[WIP ]Adventure Game mockup

[Jim16]

I spent today before work making this mock up so far.Usually I'd always try to finish pixelart by myself without any critique, but it always feels like my work is unrefined in my eyes. I also make silly mistakes that other users in the pixel art community pick up on straight away, which can be a bit embarrassed and frustrating when I have to go back change the whole damn thing . So I've decided to go straight to the source to make sure I fix the mistakes early on and make sure I reach the potential I'm capable of. I hope you guys can help me develop this, and I look forward to your critique.



As it is, its very rough, I haven't added all the HUD yet, but I guess its best I get everything also looking good before I move on.

The idea is to make a few mockup screenshots in different screen resolutions, the tile sizes don't change, but the HUD moves to facilitate the change. With that, each resolution will allow for different amounts of tiles on screen at once.  The resolution I'm working with now would be the minimum, so I work from that and up. Basically showing fake cross platform testing. I hope that makes sense.

I'll add more to this in the next day or two, as I've not really fleshed out the full idea yet. But in reality if it were a game it would allow for multiple layers of parallax scrolling, weapons/object pick up, basic enemy's and a whole lot of other fun.

[Cheetah]

Um...wow this looks great. The man's head in the cloud pops out a bit much, though it did take till my third look to notice it. This would probably work better horizontal. Great palette and I enjoy the vague but solid forms used here, everything has depth and dimension.

[Dr D]

Looks fantastic, I worry though that the character blends into the background and middle scenery way too much.

[AlexHW]

KEEP GOING!
looks really good.. It has a characteristic about it that is appealing because it is a bit loose looking in places. Kind of as if it is alive.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Weapons, enemies? Isn't this an adventure game? Just because of that, the screenshot is double appealing to me, because adventure games in this POV are quite rare.

I like the atmosphere the scene conveys. Quite powerful stuff. Not sure I like the face in the clouds, but yeah, I understand, this is in mockup/experimental stage. Also, maybe I would prefer hero's face to be less shadowed, but perhaps I would need to see this animated to know for sure.

[Jim16]

Um...wow this looks great. The man's head in the cloud pops out a bit much, though it did take till my third look to notice it. This would probably work better horizontal. Great palette and I enjoy the vague but solid forms used here, everything has depth and dimension.

Thanks man. Yeah I agree, it looks terrible. While making this I recalled my friend saying I always had my head in the clouds, because I used to day dream a hell of a lot. I drew that and then thought, why not play with the shape of the clouds to suggest different everyday objects and living things. You know, like when you look up at the clouds and you laugh because it looked like a sheep, or boobs dependant on how vivid your imagination is, aha. Anyway, it turns out I suck at making clouds :/ So I guess I'm going to have to do a study into it soonish.

Looks fantastic, I worry though that the character blends into the background and middle scenery way too much.

Yeah, he does. I also think it doesn't help that there is a lot of green in this scene and he has a green jumper on. I'll keep working on the character, maybe use a bit of red, which I've used scarcely. If that doesn't work I'll have to work on the background, which might be to high in value, hopefully by toning it down the foreground will stand out a bit more.

KEEP GOING!
looks really good.. It has a characteristic about it that is appealing because it is a bit loose looking in places. Kind of as if it is alive.

I definitely will in my spare time I've been working 10 hour days at work recently and then fitting in 10 miles of running a day. But I make time to work on this, even if it means I'm making slow progress.  Thanks for the encouragement.

Weapons, enemies? Isn't this an adventure game? Just because of that, the screenshot is double appealing to me, because adventure games in this POV are quite rare.

I like the atmosphere the scene conveys. Quite powerful stuff. Not sure I like the face in the clouds, but yeah, I understand, this is in mockup/experimental stage. Also, maybe I would prefer hero's face to be less shadowed, but perhaps I would need to see this animated to know for sure.

It definitely is an adventure game, but what is an adventure without obstacles? I use the word enemies loosely though, enemies in this instance would be obstacles like a wild bear, or a bee hive, or an angry town you've pissed off while on your adventure. I like a bit of fight in an adventure game, otherwise it just feels like a stroll in the park, which would not be an adventure legends are made of. haha Weapons however are just objects you'd pick up along the way and discard when used. For example, you could pick up a stick and later used it to scare away bear :/ Bears aren't scared of sticks, but luckily for you, you've also picked up flint and have used it to make a fire at the end of your stick. Yeah, this bear is F***ing scared of fire. Then the player would carry on and progress.

