First attempts with isometric Pixel Art, questions & CC

[Neirda]

Hello fellows artists, I recently discovered few RPGs gems on emulator and wanted to see what I would be able to realise by myself ( as hobby, since I'm already working on my own game: http://oddtales.net/)

This is the first time I'm drawing isometric stuffs, perspective had never been in my comfort zone, but the enjoyable part with isometry is the fact you can't be wrong if you follow the grid. The overall idea of this "project" even if this is never gonna happen is to make a RPG based on grid fight ( like Banner Saga, Dofus etc. ) but with the mood of Shadow of the colossus, Princess mononoke & Jade Cocoon.

This is what I've done in approximately 2 hours :




So, I have few questions on the subject :

* I've always been attracted by high quality texturing, I'm pretty satisfied with picking randomly the 64x32 tiles model, do you know what is the standard in most games with fancy graphics of the genre?

* About the character:  since I'm not really good with either

 - Do you think his perspective fit one the grid?

 - Does the proportions seems okay, since he is supposed to be seen a bit from top?

 - I've picked 4 tones per colors is that too much for good readability with the landscape?

 - Is it too time consuming to animate character of this size?


* About the dirt tiles : I'm pretty experienced with texture, but

 - Maybe dumb question, but I've filled the transparency between tiles space manually, how do you proceed to make them match? do you merge directly each tiles? Or are you just putting some sprites on a single colored background?

 - And, do you think there is too much colors/contrast on each tiles? I'm afraid of the overall readability in case I'll make a full scene

 
* Otherwise, I would love to hear your critics, and I would be really interested if you can share your favorites Isometric pixel art backgrounds and/or beautiful tiles.

And for the end, my latest piece in standard pixel art (same kind of univers I want to explore) :



Thanks you folks!

[Pusty]

I'm not experienced in this field (or at all lol)
But I think using 4 tones per color seems like a good idea (or at least I think it looks nice)
Proportions of the field seem right to me.
I think everything will be readable but I'm not to sure either, maybe highlight the player more? (no clue how)
(Also the standard pixel art looks awesome!)

I'm quite interested in knowing some of this things as well
Maybe I will try to make a isometric styled game too

[AimlessZealot]

Really nice work. I wouldn't have guessed that it was your first, to be honest.

So, a few things:

The shadows that you laid down are incorrect based upon the rest of your picture. You made an isometric perspective which means that perspective skew does not exist. You cannot show the viewer that foreground and background are not impacted by perspective skew but then lay a stretched shadow on it. The more complex the scenes you build like that, the more obvious that dissonance is going to become. This is part of the reason why light sources are almost always assumed directly over a target in this genre especially.

In most isometric games either the tile sets beneath are kept relatively clean while the characters on them have greater level of detail and complexity OR the characters are given a huge amount of outlining and strong blacks to help sharpen them. This helps the eye focus on the character and get a sense of distance that the perspective would not otherwise permit because we expect that distance makes things less distinct. You've chosen to do the opposite and it flattens the character on the tiles you laid down.

The problem you had with connecting the tiles actually comes from the fact that the standard is not 64x32, it's 64x31 with either the top or bottom row left empty. This allows you to stack the tiles without the overlapping issues you did before. The resolution itself is totally acceptable and has been used by many famous tactical RPGs.

The landscape is very readable but a bit cool. The character is even more cool colors. It steals some of the sense of motion.

Nobody can really tell you if animating characters of that size is "too time-consuming". The answer will be heavily hedged on how you intend to use them, how fast you work, and how complex the motions are. To give you some helpful thoughts on the matter... I'll do some back-of-the-napkin math for you:

Think of how long that one static character image took. Assume that every frame will take that time because even if you are just adjusting them, you're going to have work to do to get the animation smooth. Imagine that a smooth idle animation might take between 2 and 6 frames reasonably. A walk might take between 5 and 12 frames reasonably. If you choose to have 4 direction motion sometimes it's going to look a little silly as they zigzag, but if you choose to have 8 direction motion, it will double the workload.

I'll call T the unit of time that you spent on that one character.
Just to have them idle and walk around in 4 directions would require a minimum potential timeframe of
(4) * (2) T units for 4-way idle.
(4) * (5) T units for 4-way walking
(Total: 28 T units)
or a maximum reasonable potential timeframe of
(4) * (5) T units for 4-way idle.
(4) * (12) T units for 4-way walking
(Total: 68 T units)

That's a range of 28-68 T Units for 4-way and twice that for 8-way (56-136 T units)

If the character you showed took you 1 hour to be happy with, then you can expect 28-68 hours of work for 4-way basics and 56-136 hours for 8-way. You of course can use tricks to reuse plenty of things from one character to the next, but future characters are likely to require similar time frames to keep quality and uniqueness up.

You seem to be a technically proficient pixel artist and certainly capable of the task but only you can judge the scope of your goals. Honestly, isometric is seen less than most of the other perspectives because it is a very time-consuming perspective to work within. The fact that it is so striking when seen beside top-down and sidescroller games is one of the only reasons I've tolerated the demands it places on the artists.  I hope this breakdown was useful to you.

Great work and good luck!