Castle For A Game ( c&c wanted )

[brian.h]

I'm currently working on the art for a game called Castle Siege or Bust. Just about finished up redoing the castle just need to do the flooring on it and would like to get a feel for where im at on it. Would love to hear your opinions and critiques on it 

[Blackbeltdude]

I'm digging the style.

You could experiment with the shading for that room though. I've seen it done as you have it now, and I've seen it done where the darkest shadows are on the back wall, and the lighter shades are on the right and left sides. (Basically, reverse of what there now, if that was too wordy... >.>)

I also think it could benefit from another highlight color or two. (Just on the outside). I think that'd really give it more depth, and roundness, and could even compliment the purple shadowing if you use a yellow hue for the highlights.

On a final note, I think the bricks could use some texture. Nothing too major, but some dithering or something so we know the walls are rough. (As castles tend to be).


I can't wait to see how the floor looks.

[smiker]

whoooooooahhhh i have no words for the moment...just asimilating, it breaks the grid a lot!!!
can i make a question of your game? where can i see more stuff? i loved it alot, be sure i'll be one follower of that game.

[KhrisMUC]

@smiker: what grid?

The top of the wall should look something like this:

[Jigsaw]

Yeah, the tops of the bricks kinda stood out to me as well, but other than that it looks awesome. I like the colour palette.

[rabidbaboy]

Very nice, reminds me of Castlevania.
Yeah, prob should fix the perspective issues with the "rims".

[brian.h]

Hey thanks for the comments on my castle here. I really appreciate it  Here's the updated version of it.  Great tip on the perspective of it, I fixed that and add the flooring to it. I hope you like it. 




As for the info on the game, we really havnt put together a website for it. But once we do I'll send you a pm on it. I also have a pixeljoint account under the name Atlas. Most of the art on there isnt up to the standard of this castle tho, simply because im doing back and redoing the art since I have improved quite a bit from the start of this games development.

[DavidCarney]

hmmm the floor tiles look a bit big for the castle.  and the highlights around the nails seem a bit bright.

looks much better with the fixed perspective.

edit: sp

[Phlox]

The floor real sticks out because it is more saturated than the rest of the castle. So i would say drop the saturation on the colors in the floor and it should fit better with your castle.

I really think that this piece is looking good. 

[CrematedPumpkin]

Agreed; for a castle, I think the floorboards should be a smaller. I really like the bricks; until I looked closely I didn't realize that the first and second levels of bricks were copied 

[brian.h]

Redid the flooring to make them smaller, and lowered the saturation on the colors. Thanks alot for the advice 

[Xion]

I think you should entirely simplify the floorboards, making them maybe one or two colors per board instead, and/or and having each board just be one of like, 4 colors, every once in a while having a nail stick out enough to be highlit.. Not sure how that would look actually, but still, everything just seems a bit too cluttered and too high contrasted for the floor. The hilight is too bright.
Also, you applied perspective to the rim of the castle, but not the floorboards - they stay a consistent size throughout. Looks strange.

[MrMister]

I still think you need stairs.
Very nice stuff though.

[Dajhail]

I love your awesome castle, though it looks to me that the floors don't seem to match the rest of the lighting. The wood looks very dark compared to the top of the stones, and it feels to me like there should be some shadow on it so it doesn't look as strange against the shadow on the wall

Here's a quick edit to try to show what I mean:

[brian.h]

Thanks for the tip on the perspective & simplifying the floor Xion, it really helps pull the whole piece together. And im a moron for not thinking about shading the floor thanks man 

[JackBauer24]

Hey there Brian,

I am by no means an expert but one thing that popped out at me was the shadows within each section of the tower.  What is there to create those?  Theres light in each and a lack of holes in the roof section of each of them.  Maybe Im missing something.  Just something I was pondering.  Keep up the good work. 

Jack

[DavidCarney]

TONS better with the floor!  Something else that kinda sticks out me me is the top row of stones in the hallway out of the tower.  Looks outta place?

