[WIP][CC] Ancient Temple/Tomb 2D sidescroller tiles

[zubby]

Hi all,

I've been a lurker on this site for many many years now looking at all the amazing work done, but I finally bought aseprite last night, and so this is my first serious attempt at making some pixel art. any tips/cc very welcome



I didn't really think about any theme while making this, I was just following this tutorial and wanted to make something more to my taste. I had cave story's angular/repetitive rock tiles in mind when i made the initial centre rock tile, but I didn't look at any screenshots until after and I realise now that mine repeats on a much smaller scale than cave story. The square block tiles I made after looking at the cave story screens as i thought they were a nice way to add variety in, but they're not that well integrated yet i think.

i'm using Arne's 32 colour pallette, and the orange in the rocks is there just because thats the colour I started sketching out with and kinda liked the result last night. I'm not so happy with it now I look at it again so my first edit tonight has been getting rid of it

i started on some ideas for background tiles for a mock-up... struggling a little to get a nice contrast/ background with the remaining colours in the pallette. I do really like the rich purply blue though. Don't know if I actually want this wierd aqueduct thing as the background, that idea was shamelessly taken from looking at the castlevania critique thread on here.


here's my edit so far today - trying to get rid of the orange (only worked on cleaning up the central rock tile in this image):


it seems pretty quiet on pixelation these days, but i'll keep updating as I go along.

[zubby]

I think I want to start over (still aiming for a mock-up as a final image) with the same theme in mind, some sort of temple ruins, with a deep blue sky, maybe some grass and vines growing over the ruin walls. I made a wall tile with a couple of variations. I'm definitely going to go back in and remove some of these cracks as I didn't realise how obvious the repeated shapes would be once I put them together in a wall - there's a really ugly grid pattern that appears because of that crack. I think the variations might stand out too much, too.

i made the tiles first in the brown colour pallette and then tried out the more contrasty sandy pallette after, as I'd like it to have a more contrasty super metroid/castlevania vibe

[zubby]

I did a bit of plastering on the brickwork... think it looks a bit better now without so many cracks.



And I've been thinking about how I want the image as a whole to look. The original idea I had was a sort of "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" level, there's a level like this in an old game maybe DOS era that I just can't remember/find the name of. Anyway while googling to try and find that, I found some nice images of Assyrian statues/reliefs and thought they would be good reference material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_sculpture

excuse the rough sketch. I was playing super metroid last night so the hud/player proportions are lifted totally from there. I was thinking that the reliefs on the walls would be edge-lit by the torches on both sides, and would always have a torch either side so that they could be used throughout the level.

the idea for the statue in the middle is for it to be set a bit back in this sort of spike-pit canyon which goes back infinitely into darkness. maybe a bit ambitious I also realise this is more of a underground tomb than hanging gardens of babylon but eh

[zubby]

I spent ages trying to get this side angled brick tile to look good, not happy with the result still.



cleaned up the mock-up a bit, i'm procrastinating making a start on the wall relief... looking at it here, I think the way the floor ends at a trapezium(?) doesn't really work at all.

[Ryumaru]

Not much critique from me, it seems to be progressing nicely! If you're still around, you might get more eyes on this thread now that I've approved it from our overclocked spam filter 

[Mathias]

Setting out on a big new pixelin' adventure are we. GLHF

I love the weird Cave Story-esque copper lookin' rocks tiles! Very strange and unexpected. Refreshingly not the norm.
The grass is mega cliché though. I get a creepy macabre vibe from the polygonal rocks and skull faces. If the grass (does it even need to be there?) had a similar dead whithered thing going on it could work. What if it was less grass and more kind of a mossy generic bio-growth type thing. Perhaps not even green. Something more alien in appearance.

The angled brick tiles are fine, they just need some shading now. Choose a global light direction and shade one side darker and the other side lighter.

Now onto large unique bg decorative assets huh? Haha you're biting off a lot here.
If I were you I might first comprise a more complete level mockup. When you do so you'll suddenly realize what new tiles you need in order to flesh it out. Big bg assets will bog you down, but tiles will go quickly and keep things fun.