[FINISHED] Music Video "Comet Rider" - Howling Giant

[Sokota]

THE VIDEO IS FINISHED! YOU CAN WATCH IT HERE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjByRdae9aI





Enjoy!

Pixel dump:

[Sokota]

Here's a minor update to the scene I previously posted..removed a color, cleaned up some pixels..


These sprites have a double use-case. They are going to be used in a gameboy-like scene in the full music video. However, I also want to turn them into a playable game if I can. It's a little meta where the gameboy trucker game is replicated in the 'glossier' pixel world with the trucker character driving through the desert.

I know I'm breaking the original Gameboy's alpha limitations (I'm pretty sure?), but I wanted to stick pretty close to the actual limitations (resolution, color palette) while evoking the glory days of the OG Gameboy (I played Tetris and Donky Kong on one!)

Any feedback or critique is helpful moving forward . Or if you're a programmer and want to help code a GB-clone game for web!

[Chonky Pixel]

I love the truck! Chunky and satisfying and a bit beaten-up. Great!

I'm curious as to what's going on with the wheels though, they seem to have been replaced with exhausts. I'm sure there's a reason, and I'm not a truck guy, so...

My only comments would be:

 - The palette is a little pastel for my liking. Could be a taste thing. I'm craving more bold colours. But on the other hand it's a desert scene so it needs to look dusty.
 - The large piles of rocks in the background have the look of stacks of pancakes - they're all thin and layered over each other. I might like to see one or two with some height as well.

The gameboy version looks good, again apart from the rocks. I think that by overusing outlines you're 'wasting' one of your very limited colours. I may have a play in a bit, I haven't played with the Gameboy original palette before.

[Chonky Pixel]

An alternative rock top right. Honestly? I don't even know what I'm doing any more. My wife prefers the original (it's more cute) and outlines are very much part of the style of Gameboy games. Still, it was fun.

[eishiya]

I feel the new/alt rock is much better. Perhaps compromise by giving it an external outline, but no internal outlines?

[Chonky Pixel]

I feel the new/alt rock is much better. Perhaps compromise by giving it an external outline, but no internal outlines?

Like this?



Because I just can't help myself, the outline colour is lighter around areas of lighter shade.

[Chonky Pixel]

Now it looks a bit more obvious that the truck is lit from above but everything else is from above left... Even the shadows and motorbike suggest light direction.

[Sokota]

A couple more shots I'm calling 'done'. I'm posting here for feedback so I can mostly apply that critique moving forward..there's just too much stuff to do so I can't get attached to any one shot. I am having a lot of fun though, especially working on the limited gameboy palette stuff. Hopefully it turns into a real game, soon 



Meta gameboy pixels, I'm tempted to add scanlines to the second shot to really help sell the retroscreen gameboy look.


Gameboy game canyon tiles.. at the end of the game, the truck drives over the edge and falls into the canyon

@ChonkyPixel
Thank you for the feedback and the edit! My defense of using outlines for the gameboy looking stuff is that I wanted it to be really different from the rest of the video, where I don't plan to use outlines, if possible. Plus, I wanted to outline game objects that were interactable like rocks and cacti, avoiding using the darkest color for any of the background tiles (except for the canyon..you know, it's a dark spooky hole in the ground). I do think your edit shows better form for the rock though, by far.

[Sokota]

I'm having a hard time nailing a palette for this particular scene. I could go either in a more natural, earthy direction or a more stylized sunset/sunrise sort of color scheme. I dunno why, but something just feels off. I think the levels are okay, but I'm just not finding color combinations I'm happy with. I'm trying to use accents from both the truck's original palette and the new gameboy scenes while adding a few major tones for the ground/sky/mountains to help each scene feel different from the next. This is why having a fully fleshed out palette from the beginning would probably help, but I was kinda making it up as I went. I don't really have any blue tones atm. I'm trying to make the truck fit into different scenes without feeling too out of place.

Also the foreground is kinda shite, but it's better than nothing. This scene is still a WIP.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Update:

I think that's a pretty solid improvement, critique is still welcome

[Sokota]

Here's a gif of the finished minigame, this was made for Howling Giant, and you can check out the game here:
https://www.howlinggiant.com/comet-rider-video-game

Enjoy!