And thanks guys, I'll get straight to working on all of your suggestions.


Here's an update I worked on yesterday, That thing in the top right corner is part of the HUD. Its  supposed to be the bag strap with badges on it, the badges would represent the players health, and badges would be able to be earned throughout the game. I did have hearts on the badges, but every game uses hearts. So I'll have a look at scout badges and see what I can use to represent "health" or would "survival" be better? I like the idea of having badges to show if you are surviving, rather than dying.

I also have another sketch in the works that I've been working on and I'll post that soon, when it doesn't look too terrible.

[Tourist]

The individual elements are nice.  The composition is weak.

I suggest that the basic setup of a prominent character in the foreground and a larger scrolling background is the same as 2d cartoons.  The primary tools they use are:

• Framing elements to break up the background and suggest where important interactions take place.
• Strong depth cues to suggest a large space even if the character never walks depth-wise into the screen.
• Visual priority to keep the viewer focused on the interactive bits rather than parts of the backdrop.  This is somewhat less important than the first two.
• Linear elements in the background point along the lines of action, giving subtle cues about what is going to happen next, or where the hero is going to go next.  This might not be all that important for an interactive game if the hero is expected to return to the same location multiple times.

Looking at your image, I see problems.  Placing the background elements (trees, distant mountains) at the same height as the hero is visually confusing - no framing elements, no sense of depth.  Giving the distant trees a similar value range as the hero also kills a lot of the sense of depth, although the new red shirt means he no longer looks like a tree.  Having a dark foreground and a dark saturated background is a confusing visual priority.  It's just a mess.

So here is a link to a collection of cartoon backgrounds.  I recommend taking a look at anything from Brother Bear, and I saw a relevant Donald Duck background too.  Or just browse the site for inspiration.   It's not just nice art, but understanding why these work as backgrounds will be useful to your project.

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/

Here is the link filtered for the Brother Bear stuff.   Probably the most directly relevant.
http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/search/label/BROTHER%20BEAR

Hope this helps,
Tourist

[Dr D]

Thanks for those links, Tourist.

I never realized some of those cartoon backgrounds were so beautiful. Especially the Brother Bear stuff.

[Jim16]

Hi,  I never intended to be away from this as long as I have been, and I do apologise. My reason, put short and sweet, is part time work turned full time hours, and more. I didn't expect to have no time on my hands, which has thrown off all my plans, pixel art aside. So yeah, sob story over, but on the bright side I'm looking forward to a nice hefty pay check.

Tourist, thanks for that awesome post! It's put a lot of things into perspective. I really have no idea what I'm doing. And those images are so inspirational aswell as informative. So much to learn 

Framing elements to break up the background and suggest where important interactions take place.

I've tried framing certain elements as you suggested, Its tougher than I thought, probably because from the start, the composition I roughed out was poor. I didn't help myself there, and you've given me a few things I'll have to work on in my all my work.

Strong depth cues to suggest a large space even if the character never walks depth-wise into the screen.

I'm still working on this, I've roughed some things into the foreground and I've worked on the background to try and suggest depth. I'm not sure I've achieved this, and I think I'll work more on the transition from foreground to the background right now. It just looks odd, and I don't think having the character where it is now helps either.

Linear elements in the background point along the lines of action, giving subtle cues about what is going to happen next, or where the hero is going to go next.

I'm not to sure how to go about doing this, but I have tried to make sure the path is more prominent than before, so that the player knows what the character can/can't interact with. It's not great yet, but still a work in progress.

I've changed the values around a lot to make everything easier to read, specifically the character sprite. I hope this shows. The most important thing though is that even after doing a lot of work on this today, I can still see what needs a lot of work. Here's the mockup, somewhat revised.

->

Again, thanks for that post, very, very helpful.

[NaCl]

Hey Jim, this is looking great! Lot's of atmosphere, I'm impressed. I especially like the mountains in the back, I'm gonna study those.

My main problem is that it doesn't quite have that pop, or vividness. Basically I think the colors are a bit washed out. Here is an edit on the colors. I also changed the composition a bit. Having a dark sky above and blackness below creates a bit of a "band" in the middle. In yours I think the sky is not dark enough to make this obvious.



Anyway, good work.