback, St0ven. The master and pupil together again!  Following your lighting example I have refined my own. It's now pretty similar to yours in light source direction. Thanks for the help there. I did lose the shape somewhat. The hand may need that little extra bit of refining as when I compare yours to mine the former does seem to be a bit more impact to it.

What I haven't done is changed the palette yet. Whilst yours is very nice and has a swell mixture of colours, it's not really that look I'm after. Perhaps when I said twilight it wasn't the right word. What I want is a very rich blue light source throughout the whole environment. On yours it seems like there are more greys and yellows whereas I want to stick as much as possible to blues and greens. It doesn't look too dark on my monitors, but I do have them quite bright with a lot of clear contrast between the shades. What does everyone else thing of this?

I'd highly appreciate it if you could whip me up another palette to shades you'd consider more suitable, but still retain that blue and green focus that I'm aiming for.

Thanks again St0ven! 

The new stone head is obviously still a work in progress. I'll get on that ASAP.