[WIP] Forest scene

[Marscaleb]

Hello fine folks, I've been working on a forest scene for my game.  This is a work in progress; all I have right now is the dirt.
I wanted to share it at this state because I would like to get some feedback.  Please be completely open in your feedback; rip it to shreds, draw over my work, make me cry.
I personally see dozens of flaws in what I've made so far, but I've been staring at it so long I can't tell if they are as bad as I think.

I'm loosely following the restrictions for SNES backgrounds.  I'm not actually counting the number of tiles, but I am keeping everything within appropriate tile sizes and trying to keep the number of tiles looking close to what I've seen other SNES games do.

Main character sprite included for comparison.

[eishiya]

Your character doesn't appear to be standing on the tiles, the way the feet are shaded makes it look like heels are higher up than the toes.
Another common trick in games is to not outline the bottom of the characters' feet when they're on the ground. This eliminates the appearance of an underside/shadow, making the feet look planted on the floor rather than hovering just above.

The dirt tiles feel rather busy. The tops of them are nice, but the fill pattern on the sides is a bit distracting, there's too much going on. Keep the fill patterns simple, more like what you have on the dark dirt in the background. A solid colour with occasional detail is a lot less distracting than a constant pattern.

This ground doesn't feel very "foresty". The light colour suggests sand rather than the sort of soil full of decomposed leaves and wood that most forests grow in. I'd expect this ground colour in a prairie or desert area. Try using some darker colours and adding some vaguely leavy patterns instead of just rocks, to add the look of dead leaves. A couple of refs you might find useful, cut-aways of forest ground: Root-filled but otherwise clean, sub-tropical, leafy and natural, temperate. In particular, look at the colours of that dirt, and how it's not particularly rocky. A few adapted species aside, trees don't do so well in rocky soil because they can't get well-rooted in rocks, and tend to not get enough nutrients, or to topple over from wind.

[Marscaleb]

Your character doesn't appear to be standing on the tiles, the way the feet are shaded makes it look like heels are higher up than the toes.
Another common trick in games is to not outline the bottom of the characters' feet when they're on the ground. This eliminates the appearance of an underside/shadow, making the feet look planted on the floor rather than hovering just above.

I never really noticed that, but I do see that in many of the examples I have on-hand.  I'll keep this in mind when I get back to drawing character sprites.

This ground doesn't feel very "foresty". The light colour suggests sand rather than the sort of soil full of decomposed leaves and wood that most forests grow in. I'd expect this ground colour in a prairie or desert area. Try using some darker colours

Okay, I'll try that.  But I think I should get the trees and other elements in before I make any major changes to the color, because I'll need to see how it balances with the other colors.

[MysteryMeat]

Counterpoint, for a cleaner Color Palette you're going to want to use whatever greens and Browns you use for the grass on the trees

[Marscaleb]

So I already knew I wasn't going to have much time these last couple weeks, so I decided to make some water instead of starting on the trees.

Here's a sample with a water tile:


And here it is a detail with the water animated:

It uses three frames, but they are offset which makes the animation six frames long.

By the way, while this is a work-in-progress, I would appreciate it if you critiqued the art as if it were a finished product; (barring the obvious placeholder elements of course,) because I'm generally not planning on going back and revising any of this if nobody seems to notice any flaws.

[eishiya]

I think the wave pattern feels very repetitive, even more so in motion. Using smaller waves would make it easier to hide the pattern. Alternatively, you could "stack" waves (exaggerated illustration, effect in motion), e.g. a big wave that takes 3 frames, and a much smaller sequence of waves that stacks with it that takes e.g. 2 frames (having different periods for the waves looks more natural), so you'll get a 6-frame animation loop.

You have some highlights in the water that are almost static, they look unnatural.

I'd have the water fade in colour more gently. I'd go into the second colour only slightly below the waves, and then fade from there to the darkest colour. Having a big space of light and then fading to dark suddenly makes it look like a shadow on a tube, rather than darkness in transparent water.
Consider making each colour transition its own tile, with solid-coloured water tiles optionally between them. That way you can have a gradient between all the colours for a water column of any height, and you could have the fading end on a lighter colour in shallower pools if you wanted to.


A critique I missed on the ground last time: The dark background dirt tangents with the corners/tops of the platforms. I think it would look more natural if it didn't, but rather came out of the sides of them, or went above them in some cases, e.g.

I think this way, the platform edges are clearer, and the scene feels more interesting because there's some visual overlap and more interesting silhouettes.
(Also, while I was editing, I noticed you seem to have some semi-transparent pixels on the edges of the background rocks! Might be left-overs from when you sketched stuff in first? IMHO it's best to sketch with pencil tool, so your colours are under control and sketches easy to get rid of.)

[MysteryMeat]

Counterpoint, for a cleaner Color Palette you're going to want to use whatever greens and Browns you use for the grass on the trees

I have only now just caught and corrected my horrid typo

[Marscaleb]

I think the wave pattern feels very repetitive, even more so in motion. Using smaller waves would make it easier to hide the pattern. Alternatively, you could "stack" waves

Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to draw this again.  I might keep it for use in some area though, where it would look better to have "rushing" water.

You have some highlights in the water that are almost static, they look unnatural.

Highlights in water actually are very static; they just glimmer but they stay in the same spot.  So I'm not sure what highlights you are referring to.

I'd have the water fade in colour more gently. I'd go into the second colour only slightly below the waves, and then fade from there to the darkest colour. Having a big space of light and then fading to dark suddenly makes it look like a shadow on a tube, rather than darkness in transparent water.

I was going for having a dark portion just at the bottom to signal to the player that they die if they go down that far, but yeah, I don't need so many color transitions to do that.

A critique I missed on the ground last time: The dark background dirt tangents with the corners/tops of the platforms. I think it would look more natural if it didn't, but rather came out of the sides of them, or went above them in some cases, e.g.

That looks a lot better; Imma do that.

(Also, while I was editing, I noticed you seem to have some semi-transparent pixels on the edges of the background rocks! Might be left-overs from when you sketched stuff in first? IMHO it's best to sketch with pencil tool, so your colours are under control and sketches easy to get rid of.)

I see what you're talking about.  It's actually on a separate layer; the same layer as the tree sketches, so its really gone already.  (But thanks for pointing that out; I would have hated to have left that in the final version.)

[eishiya]

You have some highlights in the water that are almost static, they look unnatural.

Highlights in water actually are very static; they just glimmer but they stay in the same spot.  So I'm not sure what highlights you are referring to.

It's true that highlights generally tend to retain their general position, but you've got waves on your water, so the entire reflective surface should be undulating. In addition, even with only minor waves, the highlights are only static in the longer term, in the short term they dance, they disappear, etc, they don't look that static if you follow a specific glimmer rather than the entire reflection.

I suppose part of the issue is it's unclear whether we're seeing the water's surface, or the interior, since you have both highlights and the light-dark fade with no clear transition between surface and interior. Because of the lack of other transition, to me it reads like this water is a cut-away, with the interior starting right below the bright highlighted ridge of the waves, which would place the static glimmers underneath the surface, where they don't belong xP

[Marscaleb]

Finally got some time to work on this again.
Got some tree trunks made today.