SHMUP Progress

[Delibrete]

Hello all,

I've been wanting to do pixel art for some time but have been too lazy/haven't had the time. I'm currently working on a shmup with my friend. I've only sort of just started and this is what I've made so far (100% and then 200% zoom):


This is my progress from left to right.

My inspiration is this: http://opengameart.org/content/retro-spaceships

I don't know how he (Jerom) does it, but he only uses like 4 colours and each of his ships look really detailed :O

I'm quite a beginner and I have much to learn. I want my lines smoother, my colours to look nicer and my shading to look better. What C&C or advice can you offer me?

Thanks

[Kich]

You could try some hue shifting too, like Jerom did. Take a look at his purple~brown~green~yellow palette. Yours fade from darker to lighter green, from darker to lighter gray, etc.

(4 colours either)

[Delibrete]

thanks for the reply

What is hue shifting? Is that where you take two colours and make one the light colour and the other the darker colour?

Thanks for showing an example btw

[Johasu]

It's more moving from one color to another rather than from one color to a darker version of that color.
I've been learning the ropes on this myself lately.
http://wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=2836.0  <-- a thread about it
http://www.planetminecraft.com/blog/tutorial-palettes-and-hue-shifting/ <-- maybe more useful if you read the specifics on which direction to go.
More specifically look at Lucas Kich's edit. Notice how he moved from a bluish gray to yellow and used that lighter blue color as a bridge to get there.
Hue shift from darker color to a brighter and different color.
Bridging is the use of the blue color in between as a middle man. 

[Delibrete]

Ah I see, thanks for the links and the explanation

Going to work on a new design using hue shifting. Thanks for the support

[Daimoth]

Your green ship could use quite a bit more contrast. Try making the dark shades darker, and the light shades lighter.

[Delibrete]

Ok I went and did some hue shifting:



However it doesn't seem right to me. What can I do to improve this? This is by far my biggest piece of work. It's supposed to be a boss for the shmup game. But it doesn't feel defined enough? I don't know. What do you suggest?

Here is a little sketch I did while in a lecture before making the boss:

[Pizza Tom]

Your boss doesn't seem defined because the shading doesn't describe his form, it just gets darker toward the middle. From your sketch I can see you're already thinking of his shape being made of different forms, just pick a light source and shade accordingly. Here's a quick, sloppy non-pixel art example of what I mean:

I didn't fix the issue of each "sphere" seeming to be on the same plane, but hopefully this at least gets you to think in the right direction.

Also, your palette has a lot of colors that are too close to tell the difference, you could probably get away with cutting it in half.

[astraldata]

You have waaay too much dithering on there. None of the pixels have any purpose.

I used the circle tool a lot to revamp your sprite to look more like the sketch:

[Delibrete]

Regulus Awesome:

Yeah I didn't really know what I was doing and I couldn't figure out why it didn't look right. Thanks for telling me what was wrong with it I'm still progressing but thanks for the example It will help!

astraldata:

Oh wow! That's totally what I was going for actually I just couldn't achieve it but you made my sketch come to life! Thanks for the inspiration

I was going to give up on this sprite but I might try and fix it, thanks for the help guys!

[astraldata]

Not a problem man. Glad I could help! This is a really neat looking sprite. Has lots of character. Reminds me of some of the old megaman baddies, but in a shooter. It just needed a little more TLC, that's all.

You should think of a sprite as layers of value (light and dark) and place a wide amount of dark, less moderately dark, a little of the base color, and almost no highlight color except where necessary on shiny/glossy surfaces (such as the spike I edited in this sprite.) If you wanted to make this guy appear more icky, you could consider adding a single pixel on the spheres as a specular highlight, but I left it out, not certain of how shiny you wanted him. Great job on the hue-shifting though.

[Delibrete]

Thanks!

Here is the new update:



I like the direction it's heading, but what can be improved here? I feel like it's almost there (or am I wayyy off?)

[cels]

Looks much better. A few issues

- The light source isn't really clear. All the major spheres (including the eye) indicate different light sources. The teeth are darker on all sides, like some form of pillowshading.
- The design itself could be improved a bit, I think. In the original sketch, there was a bigger sphere behind the body of the ship, like a spider's abdomen. It made the ship more interesting.
- Is the eye supposed to be able to look ahead of the ship? Because now the whole ship looks very flat indeed, and the eyeball is on a flat surface between a ring of spheres, being unable to look anywhere but directly above the ship. Was that intentional? If you want the eye to be able to see where the ship is going, then you need to slope the center mass of the ship, like a hill. And if you just intend the eyeball to rest on a flat surface like a meatball on a pizza, then you have to make sure that it's in a top down perspective, like the rest of the ship.

[Delibrete]

- The light source isn't really clear. All the major spheres (including the eye) indicate different light sources. The teeth are darker on all sides, like some form of pillowshading.

I was actually trying to have the light source coming from the front, left and right of the ship. Is that a bad thing? I can make it just come from the front. The teeth were rushed in 2 minutes so I should redo them (I'm also not happy with the teeth's colour).

- The design itself could be improved a bit, I think. In the original sketch, there was a bigger sphere behind the body of the ship, like a spider's abdomen. It made the ship more interesting.

It's actually going to be a snake-like boss, and the big sphere thing behind it was supposed to be part of it's neck where there will be multiple spheres to make up the rest of the neck. I was going to add that in later.

- Is the eye supposed to be able to look ahead of the ship? Because now the whole ship looks very flat indeed, and the eyeball is on a flat surface between a ring of spheres, being unable to look anywhere but directly above the ship. Was that intentional? If you want the eye to be able to see where the ship is going, then you need to slope the center mass of the ship, like a hill. And if you just intend the eyeball to rest on a flat surface like a meatball on a pizza, then you have to make sure that it's in a top down perspective, like the rest of the ship.

The eye was also pretty quickly done and it's supposed to look ahead as if it's coming out of the top and not laying flat. What did you mean by slop the center mass of the ship? I might redo the eye so it looks like it's popping out a little more.

Thanks for the reply

[cels]

Yeah, having the light come from all sides is a bad thing. It looks better to have it from one direction, because multiple light sources = multiple shadows, and it's hard to make it look good, especially on a very small sprite. I guess most SHMUPs have the top or the bottom of the screen as the light source.

Here's what I mean about raising the eye up. You have to create depth with your light and shadow, and right now the whole ship looks flat. So it looks like the eye is stuck on a flat surface.

[Delibrete]

Thanks for the diagram I get what you mean now. I might try and work on some depth for it tomorrow. I've been told that the eye needs redoing and the colours are somewhat odd as well. Thanks