Pixel art principles in High res graphics?

[Seiseki]

Thanks, these were made yesterday though

The ones I had trouble with where planets, couldn't find the one looking the worst, because I've redone them twice now.
But this is sorta how it looked, luckily the craters sorta break up the shading on this one:

Old. (no perspective on the craters)


New, although different planet with soft shadow, soft gradient.


But since the entire theme of the game has changed over night (my own decision), I'm remaking the new ones too into stuff that aren't planets..

I started to realize how wrong my planet shading approach was when I saw angry birds space. (mobile games are excellent for inspiration when it comes to vector art)

[ptoing]

I fiddled a bit with the colours here and think this look better. Pure grey on metal is super boring, esp if you have a cartoony style, imo. Throwing in some blue shades works well.

I also agree that these are pretty nice and a good start for sure.



Also, if you want this thread moved to Low Spec Art let me know.

[Seiseki]

Sure, go ahead and move it!
And yeah, for some reason I tend to forget hue shifting when not doing pixel art..

These aren't supposed to be that colorful though, that's why they're mostly gray. To sorta blend in.
Not sure about the extreme bright white on the bolts and nuts though..

[blumunkee]

Not digging the color shifts in the metal. I think in an actual game you'd have enough colorful stuff besides the metal to keep the gradients monochrome. Maybe do a very subtle blue shift towards the darkest shades. Otherwise, Ptoing's color pop edit is .

[rikfuzz]

Flat monochrome 'ramps' look quite flat and strange (comparatively), especially when it's a neutral colour.  If I glance over to the phone on my desk I can immediately see a couple of light sources once which is more yellow (fluorescent lights) and a more blue light from the window.  If I took a photo and desaturated only the phone it'd look super weird.  So anyway, yeah, just wanted to make the case for ptoing's edit.

[Seiseki]

Wow, I have a hard time thinking in 3D..
Tried to imagine how the missile would look when it rotates.. These are just 3 frames, left middle right.. (I think I can get away with 5 frames since these missiles are kinda fast..)



edit: here is an animated mine!



Also it's hard to stick to one style, I find myself wanting to add more and more detail. (I've recently realized I can add scratches to everything, so that's what I'm doing, lol)
Actually had to remove some detail from this missile since at that resolution the vectors started looking like gradients and it just looked too real.

Also, should I add rust? It takes place in space so it wouldn't be realistic..
I'm sorta expecting that I'll have and retroactively add rust to everything later, haha.. Mostly because rust is awesome and would fit the theme.

I've realized how important it is to feel attached to the artstyle for what you're drawing.
At first it was just a goofy casual theme, but then we changed direction and now it's 2D borderlands in space, sorta.
And I've spent more time working on these graphics the past few days than I have the 2 past months.

[Ai]

Also, should I add rust? It takes place in space so it wouldn't be realistic..

In space, there are other contaminants. Space dust. Meteorites. Depending on the exoticness of the locale, it mightn't be too much of a stretch to have colored contaminants worked into things -- particularly moving things..

[Seiseki]

Mockup time!
I used to have a blue background but I had to tone down it down A LOT. Now it looks pretty gray and dull, which sorta is the setting I'm going for I guess..
Any kind of depth I tried to add to the background sorta made it look really cheap. Like cartoon characters pasted onto a photograph.
So any thoughts on how to make the background layer more interesting would be more than welcome!

[Facet]

I dunno how I missed the rest of this thread; looks great

I might have thought that great hue-shifting would have been one the first carry-over principles you'd apply . Individually elements looks great; really chunky & clear (although the single cog with no depth is a bit strange in context) It has to to be said though that there isn't much colour yet in that mockup, fg or bg. You need to pimp that space .

It looks like you've started including some gradient effects/transparency and stuff too so how 'bout some proper psychedelic space stuff in the background (perhaps kept to a certain smaller chroma range) & generally going a little brighter, more eye-catching in the foreground (glowing/coloured outlines, sparkly particles?) 

[Seiseki]

Facet, thanks!

As for the background, it used to be more vivid and had more contrast, but that made it look so extremely de-attached to the rest of the elements and the style.
I think I could add a lot of colorful nebulas and such, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd keep it flat and low contrast.

Here's the evolution of the first player ship. Left to right.



After the 2nd revision I realized that I really needed clear sources of inspiration and clear functionality for the ship. (function -> form)
Because it was way too hard to just make something randomly and the results were not very impressive.