City Tileset

[Fizzick]

For a game. Doesn't have to conform perfectly to the grid due to our collision method, but solid objects do.
All C&C accepted, please be brutal! 

[astraldata]

I like the use of neon color on this -- very unique for a game -- though I don't know how 'complete' you're calling this. Might help to know that before I go into a detailed crit.

The few things I can see off the bat is that it's hard to get any true sense of scale. The height of the buildings and the size of the car and puddle don't seem to go with the scale of the buildings at all.

Additionally the puddle is isolated in the road, and the road is way too empty -- no details to break up the empty space like cracks in the road / potholes / trash / yellow-lines / whatever really make this puddle stand out as something of importance (which I doubt is the case) visually.

Also, if this is a wet scene (after a good rain or something), you really should emphasize that with a slippery look on the car and perhaps even more reflections toward the bottom of the road from the buildings on the other side of the road (if there are any -- if not, there should be *something* there at least, whether that's bushes/grass/sidewalk/whatever). If you want a thoroughly soaked scene, you might want to remove the puddle completely and only put light ripples here and there in places where water could be assumed to be pooled (and replace the puddle with a manhole cover). The puddle tends to give an impression of standing water (i.e. the day after the rain) which would negate the cool shines on the ground from the windows since most of that would have been dried up by then.

Lastly, the yellow on the roof of the car fights with the intensity of the lights on the city buildings, so I suggest darkening it or toning it down a lot until it no longer fights with those neon colors.

Atm, that's all I can really offer right now.

[Fizzick]

Thanks so much for the criticism! I'm shooting for a pretty refined but simple style for the sprites themselves, but for the lighting I'm taking a lot of inspiration from some almost impressionist style paintings. The goal is to make light features look like brushstrokes, but still fit with the rest of the art.

Some of my sources:
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/chicago-rainy-street-anita-burgermeister.jpg
http://fineproart.com/uplimg/img_117845_c2b2b9da08e007d227d7463d259fe681.jpg
http://cdn.dailypainters.com/paintings/new_orleans_night_rainy_street_cityscape_69b92f9568dcc6f594970223cec6df0e.jpg
http://cdn.dailypainters.com/paintings/cityscape_landscape_rainy_street_painting_by_debra_e5146b7fa6ea8dab7242a590e31024d9.jpg

Added some placeholder guys for scale

I'm still not sure how to pull it off without the reflections looking like random blotches.
Also having trouble with making the car seem 'wet' instead of just 'shiny'.

[astraldata]

Definitely an improvement over your original. Here's some thoughts:



Just a quick edit to give you some thoughts on how to solve some of your issues you mentioned. Took some time to show some other hints for improvements such as lowering the brightness of the puddles. This grey color in particular can really be played with a lot. Also, your tree coloring was more of a daytime tree without much hints of blue at all in it. I fixed that a bit as well.

[Fizzick]

Great stuff. I especially like the traffic light and the way you did the shading on that added highlight down below.
I should note that this is a 'demo' of sorts for how I'm making the actual game maps. I'm less focused on composition and adding more light emitting objects than how to make it REALLY feel like a dripping wet street. What more can I do to emphasize that other than adding more lighty stuff and puddles? I'm at a loss.  Also played around with a more angular style to the reflections. What do you think? Do any other users have stuff to say, as well?

[astraldata]

Another thing you can do is make reflections of the buildings and sky/trees/etc. on the road below.

The color that this overall change in the image would be would depend on your lighting/context. A really rainy/wet appearance would definitely look like that and feature many reflections of street objects and the car, or whatever else is around. Though in that case, the road would mostly be the same color/texture as the sky/buildings/lights/objects on it, which means that the street itself would likely appear much darker than it is now, and you might have to rework some of the lighting on it. However, this could look really cool depending on how you approached it.

[Fizzick]

That sounds like a good idea. What do you think of the way I've done the red and blue lights? Better or worse than the more brushy kind?

[astraldata]

That sounds like a good idea. What do you think of the way I've done the red and blue lights? Better or worse than the more brushy kind?

I'd say much better. Also the shading on top of the car is a good start, but having a stray set of 2 lonely diagonal pixels sitting inside a cluster is throwing off what could be a great approach.

[Fizzick]

more experimentation.

edit:

[astraldata]

Because the ground is darker and everything is reflecting, it looks a whole lot wetter than before, which looked like after a short heavy rain.

I'd say keep the shadows of the buildings, but use that shadow color across the entire street to lower the contrast so that the highlights/reflections of lights/objects appear more prominent. Looking much better now.