[WIP]Sci-fi platform game mock-up.

[capnbubs]

I'm drawing this game mock-up as a free time project around other work. I don't have a particularly large amount of experience in pixel art so I thought i'd post here in case anybody could give me some useful advice on colour choices, pixel placement etc. I'm purely using graphics gale and keeping everything in separate layers so that I can eventually turn this into a game tileset. The tile size is 16x16 pixels.

Criticism is welcome!

[EDIT - 12:45 - 14th july]

[ErekT]

The colors and contrast are a bit washed out? I tried adjusting them a little. You could try some experimenting with hue shifting on the earth/rocks too. But overall I think this looks very cool



EDIT: Actually I think the part of the leaves in shadow, the blue part, could be quite a bit darker too.

[capnbubs]

The colors and contrast are a bit washed out? I tried adjusting them a little. You could try some experimenting with hue shifting on the earth/rocks too. But overall I think this looks very cool


EDIT: Actually I think the part of the leaves in shadow, the blue part, could be quite a bit darker too.

Thanks for the advice, I actually went for more pastel shades on purpose but some of it does look better in your edit. I definitely agree with you about the tree, I'm just got a bit stumped getting it to look right with darker shades, I'll give it another go.

[surt]

Love the look of this.

Did a quick edit to show the way I would go:

• Gave the colours a bit more pop by warming the highlights, uping the saturation on the foliage and reducing in on the earth.
• Blued the sky a bit.
• Gave the earth a more gradual the light-dark transition.

[Seiseki]

That's a great edit.
I felt ErekT's edit just upped the contrast and saturation on the entire palette, making it look a bit too harsh.
The blue sky really helps too, as it was looking quite dull..

I do think the sprites and metal bits could use a bit blue in them.
And the suits they're wearing could use a more unique color, a cooler color would help them pop out from the terrain.
But I assume the natural color of the suits is supposed to blend, due to the military, camouflage nature.

All in all, it's a very impressive piece.

[capnbubs]

Thanks for the tips, those brighter highlights really make a big difference.

The player will be able to choose the colour of the suits in the game, I drew the little guy first and didn't really put much thought into his colours.

I split the foreground dirt into a tileset and passed it over to my buddy today. He's making a neat little level editor out of it  

I'll post an update tomorrow evening when i've worked on it some more, thanks again for taking the time to tell me what you think!

[Update]

Here's the newest version, I brightened up the highlights on the foliage like suggested, I messed around with the less saturated dirt but I didn't like it as much as this fertile bright look. Finally came up with a sky design I'm happy with, I improved the cloud too. Darkened up the shadow on the tree leaves and a bunch of other little things.

[Fickludd]

Looking great, especially the tree!

My only suggestion is to perhaps rework the "grass" a little, to give it a more irregular texture. To me, the combination of large leaves on an almost flat surface give the impression of something that is melting with the occasional bubble =).

Another minor thing: maybe differentiate (desaturate + brighten?) the parallax layer a bit more from the playable layer to increase readability a bit more.

Would be a great game no doubt!

[capnbubs]

Looking great, especially the tree!

My only suggestion is to perhaps rework the "grass" a little, to give it a more irregular texture. To me, the combination of large leaves on an almost flat surface give the impression of something that is melting with the occasional bubble =).

Another minor thing: maybe differentiate (desaturate + brighten?) the parallax layer a bit more from the playable layer to increase readability a bit more.

Would be a great game no doubt!

Thanks for the comments, I've passed the terrain tilesheet to my coder now so I'll see how it all looks while moving and I can adjust from there. I see what you mean about the grass, I'll see if I can add a bit more smaller detail without losing the style.

I'm working on the trooper animations now so I'll post some of them later.

[EDIT]

Added left handed so when you change directions you won't swap hands.

[pulsecode]

I love it!
I really like the the way the weight of the gun is conveyed. And i'm a big fan of having 2 separate animation sets so things dont magically change hands when a character turns around 
For some reason i get a bit of a Shadow Complex vibe from all of this. Which in my opinion can only be a good thing!

[EyeCraft]

Really loving those animations!

