[C+C][WIP] Platformer Mockup

[Curly]

This is the first time I try to make a mock-up, and I started drawing the things I've enver done before like trees, backgrounds and HUD.
The background gradient is kinda cheap, but I guess it's better than a Photshop gradient

[SmashAdams]

I really like the colours, however I think there is some depth problems with that city in the "background". it looks like your character could jump and climb on a cluster of miniature houses.
perhaps try lowering the brightness/visibility of your background pieces to "push it to the back", so to speak.

[Curly]

True. I already lowered the saturation of the city and raised the character's but it doesn't feel good yet

[MysteryMeat]

I think it might help to raise the "floor" of the villiage up so you can see the cliff it's built on, would look less like part of the foreground that way!

[wzl]

You can try to blend the houses with the atmosphere, give it a more blue/orange hue and lessen the brightness a bit. Looks promising otherwise. curious where you will take it 

[Curly]

I think it might help to raise the "floor" of the villiage up so you can see the cliff it's built on, would look less like part of the foreground that way!

That was my intention actually. That's why I started drawing the rocks, but I started from the top

You can try to blend the houses with the atmosphere, give it a more blue/orange hue and lessen the brightness a bit. Looks promising otherwise. curious where you will take it 

Thanks I will try that.
I wanted it to look like those mediterranean white little cities

[kullenberg]

Here's an idea. I envisioned it with a golden hour kind of light scenario 

[Double7]

Here is an image I found to help explain it a bit.

The tower in the background is what is comparable to your city. This image uses some sort of lake to bridge the gap between the foreground and the background. In your case I am assuming it would be land bridging this gap, so having trees or something similar in between the two would work pretty well. Make sure to make everything the correct size so that the houses in relation are also correct. You don't want them to appear too big or too small.

Good luck though Curly, I look forward to seeing where you go with this.

[Curly]

kullenberg: Ohh that looks much better! I was going for a sunset too. I will play with colors later

Double7: Yes, that would help. That was the idea from the beginning actually, but while I was drawing the houses I thought it could look cool this way, the player being in a mountain in front of the city or something. You game me a couple of ideas anyways
(The screenshot is from the game "Slain!" if anyone was wondering)

Thanks guys 

[MysteryMeat]

This kind of thing is what I was trying to describe, enhancing the cliff to provide a better visual divide between the ground at the forefront and the background element city.

[Curly]

I've been busy (and lazy) these days

I think the city looks better now, right? (I still prefer the one from kullemberg haha)
Also I've tried a couple of things to separate the foreground from the city. Do you think I should keep working on those hills?
I will try different things anyways. Something like MysteryMeat's edit could be nice.

[SmashAdams]

I think that looks a LOT better. I also like the hills.
however, you're going to do more with the ground your character is standing on, right?

[BadMoodTaylor]

I feel like if the sun is setting and light is coming from the background the tops of the hills should be lighter, not shadowed.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I did a quick edit here so you can see if it looks better (not sure the green I chose is the best).  But you will have to figure out where the dark green meets the light green, as some of the shadow streaks should actually be light streaks:

[Curly]

Thanks SmashAdams. Yeah, I'm going to make a couple of tiles for the ground.
You've got a point BadMoodTaylor. I think I would just erase it, but it was just a quick "sketch". You can notice it's two hills copypasted a couple of times

[BadMoodTaylor]

Thanks SmashAdams. Yeah, I'm going to make a couple of tiles for the ground.
You've got a point BadMoodTaylor. I think I would just erase it, but it was just a quick "sketch". You can notice it's two hills copypasted a couple of times

I actually didn't notice the hill repeated itself.  Most games use tilemaps where the same image is repeated over and over again.  As long as it isn't obvious it is repeated it should be fine.  Your hills are broken up fine since you have at least three different ones (small, medium, big).

You just have to think about the shape of the hill and where the light would shine.  You did a good job giving the hill shape with the shadows (only using two colors).  If you add a third now you will just have to adjust it a little.

[Curly]

I redid the mountain (it's not polished and I should change the colors. I leave that for tomorrow) and made an empty heart.
Does this mountain look better than the old one?


@BadMoodTaylor I'm not sure yet about what will I do with the hills... I don't think they need a highlight right now.
I will leave those like that for now, as simple sketches.

[MysteryMeat]

I feel that mountain design kind of detracts from the silhouette the town was providing, feels a lot more closed-in now whereas before it felt like an open-air sicilian type eal.
I'd try fiddling with reducing the detail, or perhaps playing with some raised spires and stuff to make the village feel more nestled-atop the mountain rather than nestled-into.

If you google "cliff city" there's a lot of good references you can pull up, this one in particular kind of shows off what I mean:

[BadMoodTaylor]

Reasonable to not want to add a third color that doesn't have much use, but I would remove the shadow line from the top of the hills as that doesn't make sense.

[Curly]

@MysteryMeat Yes... I thought about that. I will have to search for some references and try to make it properly.

[Curly]

Got kinda tired of the original mockup
I made this one tonight. The colors became way more saturated when I uploaded it to imgur and the darkest colors now look all black

Fixed. Now the original looks too desaturated