Poppin Mockup Continuation

[Faceless]

@Faceless: Well thankyou for not 'condemning me' but telling me something i made is 'shit' and 'ugly'..well that's just fucking rude and again no help at all. If you really wanted to help you could have given me examples of how I could IMPROVE..not simply of how I did things wrong.

I never said they looked 'shit' so don't go down that road. If you'd actually taken the time to read what I had said rather than see a choice word (ugly) and see red, you would have seen that I thought your first set of tiles were not only more original, but also better.

As for the tree, I'm sorry, but it is ugly. It looks like there is no base structure, and that you've just taken the MC tree and fattened it like a pancake.
Suggestions for improvement: try something original and think about the structure of the tree; especially the trunk/roots and how the leaves fit into that structure as a whole. I get that it is heavily stylised, but compared to the TMC one you lost a lot of depth in the roots, and lowered the leaves even closer to the ground to a point where it barely resembles a tree aside from in size.

[Helm]

1.Totally not my fault in any way if people don't read the full post. The '-----'s were meant to separate the note from the rest of the post as I know that a lot of people dont bother to read descriptions. How would you suggest I make it more noticeable next time b/c doing SOMETHING LIKE THIS just to get people to read something is ridiculous.

My problem is not with the note not being noticable. It's with it being misleading.

2.How is it not based 'loosely'?
Lets list the similarities and the differences, okay?

Similar:
Trees

You can stop right there. It only takes a single element that is way too close. Why are the trees lifted? What are you learning by copying the MC trees? This reminds me of a recent article about how the Final Fantasy games have made a whole lot of young artists that want to be 'rpg character designers' when they grow up (you can see a lot of them in deviantart) whereas the article says - and I agree - that you should strive to be a good artist generally and then maybe go into the game art field if you so desire. By making a shortcut and lifting the zelda tree you're neglecting what you should be learning, you are picking (borrowed) style over substance. What you should be doing is looking at real trees (and after drawing them lots) trying to engage your own judgement in how you should go about stylising them. That's the learning process that will give you the experience you need to do stuff like the current mockup without any problem.

I agree that the trees are too similar and will work to improve that.

That's all I wanted.

However I do not agree with how this was all dealt with.

Me neither. Not mostly my own approach, I am unapologetic about how I deal with rips and near-rips. That that tree is in that nebulous area of 'rip in spirit, while not in action' is the reason you got the worst end of it verbally and not in terms of action (actual rippers are banned and forever forgotten asap). However I still feel compelled to apologize about the tone of my original message. If you're to keep something from all of this I wish it to be the learning fundamentally before stylizing thing. What I'm really not happy with is the TakaM reply, and you will understand why a bit later.. However there was ganging up, and there was something of an overreacted attack towards this practise of sticking too close to one's references which pushed the 'Helm destroys stealers' button way too hard. What we're going to do is this:

Everybody: There'll be no further internet drama about ripping. If people want to discuss with you the reasoning for and against keeping to close to a IP style by all means, make a thread in the general forum and I'll meet you there. In fact that's a conversation we should have had a long time ago. However there's much critique to be posted on the more original parts of Jericho's art and I'll get to that myself on a latter post. I hope the thread can be redirected towards this. If not it will be locked.

Jericho: If you pixel something this close to original IP you're setting yourself up to be hated. This isn't because pixelation is a place full of assholes. It's because we greatly frown upon ripping. You'll always be able to get constructive critique for your art here and I think it's super unfair to criticize the collective demeanour of the place and telling us we're  all assholes after posting near-rips. What did you expect people to do, be overjoyed that you're matching that Zelda style so close?

Takam: be patient for a while...

[Alevice]

I wasn't implying anything was ripped, yet, I didn't read Jericho's note as well. I feel this MC drama is all my fault, and I'm sorry for that.I still think you should strive for your own identtity rather than replicating others'. This reminds me when I more or less managed to identify/replicate Akira Toriyama's style and used it for a project of mine. Every original character I drew was automatically associated with Dragon Ball Z, rather than something on my own. Afterwards I realized that my very own style and own understanding of structure would benefit much more my work, and make it identifiable as mine.

