AuthorTopic: my little world, monsters! ... [please C&C]  (Read 105542 times)

Offline PypeBros

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #20 on: May 19, 2008, 06:27:13 am
Well, honnestly, guys, there's really nothing to get arguing about here.

I need advices to progress, that's certainly a fact. You gave pretty good ones, and i'm grown up enough to take critics the way they are, even if they are as rude as "less interesting than kirby". I'm not doing pixel art "like this" for 10 years, fortunately. I'm just getting back at "pixel drawing" after 10 years, and i'm sure amazed at what you guys manage to do with e.g. Arne's palette.

I don't have such skillz yet, and i'm doing both the code and the gfx on this project, meaning that if i later find someone that's doing better art than myself, everything you see might become "concept art" rather than "ingame art" :P
I just wish people had given crits over the complete character (e.g. the ball with hands and feet), but it's my bad to have posted straight screen capture rather than game mockup, so i can't complaint.

I'll get back to work now, try to integrate your remarks, work on better animation and palette manipulation tools, add rayman-like animation to the main character, and come back when i'll consider to have any improvement.

Offline Willows

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #21 on: May 19, 2008, 09:09:44 am
So "helping someone improve their work" consists of telling them how bad their subject or concept is? There's a difference between offering good criticism that can help someone and regular, negative criticism that any person can give. It doesn't take much to be negative toward someone's work. I understand where you're coming from Adam, but there's no real excuse for being so harsh. As far as the "truth" goes, I'm beginning to see it quite clearly.

(Just a forewarning, it is not my intent to hurt your feelings, here, PypeBros!)

In your perfect world (Xelados), people would continue giving cheery, constructive comments and Pype would continue to sift through them and listen to the ones he wanted, and ignore the ones he couldn't easily use. Though I can totally relate to that kind of a mindset, it isn't doing anyone any favors, as it wastes the time of the critiquers and doesn't help the critiqued improve at all.

Adam just turned up the volume a bit, used a couple shock tactics to see if he couldn't get himself heard.

And you must admit there's a certain amount of ego involved in yourself, expressed by your refusal to resort to PMs.

And to pypebros, even if you think someone is TOTALLY off their nut with whatever comment and criticism they've given you, give it a try yourself anyhow. It couldn't hurt.

Offline zeid

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #22 on: May 19, 2008, 09:53:28 am
I think this big argument over whether or not Adam Atomic was being harsh or not is pretty unnecessary... It’s possible a lot of what PypeBros is saying is getting misconstrued. I take it from his blog http://sylvainhb.blogspot.com/ and his writing that English isn't his first language. Whether or not he was dodging the work doesn't matter now I suppose as he has said he will be continuing work on this or getting someone else to do it.
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I'll get back to work now, try to integrate your remarks, work on better animation and palette manipulation tools, add rayman-like animation to the main character, and come back when i'll consider to have any improvement.

From this quote:
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I need advices to progress, that's certainly a fact. You gave pretty good ones, and i'm grown up enough to take critics the way they are, even if they are as rude as "less interesting than kirby".
I take it he is mature enough to listen.  :D
Furthermore the fact he has a blog and a working game engine shows that he must have some commitment to this project. So really I don't think the discussion warrants any more mention.

If someone is not willing to take on advice despite asking for it, it becomes frustrating for those who are issuing the advice. So I can see AdamAtomics justification and I agree some people just need a wakeup call. However in this case I'm not sure if it was necessary. Keep in mind this person is working on the entirety of this game, this is very time consuming so might explain why no sprites are coming back yet. I suppose only time will tell whether PypeBros is taking on bored what we have said or not.
************
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I just wish people had given crits over the complete character (e.g. the ball with hands and feet)
:P the shapes are fine, just use the same principles I applied to the blue body to the entire character, furthermore the entire scene. Everything needs its palette reduced and colour selection improved. Rather then going from just dark to light add yellow as you get lighter (highlights), also add blue/magenta as you get darker (shaded), this is known as hue shifts as oppose to straight luminosity shifts. Also dont forget to alter the saturation of colours, you can make the highlights and shadows more desaturated then the midtone to help improve the palette. A lot of this is trial and error.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2008, 10:09:22 am by zeid »
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Offline PypeBros

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #23 on: May 19, 2008, 12:38:18 pm
Quote
Rather then going from just dark to light add yellow as you get lighter (highlights), also add blue/magenta as you get darker (shaded), this is known as hue shifts as oppose to straight luminosity shifts
tried to apply your suggestion and get an alternate raster to build trunks, and just in the last minute, i realised i used red shadows rather than blue purple shadows :P (with three alternative rasters at varying saturation) ...

They'll hopefully get more convenient for trees than the good'ol Tyrian palette i'm stealing so far. Thanks for the tip.

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English isn't his first language
#true, though i have quite good level to discuss (computer-science) technical issues. However, all that colour/shape/drawing vocabulary is new to me ... and i don't get at all the meaning of sentences like "Don't cop out on this like that"  :-[
« Last Edit: May 19, 2008, 03:13:43 pm by PypeBros »

Offline AdamAtomic

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #24 on: May 19, 2008, 04:09:04 pm
Xelados - You have a strike now.

PypeBros - These ramps look way better!!  You should continue in this vein, and keep getting away from that Tyrian palette ;)  That is bad news.  You seem to know this already, but if I give harsh advice it is because I really want to see you and this game improve and impress people.  As little as graphics matter in the long run, they make a huge difference on people's first impressions of a project.  Finally, I think you'll find that as long as you continue to experiment and try new things that you'll have no problems advancing your own skills and the quality of your game!

