AuthorTopic: House Chipset  (Read 10865 times)

Offline Zizka

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House Chipset

on: May 10, 2012, 08:39:44 pm
It might be too early to show what I got but...




I'd like to know if you think the element clash with one another. If you can't tell this way, I'll just make a mockup, no problem. I'm thinking this might be looking to repetitive.

Offline ptoing

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #1 on: May 10, 2012, 10:45:58 pm
The scale is a bit weird. The chair is massive compared to everything else. Or everything else is tiny.
Try to keep in mind how the objects would size up in relation to a person and try to make them consistently in scale.

The shading also is a bit inconsistent in the outlines. What I mean is that the table for example is darker than the closet and drawer but the outlines are lighter.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Cheetah

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #2 on: May 11, 2012, 05:54:38 pm
I liked the furniture, though I agree with the C&C above. I'm working on an oblique perspective game and wanted to test out to see how these would look in that perspective because I like the general style. Just thought I would share.


Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #3 on: June 05, 2012, 11:47:19 am
@Cheetah: Looks nice, although that closet is certainly deep!  ;D

Some new stuff, I've tried to make things bigger:

Cardbox


Save point (yeah, it's for a game):


Fridge (ref.: Mother 3)


TV:


I like the way they look in their Earthboundesque simplicity but on the other hand I don't really feel challenged anymore. Maybe if you could provide suggestions to make it more of a challenge?

Offline Seiseki

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #4 on: June 05, 2012, 08:55:28 pm
For the fridge, try doing some rounded corners by placing darker pixels in the corners, also the fridge could use a highlight to make it look glossy.
For the cardboard box you should really try to make it look more interesting by adding duct tape or something, or if it's slightly opened.

I really dig the style of the first objects you drew!
But the rest lacks that omph and pop that those first ones have.

Offline Cupcake

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #5 on: June 05, 2012, 08:57:47 pm
I like the TV! I feel like the other two new objects are missing something, though.

If you're going for sort of a Mother 3 style, let's consider some reference images...




While an individual object in the scene may be simple, each one tends to have some sort of small detail to it, or a more interesting angle than simply straight-on.

Anyway, an edit:

Seiseki came up with the same idea as I had while I was working on this!  :) I dropped the fridge legs because they don't really work at this angle, tried to give the doors more of a feeling of thickness, and added packing tape to the box to make it more interesting.
I notice these are at a different scale from your first items, did you decide to work bigger?

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #6 on: June 06, 2012, 12:14:25 am
Thanks to you both for the ideas.

Haha! The box looks much better, congrats!

I am working bigger, yes. I noticed my character was too big for the furniture:



(yeah, this needs a good makeover too).

I forgot a couple of things acutally:



The carpet looks really bland. I've tried numerous time to texturize it but it didn't looked good.

A decorative Japanese scroll:


The floor I'm happy with (although I'm certainly open to criticism):


Some table:


Some more furniture:
« Last Edit: June 06, 2012, 12:20:16 am by Zizka »

Offline Corinthian Baby

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #7 on: June 06, 2012, 01:03:10 am
You've posted a bunch of disparate elements which look alright in regards to the style you're imitating, but we haven't seen how these tiles collide together to give us a cohesive impression of a room.

For example, you haven't posted any walls yet. I'd say the most important part about creating an interior, is nailing down the walls, ceiling and floor tiles. Make sure they have an established priority that imply planes of depth. More importantly, they have to mesh with the character and maintains a relationship in which the main character is easily readable, but doesn't stick out or blend in too much.

One approach to doing this is to have a character with a color that stands out, which your yellowish brown certainly does. However, you have to make sure your floors, (right now the wooden one is pretty bright) doesn't grab more attention than the character, or any of the sprite level. For this reason it would be beneficial to have the floors relatively low contrast, I would change the color that it is now to maybe that darker shade of brown.

Offline Cupcake

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #8 on: June 06, 2012, 02:28:54 am
Going off of what you have here and what you had from your forest tileset, I have to agree with Corinthian Baby. The individual pieces you're coming up with each look fine on their own, but you're not making things that are meant to be used on their own. You're making smaller components of a larger scene, and it'll help you if you use a mock-up of some sort from the start.

Here's a quick mock-up:

I darkened the wood floor, added some very lazy walls, and used my edited box/fridge. (Just because I had them transparent already.)

If you have a mock-up, you notice things that aren't immediately obvious when you're working on something in isolation: the wood floor is a little too busy compared to the other relatively simple items, and the person gets lost against it. The scale feels off on the dresser and table.

I actually think the carpet is fine as it is, if you're going for a clean, cartoony style.

