Spore Creature

[Smashycomman]

Heya everybody!

So this is going to be my first post, and actually this is my first try at pixel art at all. So bear with me. 

I'm working on a game with some people, Driftwood, and I'm the monster idea guy, but I wanted to start doing the pixel art, and this is what I have come up with:


It's called a spore creature because I'll mostly have it spit danger spores out of it's mouth.

Right now, I'm not happy with it, so any critiques I could get would be awesome.

This is a mock-up screenshot of it in the game. Sort of:


See it doesn't really look like it belongs.

It doesn't really look very good at all, but hey, this is seriously maybe the 2nd time I've ever made any pixel art ever. 

Oh and I don't think the ground in the actual game will be that flat, so the unevenness on the bottom shouldn't be a problem.

Thank you so much for the help!

[Senevri]

Well, it clearly doesn't co-operate with the tileset very well at this point, as you have a bit of an angle to the view, while the tileset seems to be strictly a side view.
Also, the greens and reds seriously pop out in comparison to the more subdued hues of the rest of the palette, so tone those down.  I also read t he gray color (esp. on top of those tiles) as stone, which may not be what you intended.

[buddy90]

Wow. Stealing art from a forum and then posting it directly in the same forum where you stole it from. Like if we wouldn't notice.



Taken from http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=11074.0

And the background is taken from ActRaiser.

[Smashycomman]

Actually, that's one of the other guys I'm working on the game with. So... that art is from my game too. =P Same game.

And yeah we know it's from ActRaiser. It's just a filler for the background till we can make our own. Just a test.

So actually, I wasn't stealing anything. 

And Senevri, the body of the monster is supposed to be made up of stone, so that's what I was going for... but did you mean something different?

And yes I should tone down the colors a bit....Thank you. 

Anything else?

[jackal27]

Wow. Stealing art from a forum and then posting it directly in the same forum where you stole it from. Like if we wouldn't notice.



Taken from http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=11074.0

And the background is taken from ActRaiser.

Yeah, he's working on Driftwood along with me. Nearly all of the graphics in that screenshot are temporary or stand-in. Including the background ripped from one of my favorite games ever, Actraiser.  

Well, it clearly doesn't co-operate with the tileset very well at this point, as you have a bit of an angle to the view, while the tileset seems to be strictly a side view.
Also, the greens and reds seriously pop out in comparison to the more subdued hues of the rest of the palette, so tone those down.  I also read t he gray color (esp. on top of those tiles) as stone, which may not be what you intended.

The tileset and the color palette are both undecided. I've been trying to find a way to get an overall color palette that doesn't clash, but I have a terrible eye for color. I may have someone on our team do it. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to offer them   I think he just dropped the enemy sprite into the screenshot. When we put him in the game, he'll be pixelated into an area that doesn't look so awkward.

[Smashycomman]

That's exactly what I did. Just to show the size and whatnot next to Obee.

[NaCl]

You're relying too much on lines, and putting shading in just as an after thought, mostly in a pillow shade manner. Not horribly pillow shaded but I can see where in many places you just threw some shading against the lines. This makes the entire thing look flat.

Your lines don't show the care and craftsmanship that makes pixel art look good. Sculpt each lines until it has the shape you want it to have, you cant just lay down a line, clean up any extra pixels and call it good.

There is too much going on, the entire thing is quite confusing unless you analyse it. Remove some mushrooms, and keep only one type of mushroom. Having green, red, and brown ones is confusing and doesn't help the piece.

Use silhouette to help define and clarify your monster. See if you can get someone to understand the form with the silhouette alone. Your current silhouette is a jumble.

You're using way too many colors, and you're not getting the potential out of any of them. When things don't look right with the colors, it is tempting to add more inbetween colors to ease the problem, as you have done, but it won't solve it. The problem is with the combinations of colors, and the more you add the more difficult it is to control and fix. 47 colors is a LOT of colors, look how many the main character sprite has.

You are really neglecting hue shifting, and that is steamrolling your piece into flatness. It is more or less unacceptable to change the luminance without changing the hue and saturation.

Related, is that you're lacking contrast in lots of areas in the piece. This is relevant to the pieces flatness, it's confusing nature, and it's inability to blend with the rest of the stuff. To fix it, you need hue shifting and bolder color choices. Taking the primary color of an area, dropping the luminance a bit, and using that to outline is not acceptable! You need to play with the colors a lot, to figure out what works. Drop the outline color of something way down, see how it looks. Bring it up some, see how that looks. Make it purple, see what happens. My point is, experiment with the colors a lot and without fear. This can only be done if you keep the color count low, but if you keep it low then the piece will end up much crisper and nice looking.

I'd like to have done an edit but messing with 47 colors is too time consuming. Hope these tips help though, good luck.

[Jad]

I think there are problems with your workflow, unfortunately. You're painting the whole sprite as though it was a piece of art, forcing yourself to later animate the end result.

This is not what you want, you'll want to animate WITHIN the process. Take all the nice mushrooms on his back for example, animating them would be a complete hassle as it stands now, as is shading the main rock body.

I suggest that you should work from the core and outwards, redo the main rock body, making sure to get the shading where you want it, and end up with lineart or shapes that you feel comfortable animating. When that is done, you can add moss and other details. Working in software that supports layers in animation is probably necessary for this. Lastly you should draw in the mushrooms, making sure to get some good overlapping action in there.

This is mostly me rambling as I suddenly got mighty inspired and realized how you could make that rock monster look REAL spiffy. : DDD

NaCL's advice is also hella good, he touches upon things that you must know if you want to make pixel art on a higher level - essential knowledge. I don't want to reiterate all that he said, so all I say is: Read the whole post and meditate over it for a bit! : D

and good luck with your art.

Oh, and buddy90, if you go around accusing people of art theft when they have clearly stated that their images is part of a collaborative effort, you haven't read the posts clearly. It is a blessing that jackal27 has the composure to not raise a ruckus over your ignorant behaviour, and thus hasn't derailed the thread over false accusations.

This tends to happen, which is why you'll not call out people on very vague grouds like that, or you'll get a strike. Use the report function instead and let the mods handle things like that (or we'll have nothing to do, which is booring)

Well, thanks for trying to set things right, though they were never wrong to begin with.

[jackal27]

Hey guys! That was some awesome advice! I'm certainly guilty of forgetting to animate within the development of the sprite and treating each one as a singular work of art, haha. Thanks again for the tips!

[Smashycomman]

NaCl, wow... ok I guess I'll... try again. That's a lot to think about, but I very much appreciate the input. =P Thank you!

I should probably use a different program than MS paint.

And Jad, thank you as well. I agree I should do that animation stuff differently. Even though this sprite mostly will be opening and closing it's mouth, I should still follow your advice. And thank you for clearing up that issue. 

I'll take everyone's advice and try to rework it all... somehow. It's just so much that's wrong with my sprite that I guess it'll take a while... but here goes.