Luna sci-fi scene

[cels]

Just uploaded this to the PJ gallery, but I'm posting it here too because I'm looking for criticism. My previous work has often been the result of long Pixelation threads. In the end, this hugely improves my work and I learn a lot from it, but this time I wanted to do it the other way around. Finish it and then ask for feedback once I'd taken it more or less as far as I could.



Any feedback is much appreciated.

[||||]

Guile? Is that you?!

Anyway here I go critiquing; since I'm just killing some time before I have to head out for the day..

I really like the panel with the dark background, soldiers and pink guy (bad guys inside the tank) that's a great piece in it self. The one next to it's really cool showing the outside of the tank on that bridge; the buildings below look great. The only thing about it is the angle of the tank and buildings doesn't fit together (I, for a few moments thought it was a separate panel).

I think the sequence is good in setting up the scape. The first 2 panels are nice looking; the 3rd one reminds me of Winged Doom's trademark style a bit too much and the last three panels are a little unclear or vague. The fonts are good, 'cept for that 'S' on 'Side'; it looks like it could use some smoothing.

[cels]

Guile? Is that you?!

It's actually not Guile, it's this guy. From this game.

Although to be fair, he's probably a rip-off of Guile anyway. 

Anyway here I go critiquing; since I'm just killing some time before I have to head out for the day..
I really like the panel with the dark background, soldiers and pink guy (bad guys inside the tank) that's a great piece in it self. The one next to it's really cool showing the outside of the tank on that bridge; the buildings below look great. The only thing about it is the angle of the tank and buildings doesn't fit together (I, for a few moments thought it was a separate panel).

Thanks for the critique!

Yeah, the perspective in the 4th panel is completely nonsensical, but I was hoping I would get away with breaking the rules. I actually started out with one-point perspective (see WIP here) but I figured that I wouldn't be able to get a crisp bird's eye view pixel art at such a tiny scale, so I just broke the rules a bit.

I think the sequence is good in setting up the scape. The first 2 panels are nice looking; the 3rd one reminds me of Winged Doom's trademark style a bit too much and the last three panels are a little unclear or vague. The fonts are good, 'cept for that 'S' on 'Side'; it looks like it could use some smoothing.

Cheers! This whole piece was basically just an homage to other people's work, including Winged Doom. Now, I'm still a bit heartbroken that he never finished his game. So what a great tragedy if the world was robbed both of Winged Doom and of his imitators  Hopefully, someone will make a 5734L3R-clone some day.

I appreciate that the last three panels are a bit vague in terms of the story. I wanted a more dramatic end but I didn't have enough panels to do the whole story as I wanted it. So I left it open-ended and ambiguous. The original idea was to make the viewers identify the "bad guys inside the tank" as bad guys, who go out and kill good guys, but then portray the soldiers as more human while keeping the "pink guy" as an odious and evil puppetmaster.

Good point about the S.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

I definitely think you should've kept with the perspective for the 4th panel. I feel like switching from perspective to projections between panels is weird, but its doesn't really matter.

I also feel like you sort of loose the thread of the story after the 6th or 7th panel because the panel before it does not display it.

Nice work on this though.

[Decroded]

This is freakin cool man :-)
no time here but maybe 4th and 5th panels could be swapped to keep a momentum going?

[Reo]

Hey Cels, lovely stuff as usual!

There's a few things that stood out to me though, and I did a few edits:



1. I feel much of the piece is pretty messy ( understandable considering the scale!) there's a fair bit of pillowshading going on.
One such place where it is most apparent is the hooded villain dude. It looks as if the glowing eyes should be light source, yet every highlight is placed in the middle. Creating a bit of banding.

2. The whole piece seems kind of clean and calm for a war zone, that might be a wholly stylistic choice though. I added some life to the fire, intertwined the flames with the smoke a bit, made the pillar a bit irregular.I would consider maybe adding a couple of gray-ish shades to dirty up the scene a bit, add some details and texture to the ground. Overall I like you palette a lot! reminds me of  Mykola's stuff http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/6661.htm

3. I think the pillowy and blobby shading rears it's head at the portrait again, don't be afraid of angles and creating shapes with contrast, especially when the rest of the piece is all about angles! I don't think the yellow works in the face, it burns a bit compared to the other colors. Places like the ear look pretty rough, plenty of space for cluster optimization there! I also tried merging the colors a bit to get some unity and some of the aforementioned grittyness into the frame.

This is a very cool piece, I have a similar love for that eighties sci-fi aesthetics!
Also I LOVE! the logo that is very beautiful and clever!

[cels]

I definitely think you should've kept with the perspective for the 4th panel. I feel like switching from perspective to projections between panels is weird, but its doesn't really matter.
I also feel like you sort of loose the thread of the story after the 6th or 7th panel because the panel before it does not display it.
Nice work on this though.

I see where you're coming from. Sometimes my ideas are a bit messy. The 4th panel was specifically made to look like it could be a top down racing game. I was actually going to animate every panel, but I realized it would be too much work in the end.

WIP of animated version here

I also understand what you mean about losing the thread of the story. I changed the story mid-way. It was going to show the evil troopers shoot some good guys and then showing a bit of remorse. But I felt like I didn't have the talent to pull it off in a good way, the way I pictured it.  So I went with something easier.

This is freakin cool man :-)
no time here but maybe 4th and 5th panels could be swapped to keep a momentum going?