As far as the Kirby comment goes...there is kind of some history to this.  I am a freelance artist and programmer, and I was hired a little over a year ago to put together a demo for this weird company with crappy artists.  This game was called "Pod & Rodney" and was a sort of embarrassing ripoff of Sokoban and Puggsy.  Anyways, the character "Pod" looked almost EXACTLY like Bilou - he was a blue ball with big, joined eyes, little light blue feet, and little rayman ball hands.  Aside from his similarity to Kirby, to me this type of character has come to represent sort of the ultimate in extremely lazy character design.  I would love to see you push the design beyond this stage, and create something more memorable and recognizable!

Offline PypeBros

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #25 on: May 19, 2008, 07:27:21 pm
Anyways, the character "Pod" looked almost EXACTLY like Bilou - he was a blue ball with big, joined eyes, little light blue feet, and little rayman ball hands.  Aside from his similarity to Kirby, to me this type of character has come to represent sort of the ultimate in extremely lazy character design.

I understand ... It's not about being lazy but rather knowing that (10 years ago) we had no real thing to program something much more complicated. With time, the graphical style of Bilou has little evolved (but evolved anyway), but i worked with a couple of friends to build a whole world of other characters around him. A sidekick companion, wise NPCs giving him advices, etc.

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  I would love to see you push the design beyond this stage, and create something more memorable and recognizable!

I'll do my best. I'm especially working on mechanisms to be able to give him a large palette of expressions both ingame and when interacting with NPCs. If you'd like a preview of his "character", you can get a look at the "concept-art" comic on the other side of my blog  ;)

Offline ndchristie

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #26 on: May 19, 2008, 11:53:30 pm
The strike was unwarranted, since I'm acting within the rules of this community. I wasn't being an ass or anything. I'd ask why you added the strike, but I'd get the same response I'd get from any other mod on any other forum, "I'm a mod and I can do that, now stfu." I'm not taking it to PMs because the discussion started in this topic. It's also very easy to just delete a PM without even considering its content. If you want your message to be noticed, you post it in the relevant topic.

Point by point: your comments were out-of-line and off-topic (and continue to be), that is why you got a strike.  the mods are human, but not vindictive.  Were a consensus taken of the non-mod members, that same would probably be found.  It's very easy for a mod to destroy public posts, too, but they tend not to out of respect to well, you.  If you don't care about your reputation, you wouldn't need to be noticed.  Your discussion is not relevant to this topic.

Usually I think it's another mod that deals the strikes than the one who was involved in the argument.  I don't think you'd find any debate amongst them though here.

Why am i coming up so strongly against you?  Because I've been in your place more than once and it's the wrong place to be.

Adam's message was harsh, but not unduly.  Sometimes you need to make a statement.

Pype - your chart of colors there is not a bad one, even if you didn't go to blue.  It's increased the liveliness naturally which was important.  If you do go to blue, I suggest getting there through one of these reds.  One last thing about the palette, you have a jokeload of swatches.  you can easily do with half the shades you've presented.  As far as the character is concerned, it's been done, yeah, so I agree that there needs to be a little more to him.  You can keep the relative shape so long as he's got something unique.  most characters are very simple in their original designs and then become more complex as they go.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2008, 11:56:14 pm by ndchristie »
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Offline Sherman Gill

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #27 on: May 20, 2008, 12:55:31 am
Xelados: Trust me, the mods here are some of the most fair I've seen. In the one and a half years I've been here I've only seen two or three people get strikes. And if you ask why you got a strike I'd be very surprised if Adam didn't oblige. If you really wanted your message to be public, put it in the OT thread or something, just not here, since this thread is supposed to be for PypeBros.

Pypebros: Your character does have personality, but the problem is that visually he's not recognizable. Having a blue ball as your main character is fine and all, but it still needs some unique feature. Since he's pretty much made of circles, I think it'd be best if it was something angular. Perhaps...

            oy vey
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 :hehe:
« Last Edit: May 20, 2008, 12:57:12 am by Sherman Gill »
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Offline HughSpectrum

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #28 on: May 20, 2008, 03:18:05 am
Even Kirby had unique features.  He grew 4x his size when he puffed in air, for one, and his ability to absorb enemy features helped (it changed his appearance in later games), and his design was originally just a placeholder sprite.

So yeah, even simple designs can have some definitive feature that makes them stand out.

Offline PypeBros

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Re: my little world ... [please C&C]

Reply #29 on: May 20, 2008, 06:38:12 am
Pypebros: Your character does have personality, but the problem is that visually he's not recognizable. Having a blue ball as your main character is fine and all, but it still needs some unique feature. Since he's pretty much made of circles, I think it'd be best if it was something angular. Perhaps...

bull-headed Bilou ... aouch  :P

Well, if you're talking of "recognizable" in marketting terms (such as any fool on earth can identify the 3 circles defining Mickey Mouse), i have to admit that Bilou would probably be the last thing picked up by a sales representative. Since i don't plan to sell the game (making it will be hard and long enough -- this is long-term hobby project), i don't care too much.

As for the "accessories" that could help give Bilou uniqueness, he used to have some kind of "sunglasses" with antenna and microphone so that he can keep in touch with the Stellar Convention paying him. They're supposed to be a power-up later in the game, but the last time i implemented it (well, i *really* sucked at gfx by that time), i found that he had more personnality without them than with them.

Just out of curiosity, is there something that makes the tiny furballs in "fury of the furries" recognizable in your terms ? Since that game is one of my top references in pixel art, if it is conceptually flawed, i prefer to learn it now :P