Tile Practice

[Fisharto]

Greetings,



I just started to learn pixel art. Like I am curious to know what I can create when I continue to evolve. So if you have any kind of tips/advices/tutorials to share, then feel free to do so.



Here is a wood tile that I tried to make today:



64 x 64



128 x 128



256 x 256



 
 

[Ymedron]

I can kinda predict this one was done based on that one person's tutorial? The one who makes really shiny sprites..?

The planks feel too short to me, and the seam between the planks is placed a bit too close together, creating large vertical lines. You could make another variant tile so you can have longer planks than one tile's lenght.

Making the top border shiny also indicates that either this is a wall or that the planks all poke out individually. It might be better to just detail with darker color on floortiles.

The colors are a bit saturated, might make a choking feeling if used in a game. But the contrast is good, it's not distractingly detailed nor too faint.

[Pizza Tom]

Without any other context (like, say, a character standing on it) your wood actually appears to be a brick wall.

To help with that you might want to try adding some wood grain. I know it can be difficult at this size, but with the wood panels as large as they are that shouldn't be a problem. I concur with Ymedron about removing the highlight.

In this house from Minish Cap, you can see they actually left most of the floor bare, but the few details they have imply that it's wood and your mind fills in the rest.

http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/lozminish/sheet/6447

If you're set on keeping the planks outlined, here's another example from Harvest Moon. Here they also staggered the planks so they don't line up as neatly, which helps to hide the tile effect.

http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/hmmfomt/sheet/8102

[Fisharto]

Without any other context (like, say, a character standing on it) your wood actually appears to be a brick wall.

To help with that you might want to try adding some wood grain. I know it can be difficult at this size, but with the wood panels as large as they are that shouldn't be a problem. I concur with Ymedron about removing the highlight.

In this house from Minish Cap, you can see they actually left most of the floor bare, but the few details they have imply that it's wood and your mind fills in the rest.

http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/lozminish/sheet/6447

If you're set on keeping the planks outlined, here's another example from Harvest Moon. Here they also staggered the planks so they don't line up as neatly, which helps to hide the tile effect.

http://spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/hmmfomt/sheet/8102

Thanks for the comment. Somehow I have a hard time seeing where I should actually place the colors. Like, when I made that one, I didn't know where to put the colors. So I decided to pick a spot where the lighting source would be and started from there.

Although if you have any other tips on how to see where you should place colors then that would  be great.   

I can kinda predict this one was done based on that one person's tutorial? The one who makes really shiny sprites..?

The planks feel too short to me, and the seam between the planks is placed a bit too close together, creating large vertical lines. You could make another variant tile so you can have longer planks than one tile's lenght.

Making the top border shiny also indicates that either this is a wall or that the planks all poke out individually. It might be better to just detail with darker color on floortiles.

The colors are a bit saturated, might make a choking feeling if used in a game. But the contrast is good, it's not distractingly detailed nor too faint.

If you're referring to this , http://kiwinuptuo.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Tutorial-Textures-203459613 then yes. I started to read that in order to get a general idea from where I should go. But as mentioned, any other tips are welcome.

Thanks for the advice!

[tim]

You need more "noise" in your texture to make it interesting and more recognizable.
However simple noise doesn't work in pixel art, so make sure to cluster the pixels together
in small packs so they create interesting shapes.

My take - 5 min edit - 4 colors :


Tiled :


I shifted the planks more randomly to make the tiling less obvious.
I also made some planks darker than others. It helps breaking the tiling and
making the whole floor richer and more interesting.
It's still too noisy for me, but I don't have the time to make a clean version.



Last detail : make sure to save your image to .gif or .png, not .jpg, because JPEG compression is not appropriate
for pixel art, there is an actual loss on the colors. Check the color artifacts on this zoom :

[Cyangmou]

I read the tiles first as vertical wall bricks. The main problem is that the texture is to clean and the pattern also reads like a brick wall.
I second what Tim said

I dunno what you intend, but I can't imagine that you learn a lot from redrawing a texture from a tutorial and post it here for critique while all the critical choices were done by the person who created the tutorial. If you really want to learn something you should create your own challenge.

