original gameboy mockups

[Helm]

Sorry to bring this up, but what are you talking about, Andy Tran? The Game Boy Advance doesn't use 4 colors, but many, many more. The Game Boy uses 4 colors. Your key to faking the Game Boy palette is also worthless. Not only because anyone can use a screenshot of a GB game to take the palette, but also because nobody in this thread seems to have any trouble with this. It might be a good idea to post critique or at least things or relevance in the threads you visit.


About the art:

main character sprite, I'd go the full way and put a full black outline on him. On the gb, you need as much distinction as you can get. In fact, forget selout altogether for this. Edit follows.



I think single black dot noise is hurting your art. Otherwise I really love this mockup to bits.

[Andy Tran]

 Ack, sorry. My bad. I meant GB. Sorry! My mind has been hearing about GBA stuff too much. Just to give some idea to those who haven't got a method to do it. On the portrait, I would anti-alias the face features. That will smoothen the details of the face out. It looks good overall for the sprites. You can use selout or black outlines if you want for the sprite. Either one. I saw it looked good without black outline. Good luck!

[eghost]

Have to agree with Helm about the outline. really helps pop the sprite out...Plus it'd allow for more tile color variance ...
The temple definition line on the portrait seems a bit too much to me at least, especially given the direction of the lightsource...
On the overall though, looks quite good...

[Andy Tran]

  That's good advice. Seperating the sprite from background with black outline.

[sevenfingers]

Looks really nice. I especially like the portrait/sidebar thingy.
Helm is absolutely right; the selout needs to go.

I'd also advice you to reduce the high-frequency detail in the base tiles,
eparation between bg and fg, with the help of frequency and outlines is imperative at this size.

[Shifty McSly]

Yeah, you guys are probably right about the selout. I was hoping it'd work but I suppose it's fairly unworkable with only 4 colours. At least for the sprite. Maybe it's just me but I prefer my version of the portrait to your edit helm. Anyway, all valid crits from you guys, I'm sure it'd be much better to look at on a gb screen without selout.

[Ryumaru]

your guy uses 5 colors, with transparency. i think theres ways to do that but main characters havent ever been like that. plus the extra contrast of taking away a color would make your guy pop even more.

liking your mockup btw.

[ndchristie]

your guy uses 5 colors, with transparency. i think theres ways to do that but main characters havent ever been like that.

Actually, there isnt, at least not that i know of, except in cases where the character takes up his entire box.  All images on the NES and Gameboy system must be 2-bit, so while tiles can use their full 4 shades per 8x8 square, sprites must sacrifice either transparency or one of their shades of gray in order to fit the specs.  typically i think the darker gray is left out of the character, who will use white and light gray for shading and black to outline and mark in very dark portions (Boy's hair in SD is left black).

I tried a quick edit of how you might accomplish things.  it came out suprisingly well, youve maganged to create a sprite that holds up against a very aggressive reduction (25% of the palette was eliminated).  the table didnt fair so well, but then, iso angles are rough on the gameboy

<-edit-----------------helm's-----------------yours->


its a little ironic to me actually because i tihnk that doing away with the gray actually improves the way the character sits on the page

[Ryumaru]

the way i was speaking of is layers, say a sprite with transparency and white, light grey, and dark grey and another layer of transparency and black.
another way of course is to sacrifice transparency. pokemon battle images sacrifice it but they made the background white so you cant tell the difference.
unless im mistaken about these statements ...

[ndchristie]

doubling up sprites can work, but any hint of desyncronization or offset makes things rediculously ugly.  (btw sorry for the thread hijacking to talk about specs)