[wip] Bilou's school : Pendats goes marchin' in [c+c]

[PypeBros]

The lines of the circles in the binders are really weird.

You mean the "metallic" reinforcement for the circular hole, right ? I don't like it much either, now that you attract my attention there. I'll try to improve it next.

Do you have a limited palette?
I think it would work better if you re-used a least one color from the books in the background.
The colours aren't very harmonious right now.

This is for a game on DS, so technically, I can have one 256 palette for tiles and one for sprites, although they're mostly the same in practice. The background so far is just a placeholder generated following a "make yourself a magohany texture" tutorial. I'm not surprised you don't see it harmonious, but I'm surprised you've got issues with the *colour* ... and even more wondering about picking a colour from the *books*, which are deliberately vibrants and saturated to pop out against the background. If you can provide an example through an edit, that'd help me to understand what you suggest.

Maybe try to make the waves in the ink more like hills than spikes, since it's more like the liquid is slowly moving than actual waves.

Looks like I'll definitely have to try this: that's what everybody seems to mention.

[PypeBros]

vs .

There are interesting things, indeed. I also doubled the exposition of the "spikest" frame, as I think there might lack some pendulum in my original ink swamp. Of course, a doubled frame with some details animation while keeping the same shape would work better.

My brain seems to do some resistance and tries to convince me that the spiky one is best because those spikes better transmit the idea that falling in the ink means sudden death.

[yrizoud]

Have you considered making this tile scroll ? It would show that these waves are caused by a wind.

[PypeBros]

Have you considered making this tile scroll ? It would show that these waves are caused by a wind.

(*sigh*)

This all happens within a giant school. There isn't supposed to be enough wind to cause waves. I try to make it look like a dangerous pool, not like a wild sea. I want the kind of waves that appear when something periodically disturb still "water", such as drops or bubbles. There's magic involved in the game, so I can easily decide that what makes the ink disturbed comes from lost balance in the magical field.

Plus, making it scroll is a matter of programming, not something I'd do at the pixel art level.

hope that makes what I need help with clearer.

[yrizoud]

I intended the scrolling to be part of the tile graphics itself : a full animation cycle would include a 32 pixels movement so that it loops.
Of course it's only possible (and smooth) if there are 32 frames, or 16, 8 etc.

edit: like this

[ABC]

Oh I didn't read your what you said about the sponge before making my edit. I went for a blocky/geometric shape which I now find pretty damn ugly. The character designs I made were just for fun anyway.

Anyway, I'm not sure of what use this could be for you, the statement really was to try and make things simpler.

I'll agree that this is overly simple: the shading, and the perspective aren't every interesting but I think as a whole it's more coherent than what you have showed. The fact that I'm using 10 colours helps I guess, but I'm pretty sure you could get the same result with more colours.

I really tried to make the lines clean, since some of yours are a bit messy.

Also, I used the darkest colour of the table and sponge as the lightest colour of the background. I think this makes everything more coherent while still having the foreground flash like you wanted.

Bear with me, this has to be like my 5th attempt at pixel art. (the wood texture lines weren't cleaned out because I'm lazy).

Je ne savais pas non plus que tu étais francophone avant de lire ton blog.

[PypeBros]

Really interesting edit. It's much more simple that anything I'd have done myself, there's something that shines in it. Like if it was a real snapshot of a game on some 8-bit machine ... That's always a good thing to see through the eyes of someone else.

Having a more distant background will not work for all the levels, but your edit version convinced me that it could do a much better job that a soulless texture. I'll think about that.

<-pyp- :: -yrz->

@yrizoud: I haven't noticed your ink this morning. I must admit that there's something quite interesting in it. That "flow" effect it has, combined with the minor/major waves will certainly be interesting to study for location in my game where I have water/ink that "push" you in some direction.

[PypeBros]

An attempt to make the colours more harmonized. Not quite satisfied yet ... Am I at least going in the right direction ?

[PypeBros]

Tried a first rendition of inkjet.
I also tried an alternate colour for spongebop's eyes (on the right) to move away from it's current "monochromatic" look (on the left), but once on screen, it doesn't look so good 

Wish the zoom feature will come back soon. Holly Floppy! It is!
Any mistake you spot on inkjet's antialias ?

[PypeBros]

Well, I'm still fighting with the colour harmonization and the (quick & dirty, but now hand-drawn) background. The 5-bit-per-color-channel of the nintendo DS distort the vibrant colours I managed to have on 13/10, so I'm trying an alternate approach, using colours of a former background that worked fairly well with the "woods zone" and using different hues.

Still, I'm not happy with the result. the whole scene is too grey, cold and sad for the overal spirit of the game. What it does well, is to provide the feeling of a more confined space. ABC, I tried several backgrounds inspired by your edit, but they were all "too open" and did not worked for the library level I have in mind.

Any help is welcome at this point. I really need some colour guru's vision to calibrate BG and FG together into something that works well.