Commercial Critique May 06: Demon's Crest

[Lick]

[ot] Well, it's a community-thing so the point is that people can participate. If you draw the line so high, I don't think people can join in. Besides, even though the graphics of this game are very high quality in terms of pixel art, I think a more stylized game would be more appropiate to discuss. Sorry for being [/ot]

[setz]

This might be the wrong place to ask, but why not base the next critique on a commercially released game that was put out into the market with utterly horrible pixel art, complete with grids, gradients, and whatnot?  A commercial critique challenge could be included wherein pixelers attempt to salvage and redeem said art.

What I personally like about commercial Critique is it teaches you techniques and such that you can use, taking on a game with horrible art wouldn't teach me much at all.

And to make this post not useless, I would say they spent the most work on the graphics that you see the most [demon sprite and it's various forms] and not so much on the backgrounds as a whole, but rather one screenfull at a time. Or a background that you'd have to sit there and see awhile [boss fights] I'll play through and grab some screenshots soon, though I don't know enough to be able to tear them apart.

[ptoing]

Another thing I noticed, instead of having the usual lighter shades are saturated and darker are unsaturated, Firebrand's red skin does the opposite, and goes to 100 percent saturation on only like the 3rd dark shade.

That is physically correct, human skin does the same. Just take any photoof a human and colourpic the shades and look at the saturation. The lightest colour on a white person is a whitish pinkish redish colour with perhaps a bit of yellow, and white is as desaturated as it gets. The furster into the shadows you go the more saturation you normally get.

[Helm]

Bah what you just said totally is up to the lighting conditions on the human flesh, and specific phenomena like pigmentation of the skin and subsurface scattering of color.

[ptoing]

Yes sure it depends on the lighting, but it's the case in general with human skin, SO BAH YOURSELF!

[ndchristie]

ive found that, living in a more or less all-white region there are typically white-whites, yellow whites, pink whites, and warm (orange/brown) whites, and the differences are very, very easy to spot.  everyone though has a variety of tones on and under the skin that make for a huge amount of variation.  as highlighting is concerned, the more light is on something, the more 'true' it will be to what its natural saturation is, but everything can be distorted, especially if the light is not white.  in terms of patterns in this, saturation in my experience neither heightens nor lessens based on any real set rules that ive been able to discern.  low-sat colors (in white light) can gain saturation in shadows, and high-sat colors (in white light) can lose saturation in shadows, its all tricks of the light to me.  anyone can set me straight if they like

thought: perhaps, since shadow hues move towards the hue of the air (does this fall under atmospheric perspective? i just know it as a foundation of color theory), the saturation values in shadows also becomes that of the light reflecting off the air between the viewer and what is seen, therefor able to be more saturated or less saturated than when viewed in normal white light?

[Helm]

Dunno who can help you with particulars of light, but I just felt the need to point out pure white light is something that doesn't exist in nature (except I guess, lightning bolts?), it would take a fluorescent lightbulb or something, you know, clynical bathroom light whatever to get that. It's very harsh and unflattering light.

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

this remains a good guide. light is complicated

[Esker]

Dunno who can help you with particulars of light, but I just felt the need to point out pure white light is something that doesn't exist in nature (except I guess, lightning bolts?), it would take a fluorescent lightbulb or something, you know, clynical bathroom light whatever to get that. It's very harsh and unflattering light.

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

this remains a good guide. light is complicated

Actually that's a very good guide, thanks for posting it.