[WIP] Top View RPG Asset creation

[palo.poli]

Hello!

I'm working on a RPG-game that takes action with dinosaurs and prehistoric humans.

So I need to make a beautiful triceratops :

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If you have any advice on how to improve it I'll be happy!

Also it's the first time I'm creating sprites for a game. I've seen some tutorials and so, but I'm still looking for clever tips.

EDIT : I post it all the last versions of my work

Sprites:

  - - - -

Items :

- - - -

Animated:

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A tile set (first prototype version)



Here is a composition with some other elements I did (rock and tree)

[Chonky Pixel]

Cute dinosaur!

I've made a small edit to the stationary version of one of the angles:



These are just quick and dirty demonstrations of some ideas, you may or may not like them, but I'll talk you through the changes.

1: It looked like there was some pillow shading around the lower part of the head. I've put the darker pixels at the bottom of the head shape rather than all around. This is to suggest the head curving down and underneath away from the light.

2: I thought the rough edges on your shading were implying texture. They felt a little noisy to me, so instead, I used less shading and gave it some subtle dithering. This can hint at a scaly texture if it's done right. Too much dithering can quickly overwhelm an image though.

3: I reshaped the eye to suggest more of a brow and to try to give it some personality.

Other things I noticed:

In the animation, your smoke/steam is absorbed by the ground. Smoke and steam tend to lift up off the ground after hitting it, a bit like this:

https://dribbble.com/shots/2679084-Smoke-Landing?1461783240

Finally, I'm not sure about both the legs bending at once. It looks a bit odd to me, as I can't imagine an animal making that movement. If it were me, I would try lowering just the front half of the animal rather than the whole animal, to link in with the snorting action.

I hope you find something useful in there.

[palo.poli]

Thank you for your remarks! They are all very accountable so I modified my sprites like this :





- The eye gives way more personality
- The cleaner back is more readable
- Less pillow shading on the head
- Back leg is not bending
- Smoke looks more natural

Thank you for helping me improving this little triceratops ! They are more happy.

There is also a thing that I find difficult, it's to make every views of the sprite as good as we directly recognize that it is the same character... I have the feeling that on my front view triceratops looks bigger. Isn't it ?

[Chonky Pixel]

Quick work!

You may be right that the top view looks bigger. But they are very different views. Maybe the top view just looks bigger because of the foreshortening on the head?

You have given the side view some muscle definition on the legs, but the top view has more "tree trunk" legs. You haven't got many pixels to work with, though.

[palo.poli]

Hey! I made a little human for the game. He will be able to ride the dinos ! Ahah

What do you think of him :

Is he readable ? Do you have some improvement feedback ?

I will edit the first post every time to make all the sprites appear.

[palo.poli]

Hello ! Today I made a diplodocus and weapon for our Human --> //

For now I'm doing only stills cause it will be easier to test the game with it.

What I would like to know and improve is my shading and color choices. I'm not sure about them and I'm quiet doing it randomly, (Usually I go from darker to lighter colors by hue shift toward yellow, decreasing saturation and increasing value). Do you have some tips regarding these two pictures ?

I also made a grass tile, but gosh it's hard for me to render good... I guess it's because I need other tile to diversify?

Here is the tile -->

And the preview :


For now it's just to help the game developer to render the game easier with some graphics, but I got to improve this grass...

[Chonky Pixel]

I like the definition on the body of the human. The face is more difficult to read though, for me. I think because the hair colour is so close to the skin colour, so the beard is confusing. I guess... either give him darker hair, or darker skin? I mean, this is a guy who's out in the sun a lot, right? He probably should have dark, leathery skin.

The club is nice. Good use of shape and shade.

It took a while to work out how to read the diplodocus. I'm trying to think how it could be made clearer, give me a while. In the meantime there's not much that gives a sense of depth. Try making things darker as they are further away from the viewer.

The grass tile is a standard "random pixel" grass tile. I'm not a big fan of those, but they're common enough. The tiling is a bit obvious, it could do with some tweaking around the edges. Look for obvious lines in the tiled image and try to break them up.

I would be more interested in grass that's less random and contains some information. Like individual flowers, weeds, etc. With a small number of 'detail' tiles you can even get away with most of your grass being a single shade. And that, in turn, can make for a clean background that makes things easier to see. Some examples here:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/394065036122555570/

Again, if I get a moment I'll see if I can come up with some ideas.

Another alternative is the Stardew Valley style, where you see every individual blade, rendered with shadows and shading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ahU0eXtFeg&t=6

[palo.poli]

Thank you very much for your feedbacks!

I changed a little bit the man, trying to add as bit more contrast between skin and beard. I've darken the whole skin but if I do it more I lose the contrast that keep it readable..



Here is the triceratops with another version of feet :



And a better version of diplodocus :



And out new encounter, T-Rex !!! (I'm quite proud of him, except maybe for the arms...)



I did some new items :

- - -

The most important is readability for me, and then I thought about harmony with all the components of the game. As I'm not sure to have a very definite proper style in pixel art, I'm afraid that every thing will look monotonous. What do you think ?

[palo.poli]

Hello everyone. I did some new stuff.

A tile set (first prototype version)



Here is a composition with some other elements I did (rock and tree)



I would like to have some critics on my tiles. Not sure about the messy grass tile, but it looks like some flower field so why not ?

Also I did a second version of the human, which one is better ?

I'm not sure that the tree fits good with the style of the rest of the image.. how is it for you?

Thank you in advance for your help !

[Chonky Pixel]

Quick impressions:

 - The "random" grass doesn't fit in my opinion.
 - The tree works with the humans and the grass tiles with plants on them, again in my opinion. But don't trust me, I'm no artistic director. I do think it clashes with the edge of the grass tiles though.
 - I don't like single pixels by themselves, they don't convey information. I would have a minimum limit of two pixels for the height of your grass blades.
 - I like how you added shadows to the grass plants. You might want to add them to everything else as well. Tree, grass blades, humans, rock, dinosaur.
 - If you do that, pick a direction for the light source and extend the shadows in that direction. (it doesn't have to be that far. Just a pixel or two.)
 - Tree looks good, but you could work on the point where you've mirrored it, so the reflection line isn't so obvious.
 - You've outlined everything, so outline the tree too.

[Rydin]

Ditch the messy grass. When in doubt, less is more! Chop chop chop. Mow the lawn xD
I prefer the man on the left because he shows more volume. He feels more 3d.
I love the stone age. I like bone-headed caveman and I cannot lie. Great vibe.
You can make the tree feel less like it's just "plopped" there by adding a bit of the roots underneath on another tile. Does that make sense?

[palo.poli]

Hello guys! Thank you a lot for all your comments, they help me a lot to keep a good quality all along the work on this asset. I'll do the modification on the tree, add some shadows, etc...

Also I kept the left human, and in the meantime I did the 4 views of him :



What do you think about them? Do we recognize the same human ? Isn't he loosing weight when turning ? 

[Rydin]

His gorgeous flowing locks of gold lets me know it is indeed the same fearless savage from any angle. 

If you want him to look even more beefy, here's my idea (and it might not work but it's worth a try):

Notice on the front view his arms are the same distance as the edge of his hair from side to side?
But then on the side view, the arms are less than the edge of the hair. I think this is why the arms seem wimpy on the side view.

Maybe if he did enough curls his biceps would get bigger???