[bluknight]

TONS better with the floor!  Something else that kinda sticks out me me is the top row of stones in the hallway out of the tower.  Looks outta place?

With the perspective, I think we should be able to see some of the top side of the top row of stones of the hallway's roof.
The fact that we only see the side is another class with the perspective and is probably what currently makes it look out of place.

[sharprm]

Maybe there should be thick 'joining' stones, since you have a curved corridor interesecting a curved tower. You know how arches have the thick stones. Also thick is necessary because the tower is curvy so while at the bottom part of the arch, stones intersect the thick stones at one place, where the arch is thinner at top, stones would intersect further back. Not sure if i'm right or making any sense, but see if some thick stones look better.

Please put in battlements eventually if relevant to game and some flags.

Jack has got a point with the lighting. If you had open trapdoors that would make more sense. Then the corridor should be dark (unless you have torches in the corridor). Maybe a dark corridor with red and yellow lighting would be good?

[Stefano]

Loving your improvements so far! So much that I felt motivated to do a lil' edit myself (I hope that's ok).

I've changed the middle floor as I saw you were having a rough time with:
1. board ends. At this "zoom level" the cracks shouldn't look so deep. To create a milder effect without completely erasing the gaps, I've used colors with closer brightness and saturation values.
2. nails. Got rid of them! "Zoom level" was again the main issue. They were looking more like lost pixels than nails. If you want to keep than anyway, I think they'd probably look better if you'd use the same technique described above.
3. focal lighting. I like it! Draws the attention to the middle of each room and the darkest wall shadows help making the sliced walls pop up. In this particular bit, I didn't do much, except for dithering the areas between colors. I've also took one of the wall hues and used it on the floor as an extra gradient step. One thing I've noticed while doing this is that if you increase too much the contrast between the darkest shade and the brightest spot in the middle, the floor starts to look like a sphere.



OT PS: Ground humidity makes boards rot. That's why castles always used stones or stomped (is that the word?) dirt on ground level floors.
OT PS2: Do you plan to add some nice wooden stairs? It would look soooo cool!

[Kren]

hmm I really like it, the only problem i find is the place where the circular area bricks connect with the straight area bricks you shouldn't add just a blue line.

[brian.h]

Wow Stefano, I really like what you did there. Havnt gotten around to putting your ideas to work on touching up the castle tho  Just didnt want you to think I didnt care for your tips on it, I do.  Just trying to balance the rest of the game art, my job, and TF2 

[JonathanOfDrain]

Brian this is pretty good work, I like your last edit the most.
Stairs seem to be at the top of everyone's wish list, while I need to agree people should have a way to travel between the floor I think a ladder would be more fitting. Wouldn't take up so much rum either. Rum? Room*

[Stefano]

On my native language (Portuguese) we use the same word for stairs and ladders. So I wrote stairs when what I actually meant was definitely ladders. Wooden ones...
Towers just can't afford to loose floor space with wide spiral stairs.

brian.h,

Yeah, I figured you were short on time for replying. If you want help with other stuff though (such as the characters you've posted at pixel joint), don't hesitate to ask...
Just loooove medieval stuff. 

[Jad]

I've got one little nitpick and it's that the shadows are a purple that looks kind of, eh, radioactive or something. Like

DARK MAGIC LURKS IN THE SHADOW

or something. It's overly dramatic for just a castle. I'd advise you to experiment a bit with it, anyhow. The rest is ace!

[brian.h]

So I did a little bit of work to the castle this morning. I took some of the tips and lightened the floorboards, and correcting how they should look at the zoom level. I also added some windows to help with the no lightsource causing the shadows.

Im still not understanding what needs to be done to the archway leading into the castle to make it work, more so with having it feel like it's connected to the building. Would really appreciate some help on that.



Later today or tommorow, i'll throw some of the character sprites in the game. Just working on updating the standard of them atm.

Thanks for all the help 

[Sherman Gill]

Ask and ye' shall recieve.
Pretty much, get rid of the straight edge and it looks a lot better.