Tom and Jerry

[Dusty]

Thought I'd try my hand at making a platform for my old childhood favourite cartoon. Still really early and I had a lot of trouble making the sprite surprisingly since I'm no great sprite artist(or any artist). Anyways, I plan to do a lot with this because for some reason I enjoy this more than most. I plan to make a lot of variation, including a lot of different levels (outside, inside, on a piano???, on a river, goes on) and a lot of characters from the show.

Anyways, this is what I have so far:

NEWEST:


NEW:


OLD:

[ndchristie]

it all is very neet and clean, my only concern is that the mouse's face doesnt rally make me think of the cartoon character.  maybe try to copy the likeness more? no other cirts form me atm

[Xion]

You might want to try referencing the cartoon for some interesting stances for Jerry, in case you haven't already done so. I think his hands could be pulled awway from his body and his stance widened for a more ready look. For the tiles, It looks odd to have the grass pop up only around the crate. The crate could, IMO, use some basic perspective, having two sides visible instead of just the one that's seen now. Like | | | instead of |   |. The dirt in the ground could use some desaturation and, if I remember correctly from the cartoons, dirt was generally more towards the yellow/orange spectrum rather than your reddish brown.
Thiggidy-thiggidy-that's all, folks.

[Esker]

I definetly agree with Xion Night on the pose, it's way too generic.

I'm not sure if you'll agree with these edits (had a lot to drink soory) but I went and did a little edit giving him an outline and messed with the eyes to see if I could make him look more like Jerry. The lack of outline on the character was the first thing that struck me as throwing this off.



Just a question, which style are you going for with this? Are you aiming for the old 50's one (With IMO were the best) or the more recent (And crap) variations?

[Dusty]

Thanks for the comments.
About the tiles: I never liked the tiles to begin with, I was having a big debate with myself how to pull the tiles off without going out of my own league... I think I'll end up scrapping them and going with a more perspectived angle.
About the sprite: I agree with the face, I just couldn't find a way to pull it off to look more like him. And yes I'm going with the classic Tom and Jerry sprites, as I don't like the newer Tom and Jerry either(which is why I kept with flat colouring and no shading)... And I dunno about the outline, it was something else I was going to do but didn't know if I wanted to.

[Dusty]

Okay, I scrapped the old tiles completely(I didn't like them from the start) and now I'm really trying to capture the Tom and Jerry look in the tiles with pastel/painted look to them. This is pretty WIP and I have a lot to do, but just wanted some C&C on the new tiles before I really get into them.



EDIT: By the way, so there's no confusion, I intend for this to come off with parallax scrolling. The bottommost part of the image will scroll closest, the back part of the grass with scroll slower, and the house/fence and such will scroll the slowest, if even noticable.

[Faktablad]

There we go.  I'm glad you ditched the "straight on" Mario look and went for something a little less disorienting.  You really matched the style to the sprite, too.  Keep the perspective, however put the house and fence in perspective; Don't let them sit on the horizon line.  Move the horizon line higher, behind the house.

[Dusty]

Update:


I'm not sure about changing the horizon line, if I give more depth it may just be too much for my liking to fill in the gap between the foreground and background.
And no, I don't like the tree, but I just can't do anything better.

[Alex]

i know i did this without permission, i only tweaked colours. and i think i added like one doodad to the roof, whatever. i just think your colours are a little bland and need more spice. i think the image overall is very cute and such, but it needs stronger colour. i doubt i even accomplished that.

[Dusty]

Eh, well the colour choices weren't exactly my choice, though I did pick them out. I tried to relate to the cartoon's pastel and bright colours:

As someone mentioned above, the dirt always had a bright yellow tint to it, the grass too, had a bright colour, and most of the background had a soft colour to it. I will take some things into suggestion though and mess around with things.

[Kcilc]

Umm... I got a BIG RED STOP-SIGN. Instead of your update :-(

Anywells, the tree IMHO should have a bunch of little Bloches(for 'leaves') instead of the "leaf-dither" it has now.
And in case you don't know what I mean... I... madeanedit(excuse the poor attempt to make ambient lighting)

I added a shadow from the rock, and put some sloppy trees into the background.

Ugh, I made that tree too 'real' for this.

[Panda]

At the moment the whole thing hints the cartoon but doesnt resemble it well.
I would suggest you studying the style used on Tom and Jerry before you continue working on this.
Both character and enviroment wise.

You said you are using pastel colors following the cartoon stylistic choices, but yours dont have that "painted" feeling, your tiles just look washed out.
Look how the cartoon's dirt was made mixing yellow with green, brown and turquoise tones, look how the rocks were made mixing gray with purples and blues and yellows, look how the grass mixes blues and yellows.
You should experiment with colors rather than just using pastel tones.

As for Jerry, you should pay more attention to the shapes used on the structure of his body, use references (model sheets, cartoon screens, whatever), sketch them down on paper (or your computer) and try to pull the likeness.
I'm aware that making pictures that resemble cartoons in such a small space is hard, but you should try to go as close as you can.

I made a Jerry myself, hoping it would serve you as a reference, some details might have not been translated that well, but didnt have much time to work on it (20 mins?)


Anyway, looking forwards to more updates.
Good luck with it