GR#096 - 32x32 RPG Tiles

[Helm]

I'm no animation expert, but just centering the figure with the head as a node made some difference, I think
centered - original
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[Facet]

Hi Sharm, you've obviously put a lot of effort into these tiles and it shows  , lovely polish on the trees and dirt tiles. Everything here is quite conventional but no less pretty for it.

Some stuff you could improve on -

The water is a very odd colour at the moment and the sparkling animation pretty rudimentary. Think about what a stream might look like in this situation in a photograph. Given the brightness of the scene and also the perspective, a slow-moving stream would be reflective and therefore take on the blue of the sky.

The grass looks more like wallpaper presently; there's no real attempt at shading. Treat it more like you have the foliage and It'd look miles better.

More minor stuff; no foreshortening or overlap on the bare tree making it look flat, try to limit the amount of distracting detail in your shadows and a greater variety of foliage (small trees, flowers etc.) would be nice.

I've loosely painted on most of my suggestions here.



Also thatch would looks lovely here

[Sharm]

Wow, I've got lots and lots of work to do, I guess I'll just have to work on it one critique at a time.  This is why I love coming here, nobody lets me rest on my laurels!    Yesterday and today I did the thatch and added some details on the house.  If anyone has suggestions on how to make the stucco look more like stucco without making it look over processed, I'd like to hear it.



jams0988: I'll be working on that arm movement soon, but before I did, I wanted to mention that as a girl I can't really use myself as a reference for a guy's walk.  However, I did specifically watch a lot of guys walking yesterday and paid careful attention to the way their arms and shoulders moved (the shoulders do move, BTW) and I've got a great photo reference I'll be using too.  Hopefully I'll be able to address all your concerns.

Helm: I don't know how I missed that.  Thank you.

Facet: That's beautiful, thanks for the edit.  I'll try to take what I can from it, though I do admit I don't have a clue how I would make the grass, shadows or water tile efficiently.  I've been looking at your edit from the chip16 thread for ideas on how to do the grass.  Do you know of any examples of what you'd be going for as an alternative to wallpaper grass?

[Sharm]

Updated animation

I was more sick than I realized when I did the arm animation the first time, this is way better and wasn't as hard to do.  There's some oddness with the shading that makes it look all noodley at the forearms, but I want to do flowers now.

[Facet]

The animation's nice & smooth, I'll let someone better informed critique but I will say that we all walk pretty much the same, with certain nuances.

Mocking-up nice looking stuff is a lot easier than trying to figure out nice tiling , It's bound to be hard work without templates and will doubtless necessitate a certain amount of trial & error but give it a go and you'll definitely 'level up' somewhat, whatever the result.

My quick attempt at grass was in the bottom left of the edit, although it did end up quite voluminous. I'd try and find a different solution than what Chris is doing in the other thread.

Salient points for the grass -

• Less contrast in order to keep it in the background.
• Indicate different heights with patches of light and shade including areas of overlap between mounds/clumps
• More variety (alternate tiles) in general

I can't think of any specific examples for the grass but have a look at Nathan Christie's PJ Gallery for smart foliage.
http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/3171.htm

Looking forward to the flowers.




 

[jams0988]

"(the shoulders do move, BTW)" ---> takes out the shoulder movement I was talking about.
Well, whatever. Either way, it's looking much better now, hahah. Good work. =)

Also, I like your original water more than Facet's....even though Facet's looks nice, I think it clashes a bit with the rest of your set. It might be mostly the color...it looks a bit too bright and saturated to me. I pushed the colors in Facet's edit more towards something like you had in your original water:

*Shrug* I dunno, to me, it feels like it fits better with the tile set's atmosphere. I imagined it as kind of a dark bog/forested area, though, so Facet's edit might be closer to what you want, depending on what you're trying to do with the set. I *still* like your original water the best, though, even with the color changes. Your water just looks so muddy and murky! Plus, your stream is being viewed from a pretty high angle, so I don't think it'd be all that reflective. From what I know, the closer you get to viewing water from a 90 degree angle, the more you can see through it. The lower the angle you view it at, the more reflective it looks. I'm no water/math/physics expert, but I always imagined this is because light hitting water head on at a 90 degree angle has a higher chance of piercing the water (thus, hitting the dirt at the bottom of your stream before bouncing back into your eyes) whereas light hitting the water at steeper angles will ricochet off of it more, making the water look more reflective.

