AuthorTopic: [WIP] First attempt at pixel art, mid progress level design (forest scene).  (Read 2845 times)

Offline wyhol

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Hey guys,

So this is my first attempt at creating any sort of complex pixel art. I'm working on a pixel art game set in 1612 Pendle County. The mood I'm going for is somewhat, but not particularly gloomy at this point in the game. The game is an adventure game in the vein of Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery and the upcoming title Witchmarsh. I want to approach each scene almost like a navigable painting/drawing. This is the first scene of the game and is placed in a lightly forested location.

Basically I'm looking for suggestions on how I should approach trees in general (Background, as well as foreground as if the player is looking into the scene from a wooded area) and any other suggestions (unsure about character and animation as well). I'm using photoshop to put the images together.

Offline Sharm

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Well, the very first thing I would do would be to get rid of that strange boxy gradient around the moon.  You should do something more purposeful there, something that doesn't detract from the beauty of the moon.  There's a lot of stray pixels especially in the sprite that's adding noise to everything.  It makes it hard for the eye to rest anywhere and on the sprite it makes the character less readable.  You do a pretty good job using shadow to define form, but for some reason your highlights aren't doing that, they seem much more randomly placed.  The pallet needs the most attention, it looks very haphazard.  Think about what color the light is, how that would effect the hue of the highlights or shadows.  Think about how contrast and hue determine where your eye naturally goes in the image and how you can use it to highlight the things of importance and lead the eye.  With such a bright moon I would expect to see more highlights.  You could use it to define the walkable areas better.

Your tree isn't too bad, I think if you clean it up the same way I suggested for the rest of it you'll see some improvement, especially if you do more purposeful and form defining highlights.  You might want to make it less lopsided too.

Offline Manupix

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What Sharm says. There's a good atmosphere in this, but lots of problems too.

I don't understand the 'horizon' (or lack thereof) under the bridge. Why is it oblique, and why is it so close?
If the viewer's eye is level with the top platform as seems to be the case, then the actual faraway horizon should be seen more or less level with it too.
Only places actually above the viewer level should appear above the horizon.

There's also an apparent scale inconsistency: the fallen tree and cliffs make the landscape seem huge, so the sprite is completely out of scale. Since I don't think you can reduce the sprite, you should make the real lanscape size more readable: turn trees to bushes, introduce smaller elements such as flowers, etc.

The sprite anatomy is wrong (limbs are too short).
Anim: the whole body should be bobbing.

Offline wyhol

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Been meaning to post a reply with some updates but I've been working too much in the past few days and been having some struggles re-working the scene to comply with your feedback. Thanks for the criticism so far! It's been extremely helpful as I was having such a hard time pinning down some of the issues with my progress to date. I will hopefully have updates by the weekend time and sanity permitting.