AuthorTopic: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff  (Read 6027 times)

Offline vedsten

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 125
  • Karma: +1/-0
  • boo
    • View Profile

vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

on: January 17, 2007, 02:06:34 am
i used to able to finish my shit, but meh

wanted to something ambient, but somehow managed to fuck just about everything i could up:



soo, i tried again:



scrapped it and wanted to dew a tileset, watching helm making one in PM, i thought i wanted to try it out



aaaand, then fucked it up with lame sprites and interface:




I figure i'll finish the tileset, so any C&C on that would be appreciated. Im very fed up with the bg's (tho i might finish the second one), but any c&c on those are welcome as well.

Offline Blick

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 573
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • I am not an eskimo.
    • pixeljoint.com/p/327.htm
    • View Profile

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #1 on: January 17, 2007, 02:58:06 am
I find it awkward how your trees are more like tripods. The roots start to break away from each other too high on the tree, I think. That's what makes the first one look especially awkward. You made it a bit more natural on the second one, with the trees being embedded into hills and structures, but I'd still like to see the roots have more natural positioning.

Also, I think the vertical grooves in the trees or too emphasized by being so dark.

Offline Stwelin

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 567
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #2 on: January 17, 2007, 03:06:57 am
Personally i think the first one has a certain something about it. i like it a lot. The roots may look a little strange, but thenagain, the trees are growing out of land completely covered in rubble, which somewhat explains the exposed/premature roots. I think it is much more interesting than the generic:

\____/
   | |
   | |
   | |
   | |
   | |
   | |
  /   \

etc. the really light tan ones stand out though, i think they should be a midway between the forground and backrgound, as in, they should be brown mixed with some blue, not one or the other, to create some depth.

I like the palette of the second one, it's very mysterious and forest-like.

The tileset is ace, IMO, lots and lots of eyecandy. The sprites blend in a little too much, which tends to happen when dealing with characters that resemble marines / troops since they uniformly wear camoflauge. I like the purple shadows especially, my favourite type of undertone.

Keep it coming, i love this type of work. :)

Offline David

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 244
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • I Am Not Original

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #3 on: January 17, 2007, 04:50:45 am
I like the first two a lot. The first one especially. The trees in that one look like cypresses. They're real. They're real trees. They exist.

Offline Willows

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 223
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #4 on: January 17, 2007, 09:31:06 am
I think you're being too hard on yourself, lol. Too much "It was going well and theeeen I fucked it up", not enough actually finishing shit. Of the first two, the parts that are more or less complete are wonderful, the only thing stopping it from being jawdropping is time, not skill.

I am the most hypocritical being out there ;)

On to actual crits, you don't have as strong a grasp of lighting as some (Namely Lawrence, perhaps he could give you some pointers?) but your textures are wonderful to look at, and seem to be suiting to their objects. I specifically love the greenery in the first one, such detail is awesome to have in there. It seems logical to me for the forest to get darker/more saturated as distance increases, rather than brighter.

For the tiles, I want to say find a way to add some colour in there, but I've no idea how to, myself  :hehe:. The commando dude is rather hard to see as well, but the green dude is quite impressive himself. Personally, I'd take his head right out of there and leave it at that, hahaha.

Offline Faceless

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 427
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #5 on: January 18, 2007, 03:43:50 am
I'd like to see the second one finished. The first one... not so much.
I don't know whether it's a case of not being finished or not, but the tree on the far left in the second pic has a weird line cutting through it. I can't imagine why this would be intentional, so I'm really wondering how that got in there.
I really like the mockup. Nice work as usual.

Offline EyeCraft

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 597
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • What are you scared of?
    • View Profile
    • Death By Dev

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #6 on: January 18, 2007, 06:56:02 am
I really have to agree with Willows, this is primarily a problem of time/patience, rather than lack of skill. I can see why the first one could have instilled disdain...the more I look at it the more I can see how it seems problematic for you. But really the problems with it aren't that huge; above all I think it was just a lack of planning that was the downfall with that one.

I'm totally digging the second backdrop. It's fucking brilliant, and IMO really deserves to be finished. I think with some more playing with the ramps to give a transition from blue to the grey-olive tones of the foreground tree, you could really achieve alot of depth in the image.

Don't be diheartened if you hit brick walls, or can't seem to make anything look the way you want! I've had that before, I thought I'd fucked up uber big time and that I should just chuck whatever I had done. But you've just got to kick your own arse and push yourself through that. I did that and the work I was having trouble with turned into one of my more beautiful tilesets not long after that.

Speaking of tilesets, yours is absolutely wonderful! The platforms seem a bit too monotone, though. Maybe try a secondary lightsource with a strong tint? I know that's always done to death, but that's because it damn works. Stronger tint in the shadows, maybe? Deep indigo shadows or something like that. Then there's always the possibility of variation tiles to add in some other colours; little plants/vines overhanging the side and whatnot.

Anyway, good luck with it all!

Offline Helm

  • Moderator
  • 0110
  • *
  • Posts: 5159
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • Asides-Bsides

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #7 on: January 18, 2007, 07:33:02 am
These are all very nice stuff. I find the elements to be too canonical. The trees all similar, the rocks as if cut by a mason in the same sizes, the grass patches evenly distributed. This hurts this sort of art for me, repeated patterns as if out of a factory.

Offline vedsten

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 125
  • Karma: +1/-0
  • boo
    • View Profile

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #8 on: January 18, 2007, 02:39:14 pm
eya, thx for the input

@blick: i believe i've seen trees with trunks somewhat similar to that, google image search doesn't seem to support me tho, so you might be right. In any case, i think the tree structure is the least of the problems on bg # 1 (considering strange colorchoices and overall boring design buggs me more)

@stewlin: bg#1: yea, the mid-trees caused me some concern color-wise, mainly because i couldn't figure out to create the trasition between yellowish brown and tealish blue. One of the main reasons i stopped working on this one. Agree on your comments on the tileset as well, i prob. should've used different palletes for sprites.

@David: Thanks man

@Willows: Thanks. The only one i'm really not satisfied with is bg#1, mainly due to boring design and colors. Im fairly happy with bg#2 and the tileset (excluding sprites). The only reason i didn't finish bg #2 was because of the imense time i takes me to do large areas of somewhat similar tasks (the two large trees and the ground). You raise an interresting and prob. valid point on the texture/light thing. I do believe i've pushed my texturing skills while my understanding of lighting pretty much havenøt developed for a while, need to practice that.

@Faceless: Hehe, yea, i'd like to finish #2 and not so much #1 either. As for the far left tree - the wierd line is there cause i did some copy pasting changing the tree structure a bit, just before giving up on it.

@Eyecraft: Yea, bad planning was indeed an issue on #1, one of the things i treid fixing doing #2, making a much more elaborate sketch, with better, more interesting, design.    Concerning #2, yea, a ramp between the blues and the browns would prob. help, the current color reuse looks kinda forced, i'll look into it if i summon the energy to finish. About the brickwall thing - yea, continuing untill you get it right used to be one of my good habits (and it is indeed a good method). Dunno what has changed, mayby i should try something smaller. As for the tileset, im proberbly not gonna throw in a second lightsource, mainly cause it would take to long, might try it on the next one tho. As for variation tiles, it's a good idea, ill go for it.

@Helm: Are you adressing all the images or just #1? Anyhow, i guess it's an issue on all of them (but mainly the first), and it's true, i should try out some more variation, im not too good with designs and the pics really suffer from it.

Thx for the c&c everyone

Offline Stwelin

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 567
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #9 on: January 18, 2007, 04:46:02 pm
@Helm: I think you these pieces you have to use your imaination with. this may be a far shot, but imagine a sort of ground-zero type of location, rubble everywhere, the rocks of course are cut the same size, because they were originally bricks (think: Great Wall of China) and many centuries later the land has been terraformed and trees are growing out of the rubble. here's an example, just plucked from google:



I think it's a neat environment, personally. has a lot of atmosphere.

Offline Helm

  • Moderator
  • 0110
  • *
  • Posts: 5159
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile
    • Asides-Bsides

Re: vedsten's semi scrapped stuff

Reply #10 on: January 18, 2007, 08:30:20 pm
You can stumble into a situation where something is going on in your art that you didn't ever expect. That's fine. Let's not make excuses for why things turned out how they turned out, though. That can be done easily for any sort of error or weakness. My critique for mainly the first picture remains that the elements are too canonical, too repeated and there's no attention paid to negative space and using detail versus plainness to peak interest. I'm pretty certain, and vedsten would probably agree, that he didn't intend any post-bombing rubble in his first picture, but that's just what occured in his head initially when he decided 'rocks, moss and trees'. I am saying he should consider the prototypical images more, ponder on variations and try something else rather than small square rocks x 100