Sprites for a roguelike I'm making [C+C]

[odedrt9]

Hey, so I opened this thread yesterday, and I thought I at least should try to come up with something.
So 16x16 speaking I came with this kind of sytle:

And 32x32 with this:



Now, I think I better stick with the 16x16 because it's easier or at least simpler.
But I do think that it somewhat lacks depth, moreso I think it's quite hard animating such small sprites.

On the other hand, the 32x32 has much more room for improvment but that what makes it harder to maintain because you have to have more detailed style...

Before I actually start with the game I want to be at least somewhat confident with the style I'm going to use.
So any critic, advice or whatnot are totally welcome!

Thanks I want to try pixeling because no one else that I know can help me with it and I find it much more appealing than 3D for indie games.


EDIT:

So here I'll keep updating the latest versions:
Tiles:
Character:
Skeleton:

[odedrt9]

So I decided to go with the simple 16x16 style, because that way I can do more content faster.
Here are the some of the sprites:

A chest:
A floor tile and the top of the floor tile: ,

Some animations:
,
,

What do you think? how do I add more depth to them? I still want them to be a bit more realistic.

[odedrt9]

So here's an update:

I tried a lot of things this past week.. First thing I tried is making a better 16x16 characters
I started with a skeleton, because it's both a monster and a literal skeleton for any character:

Idle:
Walk:
Punch:

And made a forest tileset:


And a mockup:


Now, after that I was dissatisfied with the player itself, it feels out of place with the realistic slime, and outlined chest\slime.

So! I tried making a bigger character, and again I started with a skeleton:


I think it's better, so I also had a shot and tried to put some skin on it:


But I don't like it nearly as much as I like the skeleton... I don't know why, it just doesn't look as good to me.
Characters are my weakness. I don't know how to shade humans or skin, for some reason I make them too unrealistic..

Also I made a bigger chest which I like:

[odedrt9]

Bump... Anyone has any idea to what I can do?

[aamatniekss]

Hey!

Well, I made a quick and dirty, little edit for you!



Basically your tiles are very repetitive and not at all like in real life. Especially the way the shading affects them, they look more pillow shaded, but you should think of how the light hits objects in real life to better understand how to shade things. I drew 2 little references to the side, the rock and the grass blade, to how they would look if the lightsource was coming from top left(sun). It's not exactly correct, but it should maybe help you understand lighting better. Basically try and make the same things but on lower scale in your tilesets, and you can apply that to everything, also the characters. You just need to think about your lightsource all the time.

As for the colours, you were using mostly straight ramps for colour change. Just darker/lighter. Usually it's best to change the hue around like in the edit I did. When going for darker colours, try to shift the hue a bit towards blue, so your brown rocks for example, would turn more purplish as they go darker, or when going for lighter colours shift the hue more towards yellow, so the the grass blade for example, goes from green more towards yellow as it gets lighter.

Oh and yeah, I think it'd be a good idea to eventually make the tiles fade to the darkest colour, to avoid repetition of the tiles.

I hope it helps at least a little, atleast this did help me a lot. As soon as I started thinking more of the forms of objects, not shapes, my pixeling improved quite  alot.

[Atnas]

here's a quick edit from when the forums were down, maybe a bit too simple/pokemon-ish for what you truly want, but i feel it gets the ideas across (despite relying on my own personal crutches to show them)


and a little drawing to explain some things


I think a lot of this is a drawing issue, when you enlarge it, its obvious what looks wonky. I would advise not to let conventions of the medium control you, or let you think that certain things are ok that you would not be ok drawing or painting. Like the ? mark and belt buckle being off center is very evident when you think about this as an infinite resolution image.

Not quite sure about the eyes you have, is he looking down? If you take a really symbolic approach to a real eye and simplify things, you wind up with a bit different result that comes across more convincingly.

And a little about folds, I dont fully understand how to do them myself yet, but if you break down the cloth into a series of suspension points where its either resting on top of something and being pulled by gravity, or being pressed against another thing which dictates a fixed amount of material that is being pulled (in a belt or under an arm, etc). I didn't include folds in my edit because I tried to match the cartoony style with the treasure chest you liked, but if you want to pursue that direction there's a bit to think about.

I can see you are already better now as evident from the latest stuff you've been sending in slack, so maybe a bit of this is review or old news to you, but maybe you can find some of this food for thought still nutritious.

[odedrt9]

Thanks @aamatniekss and @atnas, I'm gonna create another thread because the main reason for this thread(deciding upon what style I'll go with) is resolved.
I'm going to use your edits to attempt remaking my sprites.

[odedrt9]

Hey so I'm making a game and I'm here to improve my sprites.
I'll post my progress here also for others who might have issues in the future, so that they can learn from it(for ambivorous too).

So in my previous thread I decided to go with 32x32 sprites.

I started with a skeleton:


Also an idle animation:
I used what people in the slack group told me and I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Now, I used the edit Atnas posted in the other thread and tried to apply what he said on my skeleton also to match the current style I'm going with:


There are a few things that I find wrong\bad, which are:
1. The ear, might be too big or unnecessary.
2. Shading on the hands(Have no idea how to do them).
3. The left eye(can't add the white because it will contradict the perspective also the skeleton's skull.
4. The left leg, looks too straight/fat.
Also I'm not entirely sure it matches the skeleton's style.

I'm going to play with it more, hopefully you can help me and give me suggestions

EDIT:
So I made a few changes:
1. shrank the ear a bit.
2. played with the hand and leg a bit.



EDIT 2:

Got rid of those weird hand shadings hopefully it looks better now.

[odedrt9]

So today I tried going for the tiles:

I tried going for the same approach aamatniekss went for when he posted his edit, but I'm not sure it went.. Any ideas?

Latest update:

[odedrt9]

So I had done a lot this week, with the help of some amazing guys on slack I had accomplished something I never thought I could do:


I'm done for now, have to do some coding too.
Probably next week I'll work on the animations of the player and skeleton.