[Pix3M]

Thanks for the comment. Somehow I have a hard time seeing where I should actually place the colors. Like, when I made that one, I didn't know where to put the colors. So I decided to pick a spot where the lighting source would be and started from there.

Although if you have any other tips on how to see where you should place colors then that would  be great.   

Here's the fun part about art that tutorials often don't really tell you. If you are unsure about how to draw something, see where a reference could take you. Look at a photo reference of a wood texture or something and at least apply what you observe about what a wood texture looks like. If you're not looking at a reference, you are kind of taking a risk when you don't "remember" what a wood floor looks like.

[Fisharto]

You need more "noise" in your texture to make it interesting and more recognizable.
However simple noise doesn't work in pixel art, so make sure to cluster the pixels together
in small packs so they create interesting shapes.

My take - 5 min edit - 4 colors :


Tiled :


I shifted the planks more randomly to make the tiling less obvious.
I also made some planks darker than others. It helps breaking the tiling and
making the whole floor richer and more interesting.
It's still too noisy for me, but I don't have the time to make a clean version.



Last detail : make sure to save your image to .gif or .png, not .jpg, because JPEG compression is not appropriate
for pixel art, there is an actual loss on the colors. Check the color artifacts on this zoom :

Thank you for the quick edit. Even if it was 5 minutes, it still shows what you wanted to tell me. So I really appreciate it.

I read the tiles first as vertical wall bricks. The main problem is that the texture is to clean and the pattern also reads like a brick wall.
I second what Tim said

I dunno what you intend, but I can't imagine that you learn a lot from redrawing a texture from a tutorial and post it here for critique while all the critical choices were done by the person who created the tutorial. If you really want to learn something you should create your own challenge.

Didn't actually redraw the tutorial, but rather read the tutorial to get the basic idea of what textures is about. But even so thank you for your advice.

Thanks for the comment. Somehow I have a hard time seeing where I should actually place the colors. Like, when I made that one, I didn't know where to put the colors. So I decided to pick a spot where the lighting source would be and started from there.

Although if you have any other tips on how to see where you should place colors then that would  be great.   

Here's the fun part about art that tutorials often don't really tell you. If you are unsure about how to draw something, see where a reference could take you. Look at a photo reference of a wood texture or something and at least apply what you observe about what a wood texture looks like. If you're not looking at a reference, you are kind of taking a risk when you don't "remember" what a wood floor looks like.

Yea. It seems I do indeed lack the basic fundamental of what a wood should look like. After all, even for drawing you would need to use reference. So thanks for mention that again.



I really appreciate everyone's comments, thank you! I will be posting my progresses on each Sundays.

[Fisharto]

After using a wood texture (referrence), I started to get how to do the texture on the wood. But I believe the wood lacks contrast? Right?









Let me know, thanks

[AzKai]

Hi there.

I see someone else is using Kiwinuptuo's advice?

Tutorials are awesome for beginning to understand how certain things work or should come together, however; like other's have suggested, it alone won't teach you everything about one subject.

A few things I notice about the new planks you posted:

You've now desaturated some of the planks so much that the wood doesn't even look like wood anymore (at least to me). Even dead wood, in comparison to the more saturated 'alive' wood next to it, would have a little more color. Tim showed before that he darkened some of your planks and I feel like maybe that was the same thing you are trying to do here. There's one major difference (besides the color choices): keep in mind human brains will always try to recognize patterns. In this case, you gave us a very clear pattern so the color difference doesn't help break the grid at all! You used single rows of color (IE: One row of wood is 1 color, the next row is another color). In comparison it almost looks like a spreadsheet

Instead, try 'breaking up the pattern'. People use the same methodology for designing different tiles, IE: "Breaking up the grid" of games to try to eradicate patterns.

Essentially, think less of the texture at the moment and think more of these things: what pixel clusters will you use to signify the material you are trying to signify? How are you going to lay the pixel clusters out to eradicate as much of the grid as possible?

Since you're a tut-o-holic like me I have two really awesome articles for you to read at your leisure. They really helped me so I hope they're helpful to you as well! http://www.pixel.schlet.net/ and http://petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/chapter5.htm

(You can make a game out of the second one. Every time Tsugumo says 'heh', take a sip of beer. ;P)

Happy pixeling!