shoot'em up airship (player's)

[beripixel]

Hello all!

I'm new here and I have pretty much no experience when it comes to Pixel Art. It seems a great place to learn though. Thanks for setting up Pixelation!

So, this is an airship I am working on. I limited the palette to 8 colors. Not that it is a requirement but the lesser the better. As you can see, it feels far from being usable. What is it wrong? Perhaps palette is too pale?

version 1

version 2

All C+C very welcome and thanks again.

[Fatalis67]

Nice, I like this little ship a lot. But it seems like much more work was put into the front than the back. I think it could be improved by making the back wings a bit more elaborate, or making a little something to make the back area seem more detailed.

[Oltar]

Very cool airship, I like a lot.
I think you need more contrast at the colors.
But you´re going in a right direction.

[sporknife]

It's pillow shaded (meaning that the light source is coming from behind the viewer, which is impossible), so i'd say move the shading off to one side. also, this is just imo, but i think the colors should be less saturated if its supposed to be metal. maybe hueshift a bit towards purple when it gets darker (and yellow when it gets lighter) for the red palette and purple and light blue for the grey one? also, i think you should add some more odds and ends on it, like wires, metal plates, windows, guns, stuff like that. A little grime here and there would go a ways. here's and example of what I mean:




(didnt do the top wing things because i have to go)

I'm not really that good yet, but i hope that that helps you a bit (just added 1 color, white. btw, try and use white as much as possible, it adds extra pop to the piece.)

[beripixel]

Thanks a lot guys!!

I'm glad you like the airship design. Thanks to you guys I realize of some errors, perhaps not all yet.

@sporknife, I had that bad feeling about the light. Thanks for pointing it out. I wasn't even aware it was called pillow shaded. I just read more about it. And that's nice palette you suggested there =)

Ok, so this is my second version. Way too different I think. Still not really sure I've got it right. Also, you can see I added some purple among the red tones. Why? I don't know. Well, I feel that left turbine is not quite right yet. Seems like I run out of colors? Don't think dithering would work out here...

[ptoing]

This is quite a different design as far as player ships in shmups go. and it's quite cool I think.

I mainly did some colour and contrast edits. In shmups, as you probably know, readability is very much of utmost importance, so the ship should contrast the background very well. Because of this a higher contrast than what you have would be a good thing.

The reflected light is kinda odd. It can look cool, but for that would need a bit more polish I think. A problem you would be that all the ships in the game would have to have the reflected light to not make it look silly, and also if you wanna rotate ships easily, this would be a hindrance. Lighting does not need to be 100% logical in games but stuff like the reflected light would stick out I think. I personally would avoid it in this case.

[EyeCraft]

This is an interesting ship! I like it. I think if you're going to stick to 8 colours, you're going to have to homogenise a little bit to get the most power out of it.



I played around a bit, adjusting one of the blue-greys to make it usable as an anti-aliasing tone for the reds. Played with some of the shading and kill some jaggies around the turbines and at the front as well.

[beripixel]

Hello all!

You guys are really helpful!

In shmups, as you probably know, readability is very much of utmost importance, so the ship should contrast the background very well. Because of this a higher contrast than what you have would be a good thing.

I concur.

A problem you would be that all the ships in the game would have to have the reflected light to not make it look silly, and also if you wanna rotate ships easily, this would be a hindrance.

Yes, that was about my next question indeed. I was checking out some shmups' bosses where only half is drawn and flipped to complete the entity. I was looking at where the light comes and seems to be from nowhere.

I also was thinking about rotation. There are some shmups that actually draw a complete rotation separately. Mainly because they use a 3/4 view, say DoDonPachi to name one. But to be honest I am a programmer first and I don't think I will go that far with my sprites.

I will go back to do more work on this ship and start some other elements. If you want to add more suggestions please do so.

Many thanks!!

[ptoing]

Even if you have the game top down, like the Raizing ones, Battle Bakraid and such, you will have to draw the rotations (or more like cleanup), unless you do not mind ugly pixels.

Here is rotating sprite I did some time ago, left is cleaned up version, right is simply rotated in Promotion. If you rotate the sprites in your engine it would look similar, it gets ugly


(sorry for the quick speed )