Catch As Cat Can Mockup.16

[xhunterko]

Cough, eh hem.

Sorry bout the blue. It was just a filler and I guess I didn't check it in time.

[Mathias]

. . .CnC please

Walkable ground is iffy; the way you're doing it, it would make sense for Paws to stand on almost any pixel of the grass's height, leaves your user feeling floaty/unanchored, very. I really dislike the lack of cross-section tiles transitioning - below the grass is just a continuous texture--make it darken up a few tiles away from the grass. Yer trees don't really qualify as trees, they're just wiggly brown oddly hollow pillow-shaded pipes jutting straight up with boughs at random that have an opposite light source for some crazy reason (sun is top right, yet lighting is coming from bottom left? are we in china?) - why not have a trunk tile as a base, maybe some vegetation, an attempt at textured treebark, rather than smooth - refer here. Heard of tile variations before? - I know you've seen them--multiple versions of the same tile that can break up repetitiousness. For instance you have one total-tiling dirt tile, make three that are capable of tiling on all sides and plug them in randomly, the clouds look like levitating deflated bags or egg whites - make 'em fluffly, default pure blue bg is annoying, sun seems too prominant like it serves a function - getting rid of the rays could help.

[xhunterko]

"I really dislike the lack of cross-section tiles transitioning":

Wait, wait wha?  I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you be a little more clear?

"Yer trees don't really qualify as trees, they're just wiggly brown oddly hollow pillow-shaded pipes jutting straight up with boughs at random that have an opposite light source for some crazy reason (sun is top right, yet lighting is coming from bottom left? are we in china?)":

Why does it always take someone else to spot pillow shading?  Yes, yes we are in china, cough. 

"why not have a trunk tile as a base, maybe some vegetation, an attempt at textured treebark, rather than smooth - refer here. Heard of tile variations before? - I know you've seen them--multiple versions of the same tile that can break up repetitiousness."

Yes I have. However, are you sure that's the correct thread your trying to point to? I'll see what I can do about the shading though. And to think it's spotted just After I finish the newest piece. I'll see what I can do about the clouds. Even though I thought it was earlier agreed that they were generally okay. Got a whisker?

Thanks again.

[crab2selout.png]

Nice post, ben. I never really thought about grass fields clumping like that. It makes sense if there seems to be a main parent root system with little child offshoots. Love it when people post stuff like that. I really need to start looking for the bigger shapes and volumes in my references.

Thanks much!

[xhunterko]

Retina burning forests removed from my posts to not blind eyes. (Looks at Mathias.)



What I mainly concentrated on here was the tree texture and layout by itself. Not everything's touched up the way it should be but I wanted to put this up before it got later. I have both foreground and background trees going on. With only the lighter trees being used for player interaction. One of my biggest concerns is if I got the leafy section to look right. I tried going with a darker leaf backdrop slightly inspired by a certain mockup here. I'll try to work on the other stuff as I can.

I didn't mean to sound like I was ignoring ben's post. It is a really useful reference and I'll probably look back to it if I should decide to redo my grass. Again.

CnC please.
Thanks much.

(So much for quick post. Stupid ants.)

[Ai]

I like the texturing, it's very retro; the lighting is currently impossible, here's an example edit on part of the tree trunk and the branches.

I think you might benefit from drawing a mesh showing the 3d shape of objects before you shade them -- it prevents you from doing impossible shading, more or less.

some of the treetops are quite believable; the bubble-formations are really unlikely though. Thinning out the leaves in places so the background can show through would be a good improvement IMO.

[Mathias]

"I really dislike the lack of cross-section tiles transitioning":

Wait, wait wha?  I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you be a little more clear?

"Yer trees don't really qualify as trees, they're just wiggly brown oddly hollow pillow-shaded pipes jutting straight up with boughs at random that have an opposite light source for some crazy reason (sun is top right, yet lighting is coming from bottom left? are we in china?)":

Why does it always take someone else to spot pillow shading?  Yes, yes we are in china, cough. 

"why not have a trunk tile as a base, maybe some vegetation, an attempt at textured treebark, rather than smooth - refer here. Heard of tile variations before? - I know you've seen them--multiple versions of the same tile that can break up repetitiousness."

Yes I have. However, are you sure that's the correct thread your trying to point to? I'll see what I can do about the shading though. And to think it's spotted just After I finish the newest piece. I'll see what I can do about the clouds. Even though I thought it was earlier agreed that they were generally okay. Got a whisker?

Thanks again.

You're welcome. I learn from this as well you know.



Here I've addressed a number of things. It's funny that Ai just posted - the palette I decided to pull colors from was shown to me by him (her?). Anyway,  it rocks so far. My modified version is wroght with crappy mistakes and problems, it's just for show, it was done too hastily.

-Decent depth achieved in sky with only THREE colors. Gradient is messy, though.
-Clouds given volume and character, imagine them floating by slowly at different speeds, all on their own bg layers. Notice the farthest cloud not using the highlight shade - this and it's scale make it appear further away than others.
-Walkable ground defined with small edit to grass tiles
-Made 3 sets of transitioning cross-section tiles (my own ignorant nomenclature, btw). Despite the obvious tiling problems do you get it now? Your version presents the eye with a depthless plain of monotony, pulling the eye down to bottom of the image, gotta keep the eye where the action is. You could greatly benefit from studying basic design principles, do not underestimate their importance.
-Trees turned into cut off bean stalk things with only a color edit, they seem a little more excusable now.

[xhunterko]

Thank you very much! This makes what you were saying much easier to understand. I'll try to work on some of that asap. The edit still looks good even though it was done quickly.

"You could greatly benefit from studying basic design principles, do not  underestimate their importance."

-Unfortunately, no one seems to know where these are written down sadly. Or, they are, and no one's telling anybody. Or they're here somewhere and I'm just completely blind and missing them entirely. (And unless I'm seeing things. Your brown tree edit uses nearly the exact same colors that my new brownish background tree does. What's that palette btw?)

"I think you might benefit from drawing a mesh showing the 3d shape of objects before you shade them -- it prevents you from doing impossible shading, more or less."

-Thank you for the edit. Your shading's a tad subtle but I think I get what you mean. And by 3d shape does she(?) mean an actual 3d model, or blobbing necessary colors around and adding texture later? (I'm guessing it's the latter.)

[xhunterko]

I don't like to not update even when I don't have much. Or something unrelated to what I'm currently doing.



Been toying around style and structure today as a break. Hopefully I'll be able to post more on the backgrounds early next week. In the meantime. That should be something for you guys to chew on.

Enjoy!
(and thanks)

(Forgot to ask for CnC on these. Please and thanks.)

[xhunterko]

Hello there, back!

Is this slightly what you guys mean?


I tried not to make the tree look too much like Ai's edit. Hopefully I avoided that. Changed the leaf structure around a little bit and left out the darker parts. I tussled up the grass some more and like the look of that as well. More or less based on ben's suggestion. I also rearranged the ground tiling. I think that covers the repeating tile issue. I haven't messed with the sky as yet or some other stuff as well. But this is what I've been working on. I'm not to sure about the grass. It seems a bit disconnected for some reason.

Let me know what you guys think!
(CnC please, thanks!)

(And if you don't mind, it's not a serious priority right now. But if anyone can comment on the new characters in the previous post that'd be helpful too. Don't mean to be a bother.)