Critique > Pixel Art

[WIP] Forest scene

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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:

--- Quote from: eishiya on September 04, 2018, 03:09:53 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote from: eishiya on September 04, 2018, 03:09:53 pm ---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

--- End quote ---

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.

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