AuthorTopic: Studying Indigo's Gift  (Read 4007 times)

Offline xiphirx

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 29
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • herp
    • View Profile
    • For The Swarm

Studying Indigo's Gift

on: July 04, 2010, 09:52:55 pm
I looked at Indigo's gift in the gifts get topic and I truly love how he did the rocks. I am now trying to learn how he created them.


At the top left, you can see my very crappy attempt at a rock. I think I am missing out on how he structures them, and how he uses the colors. I counted around 9 colors per rock. How do you guys think I'm doing? Also, are my colors usable? I think I need more contrast between them (I did not take the colors from indigo although they look very similar)


Indigo: Hope you don't mind D:
I whip my hair back n forth

Offline Olothontor

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 238
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #1 on: July 04, 2010, 10:02:49 pm
Awesome. It's not a bad start on your part, but I zoomed in a bit and it looks like you're using the wrong colors. One of the main differences I see is the fact that the colors on the flat surface on the top of your rock are not bright enough, and the hilights on the ides of the rocks are TOO bright.

Hope that made some sense :/ Good luck!
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline xiphirx

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 29
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • herp
    • View Profile
    • For The Swarm

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #2 on: July 04, 2010, 10:08:05 pm


I've brightened them and started adding more.. I think a main issue with mine is that they have round edges, and Indigo's have straight edges.

EDIT: More rocks... Mine feel artificial in comparison to Indigo's...
« Last Edit: July 04, 2010, 10:35:46 pm by xiphirx »
I whip my hair back n forth

Offline Kren

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 194
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #3 on: July 04, 2010, 11:26:14 pm
I beleive the main problem you are suffering is that you are seeing his work not as a tileset, meaning that you don't know how things work D:, I beleive you should start from the doodling process again since you started detail way to fast.

Offline Indigo

  • Administrator
  • 0011
  • *
  • Posts: 946
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • Artist, Indie Game Dev
    • DanFessler
    • DanFessler
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/849.htm
    • DanFessler
    • DanFessler
    • View Profile
    • Portfolio

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #4 on: July 04, 2010, 11:34:50 pm
This is very flattering to see a thread analyzing my art - though I cringe when I see these images because of how unfinished they are.  I really really need to go back and finish it.

If your curious about my thought-process behind this, its pretty simple really.  I tend to be super scared of saturated colors.  Its a problem I've been dealing with for quite a while, so I've been really trying to study when it's appropriate to use them and how.  Its really easy to end up with a entire image of super-saturated colors, and more beginner artists do this all the time.  But it's just as easy to be too conservative and DEsaturate all your colors so they all play nice with eachother - but this results in a very drab image in the end.

Another thing you should watch out for is your process in general.  If you spend too much time rendering each individual rock before moving on to the next, you lose the flow an composition you could have had by roughing out blobs of shape and color first.

I hope this helps... now I need to finish my tiles :(

Anyway, something I was really trying to focus on for these tiles is a warm-yellow lightsource.  Everywhere where direct sunlight hits the tiles I made sure to tint them towards yellow and saturate them quite a bit.  Wherever direct-light was not hitting a tile, I allowed the reflected light to define their colors a bit - which mostly consists of the blue sky and greenery around them.  Separating the shading into these two parts helped give depth to the tiles beyond just their shape.

Offline PypeBros

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1220
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • Pixel Padawan
    • PypeBros
    • View Profile
    • Bilou Homebrew's Blog.

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #5 on: July 05, 2010, 07:57:49 pm
Is the BG "pure" pixel art as well ? I'd be tempted to see some automatic blurring, de-saturating and colour blending here, but that's merely saying that I have no clue of how one could manage to work with so close colours ...

Offline xiphirx

  • 0001
  • *
  • Posts: 29
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • herp
    • View Profile
    • For The Swarm

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #6 on: July 05, 2010, 10:59:19 pm
Still going at this. I blobbed the rocks out this time. I used Indigo's colors this time since mine were simply not working :(


They look much better IMO D:
I whip my hair back n forth

Offline Olothontor

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 238
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Studying Indigo's Gift

Reply #7 on: July 05, 2010, 11:05:25 pm
They do look much better, but they still need more depth. The cracks on the tops and sides deserve to be a bit darker, if you're really trying to emulate Indigo's feel.

There's my two cents. Not sure if it's as worthy of notice as it might sound, I but I figure it's worth a shot.

Keep at it!
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa