AuthorTopic: My latest RPG area design  (Read 1864 times)

Offline Odovedesign

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 105
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • ODOVEDESIGN
    • BOOMCAKEART
    • View Profile
    • ODOVEDESIGN

My latest RPG area design

on: March 10, 2018, 01:52:39 pm
I'm just adding portfolio pieces and this one was one that I just made up as I went along

Oscar Dove - ODOVEDESIGN
www.odovedesign.com

Offline eishiya

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1266
  • Karma: +2/-0
    • http://pixeljoint.com/p/28889.htm
    • View Profile
    • Website

Re: My latest RPG area design

Reply #1 on: March 10, 2018, 03:14:56 pm
Any chance you could post it at 1x, without the uneven zoom?
Also, this is a dumb nitpick, but while it's good to have your signature/watermark on a piece, I feel like it is in poor taste to animate it. It doesn't help it do its job any better, but it distracts from the artwork.

Overall it looks quite nice, if unpolished. I think you should expand it a bit before you finish/polish it up, as the house is uncomfortably close to the edge and the scene feels a little empty and out of context as is. I'd love to see more of that other bank where the inhabitant apparently does their work, and more above the house where they probably store their goods.

A bunch of assorted crits:

I like the way you've shaded the ground and the colours you've chosen for it. However, the colour choices elsewhere in the scene are much bolder and the textures are flatter, so currently the rocks look out of place. Making everything match is something you should keep in mind as you work on this piece further, as from this base, it would be easy to make things mismatch.

It looks strange that the bridge sits right on top of the water, and right at the edge of the waterfall. It's an impractical place/height to build a bridge.
On a practical/logistics level, it seems odd to build a house with no easy approach to the lake nearby. I think a little beach or a floating pier would be a nice addition to the scene. Then again, realism is rarely a factor in RPGs xP Cliff-sides surrounding bodies of water like in this scene are very common in RPGs, though IRL you pretty much never get banks that look that way all the way around a body of water. I doubt most players would bat an eye if you left it as-is.

The edge of the water in the horizontal areas seems smoother than the shape of the dirt/rocks would suggest, looks mismatched. The vertical part on the bank (on the left side of the image) looks great, the rocks look like they're sticking out into and above the water.

The soft reflections or rocks seen through the water look out of place with the rest of the style, which is sharp and clean. In addition, we'd probably not see such straight lines through water that's in motion. Near the waterfall especially, there should probably be no discernible reflections/see-through at all because the water would be too turbulent.

The waterfall looks great, aside from needing a bit of clean-up. However, it is much taller than the surrounding bank, and it seems to have a speed and weight to it that doesn't match the small amount of foam and turbulence you've drawn at the bottom of it. I think there should be much more. Alternatively, perhaps you could draw a flat or very rocky (and clearly not vertical) section in the middle, which would reduce the height of the waterfall, and probably help with reducing its apparent speed/weight. Such small waterfalls are rarely perfectly vertical IRL, too.

The hut is pillow-shaded.
I can't tell whether the door is a hole or solid but painted dark because it has neither texture nor any indication of light from the outside reaching into it.
The construction of the house doesn't make sense in various way, but I suspect it would be boring to read a how-to manual on building houses xP Instead, I recommend looking up some diagrams and photos of such houses and visiting similarly-built buildings if you can. Having a sense for how they're actually built will make it much easier to draw them in a way that makes sense, and it'll make it easier to come up with appropriate details and the like.

I feel like any further comments would go into nitpick territory, and since most of it is quite rough, I suspect you already know most of what I would say and just haven't started on pixelling that stuff yet. I hope you'll post further stages of this work here!