[WIP][C&C] RPG tiles, props and sprites!

[Otto-V]

Hi guys

I am working on a RPG tile set for a personal game I am making. I am a experienced 3D artist but I have little to no experience working with pixel art.

I have studied what I have found in the tile sets that came with RPG Maker MV (I am using this as I have no programming skills)

I will keep posting my work here and hopefully I can end up with a nice looking and unique game.

I would also love feedback on the room layout, I am not sure how to best do side and bottom doors. I broke the upper door by scaling it but it should get the point across.

All art in images made by me.

[Curly]

Those remind me of old JRPGs like Golden Sun and Tales of Eternia, they look good (the bed lacks contrast in comparison with the other assets tho), but a lot of people wouldn't call that "pixel art". Here you will find out why and also learn the basic concepts: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
The top door is too big. I think every door should be the same size.

[Tori]

Very smooth, I like it.
I just didn't understand the perspective camera from the top and the orthographic objects.
Is this just for test or something like that, right?

[Otto-V]

Those remind me of old JRPGs like Golden Sun and Tales of Eternia, they look good (the bed lacks contrast in comparison with the other assets tho), but a lot of people wouldn't call that "pixel art". Here you will find out why and also learn the basic concepts: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
The top door is too big. I think every door should be the same size.

Very smooth, I like it.
I just didn't understand the perspective camera from the top and the orthographic objects.
Is this just for test or something like that, right?

If my sprites are not considered pixel art will they still be welcome in this forum?
I worked a bit on the bed and added in some darker lines hope it looks better now.

My main inspiration for the walls is Zelda a link to the past

But my sprite character (still uber wip) are one and a half tiles tall meaning a wall one tile high doesn't look to good. I tried having the top wall two tiles tall and the rest one just to see, but I am really unsure of how I should do this.

Yeah the perspective is strange. The object are Orthographic and I am using a 45 degree angel on the object, it looks strange tough when object reach close to the bottom of the maps. But you can see in the link screen the same happens there.

I might look for another solution on side and bottom walls and would love some feedback on it.

Some updates on my work, haven't had much time yet might get more done later to day.

[Curly]

If my sprites are not considered pixel art will they still be welcome in this forum?
I worked a bit on the bed and added in some darker lines hope it looks better now.

I don't know about here, but this topic gets discussed every once in a while at PixelJoint and they seem to be pretty estrict with it
There is a 2D and 3D section here anyways. If there's a problem they would just move it there I guess.

The bed still lacks contrast, it looks more flat than the others.
The new thing looks good but I'm not sure about the yellow.
I'm curious about how do you paint those

[Otto-V]

I don't know about here, but this topic gets discussed every once in a while at PixelJoint and they seem to be pretty estrict with it
There is a 2D and 3D section here anyways. If there's a problem they would just move it there I guess.

The bed still lacks contrast, it looks more flat than the others.
The new thing looks good but I'm not sure about the yellow.
I'm curious about how do you paint those

I do most of my pixel work in the program Piskel. I can go trough a bit more of what I do in another post.

I am working on a overworld sprite now. This is considered pixel art I think

[eishiya]

The perspective on the character doesn't match that of your tiles. The tiles have a from above-ish view going on (two different ones even), but the character is viewed from the front. If your overworld has the same tile style as the room you've shown, you should probably remake the sprite to be seen more from above.
Tiny chibi sprites can often get ahead with nonsense perspective just because they're so small and distorted to begin with, but with a large sprite like this, inconsistencies are really obvious.

[Otto-V]

The perspective on the character doesn't match that of your tiles. The tiles have a from above-ish view going on (two different ones even), but the character is viewed from the front. If your overworld has the same tile style as the room you've shown, you should probably remake the sprite to be seen more from above.
Tiny chibi sprites can often get ahead with nonsense perspective just because they're so small and distorted to begin with, but with a large sprite like this, inconsistencies are really obvious.

I tried to give her more perspective but ended up shrinking her a lot down. So I made a new bigger version, with eyes I was more happy with to



Edit: Made some changes to the head and made an outfit.

[eishiya]

It'll take more than just moving the features around, bodies look quite different from above. Imagine if the character had horizontal stripes tattooed on her. They'd just look like horizontal lines from the front. How would those stripes look from above? They wouldn't look like horizontal lines, would they? Clothing, etc gets deformed the same way. This example uses trees, but it should help convey what I mean:

[Otto-V]

It'll take more than just moving the features around, bodies look quite different from above. Imagine if the character had horizontal stripes tattooed on her. They'd just look like horizontal lines from the front. How would those stripes look from above? They wouldn't look like horizontal lines, would they? Clothing, etc gets deformed the same way. This example uses trees, but it should help convey what I mean:

I spent most of the day thinking about the sprite design and looking at a ton of other games.

I started with making a quick 3D model of the character with similar propositions to the sprite.
I sometimes use a orthographic camera with a 45 degree downward tilt to help me out with perspective on more complicated props. I also checked it out with a more normal perspective.



After setting this up I started the sprite again.



But I don't like it very much and based on most similar games I've seen even ones with taller sprites like mine tend to fudge the perceptive to make a more appealing character. I set up a test scene in RPG Maker to see how they look in a game like this. The only things I made in this image is the character sprites I posted here the rest is native to RPG Maker MV.



I am still going to tweak the sprite to make it look better then get to work on the male version as well, but for now I have decided to go for this look instead of a more correct perspective.

I really do appreciate your feedback tough


So these are the current sprites I've made. A lot of them as tests to figure out how to make them. Now I am going to do some research and figure out a visual style to go for in each area of my game to better guide my sprite production.