That said, the grass looks to be on the same level than dirt, rather than over it. I'd suggest a more irregular and more, erm, 'bush-y' division between dirt and grass. Just to be an hypocrite, look at how it was done in MC, where you can tell grass covers dirt.

[ndchristie]

haven't gotten around to a lot fo the things i want to talk about yet, but a few things I did -

color, tint, and shade - in full color pictures, two color types are often not enough.  recesses without crests still look flat.

consistency - if you have blocky everything and then rough grass, the grass looks bad even if you do a good job with it.

edge - (haven't put this into practice much yet in the edit) - a hard line is the last thing you want, and a soft line isn't much better.  You need an active, interesting transition without making it seem like a division.

focus - if you use hard lines to separate interactive objects and then let others just blend in, the player will overlook them.  Similarly, I can put a nice fat plant in the grass tile and without an outline, the player thinks that they can just walk right over it.  Also, your guy is swinging a sword right?  Make it happy, glittery, flashy!  Make the character easy to see!

More later....particulary about the tree.....

[Rodahue]

Getting in an argument over the internet about virtual trees is absurd. I've lost all respect for you and your work Helm

[Ryan Cordel]

This was an argument about ripping and the trees, which Jericho confessed she never ripped. The whole thing was about many parts being way too close for comfort, in style, possibly pallete, structure and look, to Minish Cap.

[Rodahue]

Regardless, Helm, Jericho, and TakaM all conducted themselves very poorly. At any time they could've taken Adarias's (I have no idea how to properly punctuate that.) approach and focused on the piece instead of continuing the discussion in such a hostile manner. But Helm's comments were particularly unnecessary in my opinion.

[Helm]

If you wish to discuss this, use the OT thread, make a general forum thread or send me a PM. I requested that there be no more sidetracking on this thread. You're trying to stir up internet drama for no reason. I do not delete the comments on this thread because I don't want to encourage the thought that I can't take criticism, but if there's any more posted in this thread there shall be strikes and lockings.

[ndchristie]

All of the criticisms of style and originality are perfectly valid criticisms relating directly to the artwork.  Why does http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/8483.htm have 101 favorites?  Because despite the act that I never played the game, and that I made the grass before the game was made, and the grass tile's vague similarities are pure coincidence mixed with media saturation, it reminds people of Sword of Mana, a game that many people like.  One thing I have come to realize is that people see and think about things based on how they relate to other things, and if you have to go around defending yourself constantly about your originality or ethics or clarity, no matter how justified you are in your actions or defense, you're doing something that will cause your work and your reputation harm and to have that brought to your attention is important.

Nobody here is pretending to be an unbiased mathematical critiquing machine; if they were, we'd never elarn anytihng we couldn't figure out for ourselves with a nice textbook and an iced chai.  The lovely thing about message boards is that they are full of people, with all the beauty and foolishness that entails.

They have even more ground in the fact that the trees are well within crit territory anyhow in that, while they serve their purpose graphically and are well executed in terms of technique, the geometry is nothing like trees.  I find them to be very attractive, but if anyone is thinking that the trees are perfect purely because they think people were overzealous in their riphunting, well, they are discrediting valid points based on an empathetic sense of pride.  Pride is a trait which at times severely cripples my own ability to learn from critique, and I would hate to see the same be true of another without voicing some sort of sadness at that.

[Jericho]

-- commence ignoring of anything offtopic  --

I've been away from home for the past day or so, which means no significant updates yet but I'm working on it right now and shall post an update  soon

@Adarias: Are those red squiggles anything important? xD I can't figure if they were just random lines or if they mean something LOL. I definitely see what you mean about the flowers and other interactive objects. The stairs are actually meant to be going down into the earth rather than into an object of any kind. I wasnt finished enough of that part for it to look quite right haha xD. 'll show you wha i mean when i update next


EDIT://

- edited the plants with a darker outline in order to define them from the background
- added in the push rock
- edit sprite and sword swing to show movement/slashing
- redrew tree





The tree still looks kind of squat but I think it looks cute? I dunno haha. Any suggestions on hwo to make it better? I actually hate the roots 


Things I need to do:
- rework tiles
- fix stairs (they look flat)
- continue work on the sprite