Offline Ashbad

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #9 on: June 06, 2012, 11:43:40 am
I think that for the amount of detail you have right now, that the room needs to shrink significantly in size for it to really be interesting to the player.  In addition, it needs to be smaller because in real life, the size of the person compared to the size of the room would make that room really huge.  And, really empty.  That rug alone would be the largest rug I would have ever seen in my lifetime.  While designing an environment to be lifelike-proportional doesn't usually work out well in cartoony styled games like this seems to be (a more realistic size for the room would be about 1/4 the size it is now), one should also not make the environment huge, especially if it's that lacking of detail.  Maybe shrink it to half the size?  That way it's also easier to make it more interesting with less props in the environment.

On that topic, the fridge/drawers look about the right size, but those boxes and that scroll are really huge.  

EDIT: just noticed that mockup wasn't by the OP :P my bad then.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2012, 12:06:16 pm by Ashbad »

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #10 on: June 07, 2012, 01:30:21 am
Yeah, you're right about the mockup. Actually, I was too lazy to actually do one even though it would take like 5 minutes.

So:

Those are two walls I did just now. I'll resize the other pieces to make it ''fit''. I'll also redo the character sprite.

My favorite:


My second choice:


Not sure if walls need more texture... I wanted to give them a ''dirty'' look.

And a couch, I like the way it looks and I didn't use any reference either, I'm quite proud of it!  :crazy: (of course let me know if there's something wrong with it  :y:)




Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #11 on: June 07, 2012, 02:08:44 pm
I redid the detective:



And a door:



I'll do a mockup next time.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #12 on: June 07, 2012, 04:27:57 pm
The new detective looks like he'd belong in a sidescroller and not a 3/4 rpg.
You need to show more of his shoulders and the top of his head.

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #13 on: June 07, 2012, 10:20:54 pm
Ok, thanks Seiseki, I've tweaked it. Any better?



Loads of elements are too small  :o. Well, ptoing did tell me at the beginning, oh well, live and learn. I'll need to fix the other elements and make them bigger. Any other comments.

Offline Cupcake

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #14 on: June 07, 2012, 11:20:55 pm
The high-contrast wallpaper is really distracting - it catches the eye more than anything else in the scene, which is (generally) not what you want the backdrop to do. I'd change it so it's all a solid color, or the stripes are less contrasted.
Shading on the door doesn't seem to fit in with everything else.

Still, this is coming along quite nicely! Some things are too small still, sure, but you're improving the scale.

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #15 on: June 08, 2012, 05:16:17 pm
I'll try something else for the wall.

What's wrong with the floor exactly? Is it too dark? Not dark enough? Too saturated? I'm not sure what the issue is ???.

If you could explain and give an example as to what the issue with the door is, that would be very helpful. Maybe it would make me understand how shading and uniformity works better.

But anyway, meanwhile, I'll continue working on the scale of the other elements.

Offline Cupcake

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #16 on: June 08, 2012, 08:43:08 pm
The floor is just too busy as it is, I'm having trouble pinpointing the exact issue but I find it visually distracting.
I did an edit to try to work out what exactly was bugging me:


or a thicker doorframe, which looks better I think


* Changed shading on door p. much entirely: same general pattern is intact but I changed it from indentations to beveled squares, referencing my own door :P Not sure what you were aiming for with the doorknob so I just made it round.
* Made planks in floor larger, added another shade to them: I think this scale for the planks just fits the other objects better, and it's less visually distracting
* Added quick shadows just to see how they'd look - I know you haven't added them in yet, no rush!
* Added frame around door: doors do have a frame, and it helps it feel more like part of the scene instead of a decal on the wall. You could do a smaller wooden frame around the door (matching the door colors) if you wanted something more easily reusable with different walls, depending on how you want to handle the frame.
* Tweaked colors in wardrobe to fit in better with door since they're both wood, not all that necessary but you've got a weird greyish-brown shade in there that doesn't seem to serve much purpose so I got rid of it

Offline Dr D

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #17 on: June 08, 2012, 10:12:40 pm
I think there is too much space between the planks in your edit Cupcake, at least horizontally. Right now, you can see the side of the plank AND a dark line separating it from the next plank.

It makes it look like they're really far apart or stacked on top of each other. If you were to look at it from the side, there'd be about 3-4 pixels of just space between them. You could break your toe in that.  :blind:

This is for the edit, but Zizka's planks do it too. I feel like there should be less space between each plank. I have wooden floors and my planks hardly even have space between them. Maybe you could use a line of highlight on one edge of the planks, too, rather than having a black outline around all of it. Just a suggestion.

Btw, I really do like your edits and the planks, Cupcake. Just thought I'd comment on that.