I have no idea if my "science" is correct, but that's how it's always seemed to me, heheh!

[Sharm]

Yeah, I'm a hypocrite.    I took out the front back motion because I realized it happened more with heavier guys, my guy here isn't big enough.  The up down is there though.

I was going for muddy water with my stream, though Facet's probably right that I need more reflection than that.  I've got an idea for something that might work as a compromise, I'll try to work on it tomorrow and put it up with additional greenery.

Facet, I checked out the link and found what I think you were talking about.  It's no wonder you like that tile set, there are at least 8 different tiles all for things that could be considered grass!  That's not really what I was going for here, I'd like something that uses at most 3 center tiles that can all use the same edge, otherwise I'll never be done with it.  I'll have to do some thinking for a while, see if I can figure out a way to make it look more organic without sacrificing functionality.

[Helm]

again, not an animation expert but please consider a 'pendulum motion' for the arm. Right now you've got it moving from idle-pose arm-at-sides to an extension that seems almost as if he wants to pick something up at crotch-height. Look at people walking again and you'll note that the arms have a pretty even pendulum motion without a *lot* of lift at the extremes.

[ErekT]

I wanted to mention that as a girl I can't really use myself as a reference for a guy's walk.

Sure you can. I use Jams0988's approach all the time; for fat people, skinny people, men, women, children, even animals. Think of animation as a kind of acting. Imagine you are whatever it is you want to animate. Try to feel their personality and act out the way you feel it would be natural for them to move, either in front of a mirror or in your head.

[Arachne]

"(the shoulders do move, BTW)" ---> takes out the shoulder movement I was talking about.
Well, whatever. Either way, it's looking much better now, hahah. Good work. =)

Also, I like your original water more than Facet's....even though Facet's looks nice, I think it clashes a bit with the rest of your set. It might be mostly the color...it looks a bit too bright and saturated to me. I pushed the colors in Facet's edit more towards something like you had in your original water:

*Shrug* I dunno, to me, it feels like it fits better with the tile set's atmosphere. I imagined it as kind of a dark bog/forested area, though, so Facet's edit might be closer to what you want, depending on what you're trying to do with the set. I *still* like your original water the best, though, even with the color changes. Your water just looks so muddy and murky! Plus, your stream is being viewed from a pretty high angle, so I don't think it'd be all that reflective. From what I know, the closer you get to viewing water from a 90 degree angle, the more you can see through it. The lower the angle you view it at, the more reflective it looks. I'm no water/math/physics expert, but I always imagined this is because light hitting water head on at a 90 degree angle has a higher chance of piercing the water (thus, hitting the dirt at the bottom of your stream before bouncing back into your eyes) whereas light hitting the water at steeper angles will ricochet off of it more, making the water look more reflective.

I have no idea if my "science" is correct, but that's how it's always seemed to me, heheh!

Yeah, think the purple colored water looks better.

You're right about the reflection in that it'll vary with the viewing angle. It's called the Fresnel effect, and I found a video example which might be helpful. Find the point where the angle matches the angle of the scene and see what amount of reflection is needed from that, maybe? But I think it will be hard to pull off simply because it's hard to factor in all the things that would be reflected in the water with 2D art, since the sprite/tile viewed from below instead of above can drastically change what it looks like.

A solution could be to add some current to the water which obscures and fragments the reflections enough that you can't look at it in combination with the scenery and think something looks off.