Thanks! That's interesting. I put the 5th panel where it is because 1) I wanted people to understand that the troopers were inside that vehicle and 2) I wanted the whole image to look balanced as a whole. That part was kind of tricky. Most panels are dominated by black, teal or orange/brown, so I tried to find a balance when determining their sequence. But I understand what you mean, it would be appropriate to show the troopers as the vehicle comes to a stop.

[cels]

Hey Cels, lovely stuff as usual!
There's a few things that stood out to me though, and I did a few edits:

Thanks! And thanks for doing the edits, that's really useful. Your evil guy looks a lot more menacing than mine, and I really like what you did to those flames. You did a lot of great work to clean up the portrait. While I kind of feel the mouth is a bit too wide in your version, everything else looks really, really improved. Especially the nose, ears and the metal collar. I love how you used the yellow on the metal collar. It really tied the room the colours together . 

I had a real issue with the portrait, because it's basically based on a very stylistic drawing of a computer game character, so it's kind of like a comic book style. And when you try to do a realistic version of a comic book character, you get into the uncanny valley. The hair, for example. When I tried to do the hair in a photorealistic fashion, it just looked too creepy.

1. I feel much of the piece is pretty messy ( understandable considering the scale!) there's a fair bit of pillowshading going on.
One such place where it is most apparent is the hooded villain dude. It looks as if the glowing eyes should be light source, yet every highlight is placed in the middle. Creating a bit of banding.

Yeah, there's a lot of messy stuff. Like the ear you worked on. There's a lot of stuff, looking back at it now, where I'm thinking "Oops, did I really leave it like that?" I spent so much time on it, I got blind to those things.

Great point about the pillowshading on the hooded villain.

2. The whole piece seems kind of clean and calm for a war zone, that might be a wholly stylistic choice though. I added some life to the fire, intertwined the flames with the smoke a bit, made the pillar a bit irregular.I would consider maybe adding a couple of gray-ish shades to dirty up the scene a bit, add some details and texture to the ground. Overall I like you palette a lot! reminds me of  Mykola's stuff http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/6661.htm

Yes, I did try to keep it clean and calm. Actually, it was supposed to all look cleaner than this, because that's an important feature of this style. As you see in this music video. I love that look, but I had to compromise because I also love the techy and dirty look of Cyberpunk / Bladerunner.

Some good critique there though and thanks for the link. He does have a lot of good stuff.

3. I think the pillowy and blobby shading rears it's head at the portrait again, don't be afraid of angles and creating shapes with contrast, especially when the rest of the piece is all about angles! I don't think the yellow works in the face, it burns a bit compared to the other colors. Places like the ear look pretty rough, plenty of space for cluster optimization there! I also tried merging the colors a bit to get some unity and some of the aforementioned grittyness into the frame.
This is a very cool piece, I have a similar love for that eighties sci-fi aesthetics!
Also I LOVE! the logo that is very beautiful and clever!

Thanks a lot! I will take another look at the face, using the feedback you gave me. Much appreciated!

[DatMuffinMan]

I'm not really sure how to phrase what I want to say but it's something that seems to be recurring in your work so I'll do my best.

A lot of your pixel art seems to be much bigger than it needs to be, which isn't bad at all (here it is very impressive that you gave the same level of detail everywhere in the canvas), but I'd love to see you try something small (128x72 or smaller) and focus entirely on optimizing pixel placement. Most of the issues in this piece are related to certain elements feeling out of place, and I think this is because your process for pixelling stuff is something along the lines of draw - polish lines - apply texture, which results in slightly different handling of pixel-level stuff on larger subjects. Working smaller would force you to make the most out of every cluster/shape/line when you define form and texture, and would ideally teach you to do the same when working bigger.

The best example that comes to mind is fool; even his smaller sprite work is handled about the same way that his larger scenes are, whereas these guys are given a much crisper attention to detail than this work.

[cels]

I'm not really sure how to phrase what I want to say but it's something that seems to be recurring in your work so I'll do my best.
A lot of your pixel art seems to be much bigger than it needs to be, which isn't bad at all (here it is very impressive that you gave the same level of detail everywhere in the canvas), but I'd love to see you try something small (128x72 or smaller) and focus entirely on optimizing pixel placement. Most of the issues in this piece are related to certain elements feeling out of place, and I think this is because your process for pixelling stuff is something along the lines of draw - polish lines - apply texture, which results in slightly different handling of pixel-level stuff on larger subjects. Working smaller would force you to make the most out of every cluster/shape/line when you define form and texture, and would ideally teach you to do the same when working bigger.
The best example that comes to mind is fool; even his smaller sprite work is handled about the same way that his larger scenes are, whereas these guys are given a much crisper attention to detail than this work.

You're spot on, the same thought has occurred to me many times. Almost every piece I've ever done has grown bigger than originally intended. My "X-cosmos" game mockup grew from 640 x 480 to 876 x 614, for example.

One of the reasons I divided this piece into 9 smaller panels was actually because I was going to work on each of them individually, to avoid getting carried away. I wanted to limit myself and focus on details. But then I had to start planning how all 9 panels would fit together, so I started pixelling all of them simultaneously, instead of finishing one at a time. You see it in my WIP, how I go back and forth between panels. Immediately after this piece, I realized I'd made the same error I was trying to avoid from the start. So I decided to be more disciplined this time, and try to improve on my first submission to the PJ gallery, a little 300 x 100 pixel piece (sneak peak here). Maybe I'll do something even smaller next time. And I won't let this one grow bigger than its original size.

Thanks for the feedback.