I agree about the grass, the strange sporadic detail on otherwise completely clean plastic-y planes isn't working so great imo. Spread the love, make that grass LUSH. 

I had a play with the palette:



Lots of stuff, I'm kind of tired at the moment so I shall just summarise with bullet points:

- I recommend avoiding using straight greys. Try to tint all greys in some direction or another. I usually go for teal shadows and yellow highlights. Helps to harmonise them with the scene as well as just add a bit more interest to them.

- Watch the contrast on your background layer(s). I feel like they share too much emphasis with the game-relevent layer atm, so I worked to lower their contrast.

- The hues are pretty straight for all the ramps. Be bold and experimental when picking your colours, push things WAY up in saturation, push the hue WAY along as you move up the ramp. If its too extreme, slowly dial it back until its reasonable. This way you are erring on the side of interesting colour dynamics, rather than playing way too safe and ending up with something that is flatter. Helps a lot with keeping your contrast up too, instead of being too meek (a problem I suffer from frequently).

- Feels like there needs to be some team colour on the player sprite's head. It's almost always the first point on the sprite that I look, and currently its a sea of grey. I would actually completely redesign the player's head if I were you. It's just this metal box with eye holes, not very interesting at all imo. I recommend leaning towards designs that give interesting lines, excuses to use a variety of colours, and something that of course makes sense for the character.

Uhh I think that's all the points I wanted to make. I could keep tweaking the palette for ages, but I'll let it be. Hopefully it's helpful as it is. 

[capnbubs]

Thanks for the help everybody!

I'm happy with where the style and quality is now so we're getting on with getting the game made. I won't be updating this thread anymore.

Thanks again all of you for taking the time to comment and critique my work. I hope you'll like the game when it's finished, keep an eye out for it on tigsource if you're interested it should pop up over there in a couple of weeks.

[PypeBros]

I'm happy with where the style and quality is now so we're getting on with getting the game made. I won't be updating this thread anymore.

Well, I hope you'll give EyeCraft's new colours a try: they definitely make the game more attractive and readable to my eye.
Btw, another thing you might want to adjust is the square-ish setup of your dirt corner tiles. Breaking that will make the scene more organic and interesting.

[st0ven]

i would agree with pypebros. your spritework looks great, but the level of depth eyecraft put into the background with some key palette choices really livens up the atmosphere. environments make games pretty, not their sprites (though they certainly help)

[malkomk]

Looks good! Though you say you don't have much experience in pixel art, it looks waay better than anything I've done myself so far. Of course, I have hardly done any. You could say I've never really done much pixel art at all.

Posting to say that I'd love to try out a demo of this sometime. What platform(s) is it going to be on?

[capnbubs]

Thanks guys, it's going to be on PC.

I feel like I should justify my palette choices a bit. We're actually going to tint the sprites and fade the background tiles towards a fog colour depending on the time of day and environment settings for the level, so this mockup isn't really an accurate example of the final look. I'll definitely keep all this great advice in mind when we set up the post processing and get the final look of the game.

I was going to stop updating this thread but since you guys are interested I'll gladly post more shots of the game as it develops.

[Decroded]

Please do, definitely interested in this sexy artwork.

[malkomk]

I like that you're posting updates. Is it going to be free or a purchase? Or do you not know?

[crab2selout.png]

I know its late, but I felt like mentioning that a little variety in the size of your rocks would go a long way to removing the monotony in the rocky parts. I really quickly edited about 3,4(?) tiles to give you an idea. I saw your post about not updating, so if this isn't relevant anymore, well, it took almost no time so that's fine.

Cool animation, BTW. Very charming and personable, something you don't always see.

[capnbubs]

I know its late, but I felt like mentioning that a little variety in the size of your rocks would go a long way to removing the monotony in the rocky parts. I really quickly edited about 3,4(?) tiles to give you an idea. I saw your post about not updating, so if this isn't relevant anymore, well, it took almost no time so that's fine.

Cool animation, BTW. Very charming and personable, something you don't always see.

I really like this actually. We've taken out the fade out to a single colour in favour of a lighting system but I'll still see if I can mix up the sizes a bit on the tiles.

Thanks about the animations, I'm primarily an animator so that's nice to hear =D