Tile a day - Mockup

[Jim16]

I've been wanting to do more pixel art for a while, but I procrastinate a hell of a lot. I know I haven't got the time to sink into a large project right now, so I've decided to do a mini challenge for myself.

So here's the challenge.
-Make at least 1 tile a day.
-Keep it simple! ( I always try to go big and then never finish what I'm working on )
-Choose a colour palette as a base, but don't confine to its limitations, be flexible where needed.

The most important thing for me is to enjoy what I'm creating. So I've decided to make a small fantasy mockup of a house interior with 1 Character in it ( A bear  ).

Here's the colour pallet I chose: LOSPEC500
https://lospec.com/palette-list


Day 1

Here's a basic floor tile. Its comprised of 3 separate 16x16px tiles that in turn tile as a set. I don't think I'll make variations of this as I'm happy for the mock up to look like there is a noticeable pattern in places. So yeah, its just some really simple floor boards on top of a joist. Initially I was going to split the joist into segments, but that doesn't make sense, so its just one continuous long slab of wood.

Here's how it looks in the mockup so far. The dimensions of the mockup are subject change, I might make it vertically longer.

Kind of a wacky wood grain patten, but I kinda like it so I'm going to stick with it for now. Also I know the challenge is 1 tile a day, but I might find that I'm in the mood to do more, so I probably will make more than 1 tile on some days.

Always happy for any feedback btw.

Day 2

Got up bright and early to started on the wall today before I have start the day job. The wall is made up of 5 tiles for the pattern and 1 tile for the bottom of the wall.



And the mockup so far

It's not the best thing in the world, but it probably will change as I find my feet. Next I'll work on a door. I might even do that this evening.

[Jim16]

Day 2 & 3



Okay, so somewhat productive yesterday evening and over the last hour. I'm trying to make it obvious that the house is inside of a tree. Not sure if that really reads well? I'll add subtle branches and stuff coming off in the future so hopefully that will help.
Also its not actually dark outside, I just want the house to be the focal point here. When I finish the inside of the house I'll do a mockup of the outside of the house. The only true reflection of the outside will be the window/future windows.

Visually there is a lot of brown. I'm a bit worried as the bear will be brown as well that he will get get lost, but thats an issue for another day. I'm hoping that once I get other things in the house like a chimney and other bits of furniture that that will be enough to break up the monotony too.

[Chonky Pixel]

Just a very quick point. I'm not getting much idea of depth. Even with the ceiling shadow and beams, it feels like the back wall is actually really close. Also, the ceiling beams seem to conflict a little with the perspective of the rest of the piece, which is non-existent.

One way you could handle this would be to use contrast. Give foreground elements a lot of contrast, but background elements less. They can be lighter in shade overall, but the distance between the brightest bright and the darkest dark should be smaller.

Here's an example from Chasm:

https://www.mobygames.com/images/promo/l/419560-chasm-screenshot.jpg

As you can see, the foreground elements fade to a black black. The background 'black' is lighter. At the same time, the bright areas and highlights of the background are darker than the foreground highlights. The only thing that comes close is a light source, and even that is dimmer than the characters!

Hopefully, doing this would both give you depth AND solve your brown bear problem, as the high-contrast bear would stick out from the low contrast background.

[Jim16]

Day 4



Thanks Chonky Pixel. I think you're right. I've lowered the contrast in the background and even desaturated the colours slightly. Still needs more work so I'll fiddle around with it some more as I go. All part of the process.

[Jim16]

Day 5


Decided to take a break from doing the tiles for the house and shifted to creating a character.
Still trying to figure out how I want him to look. I'm sure he will change a lot through the process of making this mockup. But it will be nice to have something there for scale.

[Chonky Pixel]

Nice, you got some personality and solidity in there.

You could do more with the shading, but I guess it depends on the style you're after.

[Jim16]

Day 6

So I did absolutely b$$$er all yesterday. I finished work for the week, got the beer out and then hopped onto Destiny 2. So not very productive art wise, but sometimes you just need to sit back and relax.

Day 7

Today is another story. I've set sometime aside to do some art and maybe even a bit of programming, so should be a VERY productive day for the most part. So far today I've worked mostly on the Bear, to mostly look more like a bear. Also taking what Chonky Pixel said into consideration too, the bear was looking very flat when really he's a bit fat, so hopefully he's looking a bit beartter.<-- ignore me, I think I'm hilarious, probably not haha.


I actually uploaded this and have immediately made changes, his legs were a bit too long, so he's now 1 pixel shorter.  Also main changes to how the lower part of his garment drapes. He will inevitably be changing constantly. Also I've names him Bearny Roark, again subject to change. If he has a partner I'd probably call her Ursa M Roark.

Day 7 - part 2


Made some small changes to Bearny.
I'm still not happy with the wood background, so I will rework that at some point. I don't know, I wanted to create perspective, so that the room looks rounder, but I don't know how to do that. I might just simplify it. Anyway, Instead of getting bogged down by that I've moved on to making a chimney. For the most part I think it works   

[Chonky Pixel]

I'm really enjoying watching this come together.

I think the bear's new shading works, you've brought out his paunch.

I would probably experiment with a few different palettes for the back wall, if I were doing this. You have done well to give it an impression of 3D with your choices so far, but I think it might be able to go just a little bit further. Think about the elements you want people to focus on. The rest is background, so a balance needs to be struck between it looking interesting and *too* interesting. If it's too interesting, it will compete for attention with the important foreground elements. You're making things less interesting by making them lighter and lower contrast, so you could try doing that a little more. Too far and it will look anaemic, but if you get it right the bear might just pop out a little more.

[Jim16]

Yeah you're right about experimenting, I'll keep going at it until I get something I'm happy with. I think some of my issue is that I'm going into this blindly with no planning or thought of what I fully want.  I think what I will do is quickly mock up the room this evening with all things I want in the room. Like a bed, a portrait, a mirror and some pots and shelves. Maybe a book shelf if I can fit it in. The reason I want to do this is because I'm worried that if I focus on to much detail in the background, other things further in the foreground will look odd having to compete with a lot of detail. I do want more beams in the room to break it up though, just need to find the right way of doing this.

Day 8


Posting this a day late, did some work yesterday redoing the background. Still not fully happy with it, but my thought was just keep it simple and then add to it. I will take the time to just clean up lines, but first I need to be happy with how it looks. The window looks really boring, I need to find away to make it look interesting, still looking for a good reference. Chasms windows are super simple, Owl boys is a bit all over the place as most of them are made specifically for that building. I'll come up with something eventually.

[Jim16]

Day 9

So yesterday I decided it was in my best interest to skip doing the tile a day. Mostly because I worked a whole day and then did some heavy lifting around the house, unfortunately hurting my back a bit in the process. So a bit of rest and tv was in order for the evening.

Day 10


Bit more productive today. Still trying to figure out how I want that background to look. Hapiel over at pixel joint rightly said that it looked weird with how the grain pattern moved from 1 beam to the other and that the pattern itself looked very random. I can't say I put much thought into it. Kinda had an idea and went with it, but clearly that didn't work. I still think I could make that look good if I put more effort and time into it. Decided to change it up to what I have above. It's actually inspired my something I've done in the past. Again could still be better, so feedback is always welcome.

Still need to do what I said I would from my previous post. A job for tomorrow I think.