Forester Mockup 37 x 2 - b \ 240 = square + game.

[AlexHW]

 
workin on a mockup..
but startin to get slow towards the end.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Looks nice, obviously quite WIPpy about the tree and background but I like it.

[Xion]

Your trees are always so awesome.
But I do find the 45 degree angles among its branches quite distracting.
Might just be me, but the dudes head looks a bit small...
Mmm...that's all I got.

[ptoing]

Looking good, but using the same colours on the guy and the background, esp with this high level of detail might cause visibility problems, even with the outline.

[pkmays]

Fun palette to play with. : ]

The background rocks, and I love the character sprite, but I'd have to agree that he could end up getting mixed in the background. Then again, he is a commando.

[terminal_arcade]

Somehow the hearts don't seem too manly to me, while the main character really looks like he'd like something more square. Just a thought.

[Stwelin]

Somehow the hearts don't seem too manly to me, while the main character really looks like he'd like something more square. Just a thought.

I agree.  Perhaps a more accurate depiction of a human heart? I think it would suit it more. 

[SCiDT]

WOW, love the sprites! I agree with the hearts they seem that they should rather be in a mickey mouse game or something.

@ pmkays : Nice work on the palette the last one is my favorite!

Ps: Great work Alex!

[robotriot]

Excellent works on the tiles and the sprite here, I really dig your style. I do however prefer the palette edit with the blue sky as well though. Sometimes it might be better to use more regular colours. One thing I'm not too fond of is the smaller tree, to the right of the large one. I can't really make out any detail in its leaves, it just lookes like a random blob of greenish pixels. Same goes for some parts of the grass. The mossy rocks on the other hand are awesome again. Anyway, finish it!

[crab2selout.png]

This is a great mockup, Alex. You've been making some real unique variations on typical pixel environments lately. I don't wnat to say too much because of the wip-ness of this. But I am feeling a little concerned with your tree right now. Mostly my fear is it will have a sucking vortexy-black hole feel like in the tiles you did for the 72h comp. Maybe there's some concern over how defined the leaves are compared with the rest of your tiles.

I cant wait for you to finish this. I really like where you're going with your colours. Your selection has improved since your low sat phase a couple months back. It looks like you've found ways to make it work.

[Ryumaru]

i have no crits other than what has already been said.
absolutely beautiful otherwise.

[eqko]

ooh I love this great things going on with the paralax with the foreground leaves and such.

might be an idea to give the forester a more subtle less detailed uniform. I doubt foresters go about in full camo.

[Terley]

lookin excellent alex, style wise this is looking like something I'll remember for quite a while, its teasin that its just a mockup and will probably only ever be just a mockup, graphics are beautiful.. Some great colour tips mentioned, if you work out all the kinks this will just be breath-taking.. Goodluck dude.

[Feron]

thats one damn fine mockup.

personally i think pkmays third pallette alteration is better. 

looking forward to updates

[Xion]

might be an idea to give the forester a more subtle less detailed uniform. I doubt foresters go about in full camo.

What camo?
Pkmay's 3rd alteration is indeed much easier on the eyes than that red you've got for the ground. However, I like the way the middle one has more atmosphere.

[Kable]

I just want to say that I think the character design kicks ass, I love how you've implied a lot of detail with colors and shapes as opposed to actually pixeling that detail. Muscles in the arms for example. The proportions of the character are great too, small head, big arms.. make him look like a tough guy commando type perfectly.

[ndchristie]

ptoing has a good point about losing the character, although as demonstrated by the palette swaps the background really makes a difference here (hes completely gone on the yellow, clear as crystal on the blue.)

i think, since your tree trunk seems to be entirely made of unique tiles (or just one large sprite, im not sure) that you should add a real shadow to the upper portions, such that it gives the tree a bit more volume.   you might also want to keep the bottom 'edge' of the leaf tiles in shade, since right now the shading pattern on them is really distorting.

anyhoo, its a very nice mockup, i cant wait to see how you choose to finish it

(ps - see how beautiful your work is when you use high chroma and value contrast?)

edit - separated the foreground from the background a bit, don't know if its what you want but i think it's clearer

[Jad]

Dammit Adarias, that blue colour looks like radioactive mist to me on this screen @ _ @

lower brightness on that one? :0 Looks just weird on my screen :\

[ndchristie]

Dammit Adarias, that blue colour looks like radioactive mist to me on this screen @ _ @

lower brightness on that one? :0 Looks just weird on my screen :\

sorry, i was on an old monitor where the whole thing looked so dark+yellow and i could barely see.  now i look at my edit at home and am like, holy sh****ck that's bright >.<

[AlexHW]

Thanks for the replies, they are very helpful..

lets see if i can reply to some of your responses:

Xion Night, about the 45 degree branches, it is mostly due to the 8x8 tiles I was structureing things within. I wanted to be able to create multiple trees useing most of the same tiles. His head probably looks small because he has no hair.
I was thinking of maknig him wear some sort of bear skin type of thing with some bear head ontop of his head.

Ptoing, yeah i agree that too many things are sharing similar colors, and would probably give rise to some visibility issues, but I'm not too concerned about it as it's just a mockup.

pkmays, very cool palette edits! I didnt realize how red mine looked untill i saw some variations. Oh, and he's no commando.

terminal arcade, interesting suggestion. Perhaps i could try a more realistic heart.. ill look into it.

robotriot, i agree with the blob look of the smaller tree, i edited it a bit to define some leaves better, but it still looks more like the grass than the bigger tree.

crab2selout, thanks, the zortex tree effect is partly due to the intended style i wanted with collidable surfaces(having the inside darker). The tree folliage would be capable of standing upon.

