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

[PypeBros]

Much much better make the red book with the same style.

I hesitate to do so. Could you please indicate the features that you prefer ? I'd like to keep the rounded shape of the laying books, but I'm not opposed to improve them if that can be done.

[Ai]

To me, the best feature of the new design is the depth created by the implication of overlapping areas.

[Facet]

Not sure why the upright spines are double width but I think staying with 32px would look better at first. Maybe turning the parallel lines of the reds into proper 'ribs' like the green 'uns would make a nice compromise.



I was having trouble at first trying to sketch with your palette, and I think it's primarily because you've a huge hue-shift but little difference in saturation. I toned down the cooler colours and added a nice desaturated mid-tone to effect as a bounce light; the strong highlights seem to indicate a reflective surface so I ran with it, also spaced the values out a bit.

The new mockup looks great but I do miss the sense of architecture of the previous, ie, bg appearing as part of the structure of the fg. Probably this is just a result of a quick asset test but I'd like to see the owl perched on something of the foreground and the architrave appear to support a platform.

[Decroded]

Cool edit.
I agree with the desaturation of cooler colours - especially when it comes to ambient sky lighting which seems to be much more realistic with a very desaturated blue, although it may be almost grey it still appears blue in comparison with the more saturated colours (recently discovered this myself).

IMO, this kind of selective saturation could be applied to some of the other objects so as not to interfere with the sprites themselves.
And where the light hits, ramp up the saturation too as this can help mark the edges of platforms.
Its a good idea to look for any tricks like this that can help mark out the playable/nonplayable areas, even out of the corner of your eye.

[moket]

This kind of perspective is quite hard to work with. In order to simulate depth, you could use contrast to make the perspective more obvious without compromising too much your style.
I tried to work on the books bindings, most of the time they consist on leaflets (not sure about the term here) knitted to a fabric tissue band, allowing the book to bend when opening it. Furthermore since they are old/used book you could have dents in the silhouette thanks to those "leaflets", instead of the clean curves.
The cover could be thicker considering the size of the volume.

[PypeBros]

Not sure why the upright spines are double width ...

hum ... because it worked  (compared to my earlier, unpublished attempts)
the reversed U you used for shadows is a nice way to convey cylindrical volume while keeping a straight shape.

I was having trouble at first trying to sketch with your palette, and I think it's primarily because you've a huge hue-shift but little difference in saturation. I toned down the cooler colours and added a nice desaturated mid-tone to effect as a bounce light; the strong highlights seem to indicate a reflective surface so I ran with it, also spaced the values out a bit.

Thanks for the tip. I'll see to what extend the Nintendo DS tolerates that (there are pretty few colours available when de-saturating things as result of the low # of bit per channel) without introducing rainbow artefacts.

The new mockup looks great but I do miss the sense of architecture of the previous, ie, bg appearing as part of the structure of the fg. Probably this is just a result of a quick asset test but I'd like to see the owl perched on something of the foreground and the architrave appear to support a platform.

It's indeed mostly a test, and an in-emulator screenshot rather than a mockup, but there will be a parallax scrolling between BG and FG, meaning that the illusion of "supporting something" may be working differently in different places. I should be able to tweak the alignment of the planes to produce interesting architecture effect, though. I'll try to do that better in the next run.

In order to simulate depth, you could use contrast to make the perspective more obvious without compromising too much your style.

A good tip. I have to figure out how to apply it with this tiled hardware in a smart way, but I'll definitely give it a try.

you could have dents in the silhouette thanks to those "leaflets", instead of the clean curves; The cover could be thicker considering the size of the volume.

point taken.That seems to vary from books to books, though.

[Facet]

Ah yeah! sweet combo edit Mocket.

I meant to say earlier, with the tilemap you had those ribs do work against the hard-won foreshortening effect; I don't think it's all that noticeable, but differently compressed variations wouldn't be so hard to do along with the kind of tonal tile variants of Mocket's; just so long as you have the space .

The illusion of "supporting something" may be working differently in different places. I should be able to tweak the alignment of the planes to produce interesting architecture effect, though.

Ah, I did think afterwards you might be doing offset scrolling, what jumped out at me most was the carving being behind (partially submerged in?) the ink.

[r1k]

I meant to say earlier, with the tilemap you had those ribs do work against the hard-won foreshortening effect; I don't think it's all that noticeable, but differently compressed variations wouldn't be so hard to do along with the kind of tonal tile variants of Mocket's; just so long as you have the space

I hadnt actually noticed that as a problem before, but now that you mention it I see it.  I did a quick edit to try it out just cause I wanted to see how it would look

I do think it helps, even though it is a very minor thing.

I think Mockets edit is a step in the right direction too.

[PypeBros]

There's one thing that keeps puzzling me with the proposed edits.


The ring-like structures have been given shadows on the right, suggesting that the light is coming from a large enough angle so that it highlights the rings, but still cast shadow. Imho, that's incompatible with the highlight on the edge of the book (blue-ified in the image above)



Well, anyway, I keep you updated as soon as I managed to make something convincing with your proposals. Thanks a lot.

[PypeBros]

Not sure why the upright spines are double width ...

I'm not 100% sure because you're using the English language at a level I've not mastered yet, but i suppose you mean the "stairs" effect of books cover, near the left and right extremes of the 32 px tile, aren't you ? If that's so, I'm trying to render the effect that the "dent" just between the spine cover and the front/rear covers. (see side view below or this picture)

I obviously overdid it and it should be smaller in comparison the rest of the book.