Offline Ashbad

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #18 on: June 08, 2012, 10:17:15 pm
Cupcake, did a quick edit upon your edit:



I found that one thing that was personally distracting me with the floor (and the walls/carpet/door somewhat) was that they're pretty bright and everything just seems to jump out at you.  So I just darkened it a slight bit/desat'd it slightly.  The green of the wall just drew my attention to it pretty quickly. Same with the pretty bright floor.  And the dark outline in between the door and the frame seemed slightly out of place, so I used a dark color from the floor instead, which was a lighter color.

Just what I thought at a first glance, though.

Offline Cupcake

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #19 on: June 09, 2012, 12:51:20 am
Dr D's advice is spot-on! I'll be honest, I've never lived in a house with wooden flooring and I'm unused to it, so I wasn't thinking very hard about it. It looks a lot better this way. I went ahead and edited my edit to make sure:



Varying degrees of more flatness/closeness on the planks. The one with the highlight feels as if it fits best to me.

Ashbad, your palette edit isn't bad but it does bring the values closer together. If you look at it in grayscale, the furniture all blends in a bit with the floor. Depending on what look Zizka is aiming for this isn't necessarily bad, but it's something to keep in mind.

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #20 on: June 09, 2012, 01:41:16 pm
Wow, guys, thanks for the edits. Thank you so much Cupcake, I really do appreciate it :y:. It kind of gives me back some motivation to really work on this (I kind of got bummed to have to rescale everything).

There's some things I'm not sure about however. For instance some random pixels on the planks to imitate wood texture. I have to give it a good look and figure which one I like best. The way I represented wood before is actually from Earthbound. Dr D's suggestion about the floor is really good however, I prefer the tight spaces between the planks.

I think I'll go with a wooden frame for the door, I'll let you know what it looks like.

I prefered my old door however, I find the new version a bit barren. There's actually a keyhole underneath the handle in my version  :crazy:.

Not too sure if the darker green shade should got on top of the door, I figured I'd put it there to represent filth.

There are still some things in my old version which bother me. For instead the armoire is too short and I feel that the color in the chair are too saturated compared to say, the box.

Alright, back to the drawing board for me ;).

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #21 on: June 16, 2012, 08:35:05 pm
Ok, I've tweaked the floor a bit, made an armchair, a little ''table'' next to it, added a switch, added some wallpaper, added a door frame. The gun is the inventory system of the game.

Anything wrong?

Offline Cage

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #22 on: June 16, 2012, 08:51:14 pm
A bit of inconsequence I'd say ;)

The fridge lacks the edge highlight that the table an armchair have, plus the armchair doesn't have the black outline the other objects have - personally I'd either ditch the black outline totally, or just the background, leaving the outline on the character (something that cartoon animation does often)

I'd change the colours on the door knob, most likely it's supposed to be gold, or brass, but it's piss yellow right now ;)

Character's not bad, head seems to be a bit too wide, and the hands should be 1-2 pixels longer I think. He has the problem of the "selective" black outline too - I'd have the whole character outlined (but no outlines "inside" him) or without outline at all.

Hope this helps ;)

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #23 on: June 17, 2012, 02:33:05 am
It really does help.

Quote
The fridge lacks the edge highlight that the table an armchair have, plus the armchair doesn't have the black outline the other objects have

Fixed.

Quote
personally I'd either ditch the black outline totally, or just the background, leaving the outline on the character (something that cartoon animation does often)

Do you mean that I shouldn't use an outline for anything except for the character or that I should only use a black outline for the character? Either way, I've ditched the black outline for everything except the character.

Quote
I'd change the colours on the door knob, most likely it's supposed to be gold, or brass, but it's piss yellow right now

Thank you, fixed.

Quote
Character's not bad, head seems to be a bit too wide, and the hands should be 1-2 pixels longer I think. He has the problem of the "selective" black outline too - I'd have the whole character outlined (but no outlines "inside" him) or without outline at all.

Head is fixed, so are the arms and the outline.

Here's the new version:
Before:
after:

Anything wrong? I'll take redo it as many times as necessary.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 02:34:54 am by Zizka »

Offline Cage

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #24 on: June 17, 2012, 03:55:44 pm
Do you mean that I shouldn't use an outline for anything except for the character or that I should only use a black outline for the character?

I've meant you can choose either, with the decision left to you ;)



Here's a minor, quick and dirty edit how can you make some of the stuff more interesting or more 3d.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 04:45:51 pm by Cage »

Offline Zizka

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Re: House Chipset

Reply #25 on: July 09, 2012, 10:03:13 pm
I like what you did with the armchair there, it looks great.

A toilet:

(didn't manage to replace the green for a transparent color for some reason).


And a bed, this is what I'd like most input about because right now it's not good enough for me: