Gameboy Color mockup

[Ryumaru]

this uses simplified restrictions from the gba
its a an entry for a duel between me and jww
after this mockup a title screen will also be made
any comments and critiques are highly appreciated!

[Andy Tran]

 Nice, it looks GBC-ish. There's a red neon floor on the bottom piece. Kinda burn my eye.

[rabidbaboy]

It's coming along nicely.
You'll of course work on the lava some more?
I hope to see more characters in this mockup.

[Ryumaru]

Andy Tran: yeah i should probably tone it down some.
Rabidbaboy: what youre thinking of as lava is actually red rock that is where the main character will be able to walk on, in the transition tiles, those are supposed to be red rocks, but they seem like they could be bubbles.
thanks for the comments guys!

[rabidbaboy]

Ah, I see, I see.
I thought it was a waterfall of lava at first, but now I see how it is a floor.

[Lackey]

From a design perspective; have you considered a vertical status bar?  The horizontal bar cuts off the demon's wonderfully rendered helmet; which I'd also think would have the most prominence in this scene.

The broken look of the tiles is very striking because of the palette tricks.  It's a really fancy technique (and personally I like the broken, tiley aesthetic) but it can also be distracting.  I think for game art it's often a better idea to have symbolic consistency, colours for rocks, colours for floors, that sort of thing, because intelligibility is more important than colour depth.  It is a judgement call though.  Very nice work overall.

[Ryumaru]

thanks lackey! these are the kinds of comments i want!  vertical health bar is a great idea, and will be implemented as soon as i design it.

my main reason for using that tecnique was more to seperate the squares by light, but i guess its more seperated by hue. maybe if the color ramp for the rocks was less everwhere and stuck mainly to a couple, more linked hues?

[Lackey]

That could work.  I'm curious about the technical features of this: are the rock tiles all palette swapped?  The tile sheet seems to show this.  Could you actually put this on GBC hardware?  I know the tile # and palette restrictions are really harsh and it looks like you're working within them.

[Faceless]

The tiles look really nice, though one of them breaks GBC law (2nd from the top on the right of the second spike).
One problem I have is that the devil doesn't fit in well with the scene.


A pose like this would make everything tie in together much better, and I fixed that tile for you.

[Helm]

Take heed of the last crit by Faceless because you seem to be drawing a lot of same front-on idle muscley beings. Try in do a bit of storytelling with every element you draw, not just 'here's a devil, idle stance'. Make him the liege of his domain. The more possessive stance by Faceless perfectly could portray this.