Kable, thanks, the guy was the first thing i did and you describe the intended results i wanted for him.

Adarias, thanks, I'm not to concerned with things getting lost, considering it is a forest we're dealing with here, but it is a real issue for games so i undersstand where you're coming from. I don't think the guy would become completely invisible seeing as he would never go infront of the large tree.
I had intended the guy to be capable of standing ontop of the tree as well as perhaps hang from below it.

thanks for the comments, here's an update.. perhaps the colors are a bit better?

[saimo]

thanks for the comments, here's an update.. perhaps the colors are a bit better?

Colors are OK, although I personally liked pkmays' 3rd palette better.
About the tree: it's upper part looks like it's made from a sort of ring of leaves with a big hole inside of it! - leaves are beautiful, BTW.
About the guy: the head is perhaps a tad too small... I mean, even for a commando. Maybe just 1 pixel larger and it will look less odd, while retaining the emphasis on the muscly body.
Looks fine overall

saimo

[Larwick]

Love the design of this. The bright colours are great, especially the bold contrast between red and green i like. The character looks pro, great detail. I also really like what you've done with the tree, but i must agree that it looks like some time portal. Perhaps it just needs texture going all the way into the centre? Then again i can deal with it, as it works well against the other tiles as ones you can stand on. I think it's pretty important for that to be easily recognisable.

I agree the hearts don't fit. Not necissarily the fact they're the general heart symbols, but because of the way you've done them, like shaped lip-gloss tins or something.. 

Great work, can't wait to see it finished.

[Kable]

Personally I really like your use of silhouettes (sp?) on the foreground and background layers. The only layer with any real detail is the main tile layer and even then you've manged to keep it to a lot of repeated elements without making it look too tiled. It's possible that you could create a lot of content for a game like this and have it look really good without getting to burned out.   Nice design overall! 

[gliding]

I especially like the almost neon look- due to such high contrast and hue shifting. I was a bit put of by how the tree but I also see how it fits into the design pretty well.


quite pro

[AdamAtomic]

At the risk of sounding like what I hear pixeljoint posts are like...this absolutely blows my shit away.  This is one of those pieces of art that simultaneously inspires me to just pixel my ass off all day long AND demolishes whatever ego I was starting to build up about my own art.  The character design is phenomenal, and is begging to be animated.  I'm very eager to see more tree designs that reuse the tile set you've made, I think that's a very clever idea.  The foreground plant silhouettes are beautiful, and the way the dark red outlines work at 1x is really inspirational.  I agree with the other crits that the hearts seem out of place - i could see them in a Fejer mockup, but not this one   A bar, or maybe a line of adjacent circles a la Astro Boy would work better I think (and would still pop out nicely).

Thank you for posting this!

[AlexHW]

thanks..
it seems the hearts are really out of place..

how is this?

[Akzidenz]

Why not have a really minimal interface on the bottom instead of a big one in the upper-lefthand corner? The tileset is beautiful, let it breathe.

This is a really quick example, but:

[Ryumaru]

thats much more manly aswell.

[Rox]

I like big interfaces. Big but discrete is something I strive for. Sure, the smaller the interface is, the less it gets in the way, but it's downright annoying to have to divert your attention from the action in order to see how much more you can take. FarCry Instincts keeps killing me EXACTLY all the time for that reason. Tiny tiny digital health meter...

I quite like the new one with the big throbby heart. Except, supposedly realistic renditions of internal organs make me feel funny. I'd prefer just having colored bars and nothing else. Or, like, a cool icon if the game has some sort of logo. A shiny knife with blood dripping from it, and the dripping blood creates the health bar. That'd be awesome.

[Larwick]

The heart is great. I like how you incorporated the blue bar alongside the blue veins. Somehow i feel the glossyness of it doesn't fit though.. (haha, here i go again). Very well executed though! 

[AlexHW]

i think ill keep the big throbby heart.. one good thing about it, is that it could be animated and could throb faster as your health goes down, which would be a very easy thing to judge your health by as you play.
maybe i should animate it..

maybe i could do a score in some compact way.. or some item/bag thing..

[Kable]

Do you have a full sprite with the feet visible? If so could you post it, for some reason I really want to try animating an action with him. 

[AlexHW]

yeah, here:

[xanthier]

I LOVE that sprite! he looks so ....manly, reminds me of Arnold.  I also love the background, well done. The different plants really make the environment interesting.

[ceddo]

I like Akzidenz's color edit, the pic needed more contrast

The heart looks awesome! ..but I'm not a great fan on health bars, especially if the pointer covers half of it

I would think that at full health, the heart would look as you made it, throbbing relatively slowly. At 2/3 health, blood is spurting out of it at each throb, it's pulsating faster and starting to get a greenish/grayish tinge. At 1/3 health, it's leaking with blood, has taken a strong grayish/greenish tinge, is slightly shrunken, beating at full speed.

My idea

[Akzidenz]

Color edit? Oh.. I hadn't even noticed that.

The colors are different because I'd used a slightly older shot for the screen I posted. They're not my colors.

[Elrinth]

hello.. first post here...
I just want to say, this is a great place to learn and exchange comments with art!

As to this particular forester mockup... Looks AWESOME! Reminds me kinda of Bionic Commando.