Feature 07 - Savage World (artistic nudity)

[Ben2theEdge]

First of all this is a massive improvement! Second, I think the "flat" cliffs are okay since this is a platform game. I'd consider adding more background/negative space elements to the tiles as well if you weren't planning on doing that already.

Quick sucky example because I don't know how to describe it properly:


This would add some nice aesthetics but you also want this kind of thing for gameplay reasons; you can use these noninteractive bits of background to guide the player towards platforms that may be hidden or offscreen. A lot of SNES/Genesis games did this.

[Feron]

Nice tiles, lots of good critique already given, particularly gil's.

One thought, is i think you should raise the backdrop about 50px or so to try and match the camera angle..


Also, just messed with the palette a bit;

[EvilEye]

I agree with ben2theedge's edit and I think the heads would look a lot better if you made them darker and then added a glow from the bottom.

[big brother]

Thanks again for the feedback and edits. I will consider these when I enter round three of the rock drawing. Ben, I do play on putting the ground bg layer in, but I want to make these tiles first. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mistajaye. I am grateful for the help I'm getting here, and I much prefer the direction this mockup is moving compared to how it was before. It looks more playable and appealing in all aspects to me.

I'm going to scrap the tiles and start over. The fiddly detail direction  was a poor one; I want to portray epic masses of hewn rock.

[Gil]

That does seem for the best. While the detail is astounding, it's a bitch to get the whole volume down.

May I suggest a more polygonal approach? Approach the whole volume of the rock as a lowpoly model, then shade accordingly until it looks like a believable volumetric shape. Add in details after this step.

[Chris2balls]

This is looking great!

I did this because the part underneath the path looked like it was all on the same level and quite flat, and in front of the path (layer-wise). My edit is sloppy and very quickly done, but I hope you understand.

[TrevoriuS]

Here i've been building on to Feron's edit, I like how the colours come off the screen in it; although such a palette should probably be reserved for a later level, and the current one is close to perfect as for what kind of environment you're situated in now. It's kind of to get an idea how you can continue building onto this without wasting all the detail. I've now done it very cheaply with the palette of the full image, but if you take the tiles into some decent software you can take a brush that just shifts the colour up or down the palette once by luminance to get the same effect without a huge amount of manual (re)working.

For now it's quite rough and nasty, but with some polishing and highlights it can get quite dynamic.

Also I've been doing some adjustment to the player character. In the earlier versions it had this huge chest and a golden piece in the middle separating two halves of armour. I liked that element, and tried to squeeze it back in a bit. You can see what you take from it I juts did it for my own liking I guess.

[AdamAtomic]

I haven't been here in a while, but this thread is just plain wonderful.  Pixelation at its best!  Great artists made greater through good attitudes and awesome suggestions.

Sorry about that, but this thread definitely made my day

THAT SAID...big brother, your eagle just looks lame to me still.  He looks like his legs attach to his butt, like a human, when they really attach to the eagle's sides, like a dinosaur (on account of BEING A DINOSAUR).  I would check out refs of Golden Eagles instead of Bald Eagles, since Golden Eagles are more awesomer.  Here are some studies I did, I don't know if they help or not.  Note the dinosaurness!

Anyways, that's my only gripe.  Looks ridiculously awesome otherwise, especially with the backing color behind the score.

EDIT - I take that back, I think the woman's left arm is a tad thin, and that her left lag dangles down a smidge too far, she looks a little offbalance to me, and the division between her left buttock and her left thigh is distracting.

Great job!!  I want to play this so bad it hurts.

[big brother]

Thanks for the crits, though I hardly think Golden Eagles are awesomer. Besides, Bald Eagles have that two-tone thing going on, which can make them pop more as a sprite.

I redrew the rocks to make them look more massive and less fiddly. The "rocka-fellers" blend into the stone more, keeping the focus on the gameplay. Rocka-fellers? GET IT??? I crack me up so hard I shit my pants.
On Andrew's suggestion, I added armor to the eagle, because armor is badass.
I also did super minor edits to the girl statue element. Basically, I'm in love with her, so I don't want to change her too much.



Trevorius: I like the golden piece in the middle, too. I'm afraid it interferes a bit on the small scale of the sprite. I'll definitely include it on the closeup figure of the barbarian in the inventory screen.

[DarkFalzX]

Awesome new tileset! Completely unexpected and extraordinarily stylized - totally you man! When I said "eagle armor" I ment more along the lines of this though: