AuthorTopic: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.  (Read 3940 times)

Offline gamebabu

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Hey guys, I was reading about how this site is a good place for feedback from over in the tigsource forums.

I've been slowly developing a game of mine, and would like to know your honest feedback on the color scheme if possible. Color has always been my weakness and I'm striving to get better at it.

I've read the rules, and am unsure about your communities stance on screenshots.
I also heavily use (and abuse) AA to simulate a mid ground between rough and smooth to create a more 'hand-drawn' feeling.
Though I assure you that I actually placed each pixel in these shots. (Aside from the whole objects can move around in a game thing.)

Here are two screens from the game that show off the majority of the colors so far.

10 Colors


11 Colors

Any advice would be fantastic. Though my main concern are the color choices, if there are some better things I could have done with the AA abuse, I'm happy to hear that as well.

I've lurked for a bit before registering here, and I'm delighted to find such an informative and helpful community. And again, I'm sorry if I have broken any rules, I searched for a bit, but could not find any information.

Offline e4r

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #1 on: July 25, 2013, 01:32:39 am
Welcome, and this place is great for feedback. I'm not the best of artist myself, but IM sure in order to help someone, we'd have to know what we're looking at, and what you're trying to achieve. Right now all I see is a WIP game and some sprites. No light source anywhere, but that can just be the style you're doing the game in. But yeah, we need to know what we're looking at and what you're trying to do with these pieces in order to give you any real feedback.

Offline gamebabu

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #2 on: July 25, 2013, 01:59:14 am
Ah yes, sorry, you're very right.

Yes, the light source is non-existent. It's meant to seem very flat, and as if there is a screen-wide glow from the direction of the screen to the viewer. It's a very minimalist style that I am hoping to achieve.

I want to ensure that the colors are both warm and vibrant. And that they are not hurtful to the eyes.

My main concern is that the yellow may be too vibrant and have not enough warmth. The screen I'm using to create this art isn't the best calibrated in color so I'm not sure of how it looks on other screens.

I'm happy with the aesthetic I have, but I am concerned about fine-tuning. Do I need to slightly shift any of the hues or saturations for a better balance? I've looked at it in grayscale, and am quite pleased with the luminosities. Though I may be wrong, so here is the unsaturated version of image2 in case you have a differing opinion:

Offline e4r

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #3 on: July 25, 2013, 02:42:47 am


Yeah the yellow was bit a bit vibrant and the orange was also very vibrant as well, I pretty much dropped a bit of the contrast and added 44/255 blue to the yellow to "cool" it down I suppose, no pun intended aha. Everything else to me looks fine, but of course colors will look different on most screens according to the settings of the monitor, like I have my brightness pretty high.

Offline gamebabu

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #4 on: July 25, 2013, 04:38:14 am
Hey thanks for taking the time to respond! Yes, I should have been more aware of screen brightness. Great insight! I'm going to use the technique of altering screen brightness and double-triple checking the balance.

I actually work on a lower brightness, and the colors you have seemed a bit dim, but I turned up my brightness and they are much more balanced at a high setting.

With your new insight and your great idea of adding a central color to everything, I took another stab at it and tried a more subtle approach.

At first I tried doing RGB(+0,-6,+6) and came up with a more toned down and warm scheme.
But I double checked it at 3x zoom and found that it had lost a certain, playful game-feel the older color scheme had.
So I took another stab at it, and this time focused on keeping the contrast of the black and the background crispier, and came up with RGB(+0,-12,-1). Adding too much blue seemed to wash the lines out, and lowering the green more made everything warmer.
Double checked at 3x zoom, and I'm much happier with this version. Compare to the original this one is still gamey, but more natural feeling. And I feel that the white pops out more in this version.

Here are the 1x versions: Top Left is RGB(+0,-6,+6), Top Right is RGB(+0,+0,+0), Bottom is RGB(+0,-12,+1)


And the 3x versions in a link: (It's very large)


Thanks again for all the help e4r!

Edit: Wow I just realized I had F.lux on.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2013, 05:25:25 am by gamebabu »

Offline e4r

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #5 on: July 25, 2013, 05:11:46 am
The first yellow top left is more easier on the eyes to look at,. Pretty much yellow in general after looking at it for awhile kinda messes your sight up a bit aha. Also the orange squares still seem a bit more vibrant than what you were going for in your grey scale, like you said, do to your brightness, but I still they can use a little "cooling" because they are obviously the nosiest part of the work. Also I didn't even notice the white until you said so, so that should tell you something, the yellow doesn't have enough contrast from the white. I think you should make the yellow less vibrant a little bit more.

Edit:  Also the forum has a built in zoom function(left click on the image) and to zoom out you press control and left click the image again.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2013, 05:17:48 am by e4r »

Offline gamebabu

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #6 on: July 25, 2013, 06:15:23 am
Oh, thanks for the tip!

Edit: I'm going to need to sleep on this. I'm getting to that point where color and colour are colouring my coloring and ive slowly begun to lose my mind
« Last Edit: July 25, 2013, 06:48:16 am by gamebabu »

Offline Anarkhya

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    • Hello, this is what I do

Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #7 on: July 25, 2013, 09:11:19 am
would like to know your honest feedback on the color scheme if possible.

I'm a bit concerned about this vibrant and solid yellow everywhere, especially if it's a slow paced game, right now I don't have any games in mind where such vibrancy is displayed successfully so I feel like it could be too much aggressive on the eye and demotivating for the player.

What's the genre of this game ?

Offline gamebabu

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Re: [WIP] Some advice needed on art for personal project.

Reply #8 on: July 25, 2013, 04:17:29 pm
Here is the final palette and some test configurations. Thanks a lot guys!

To get to this palette, I took a look at one of my art influences, Dr. Seuss.
Applying the same principles that I used to learn pixel art, I copied his colours and edited them till I had found a better understanding.

« Last Edit: July 29, 2013, 08:01:52 am by gamebabu »