AuthorTopic: Chakan: The forever man mockup  (Read 5363 times)

Offline Corsair

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Chakan: The forever man mockup

on: July 29, 2009, 09:11:42 pm
Anyone remember this game? Pretty average platformer with a high difficulty level; nothing spectacular for the time but the overall visual style was much darker tha most of it's contempraries at the time, as well as having a fairly interesting premise, being based on a graphic novel which seems to have been influence by a combination of Solomon Kane and Iron Maiden's "Eddie".

I decided yesterday that I'd do a tribute mockup to a game that generated a great deal of fun and frustration in my childhood.
Obviously i'm still going for a distinctly Genesis/megadrive-eqsue look and feel. (not sticking to spec, though.)

RAMBLERAMBLERAMBLE whatever.



Main things i'm looking to do immediately - First, set up a decent palette for the stone tiles, without directly using the one in the game; the improve the quality, texture and readability of any stone objects O may or may not end up including.
I'm attempting recreate/reimagine the stage select area - So for those of you not familiar with it, here are a few screens:
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9303/chakantheforeverman000.png
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/6872/chakantheforeverman001.png
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/858/chakantheforeverman002.png

As well, Anything to improve the sprite itself. Be it color, shape...anything. I want to make this as awesome as my ability permits.
Any tips, criticisms, edits...and so on will be rewarded with a free tankard of mead*




*I lied about the mead thing.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2009, 06:29:19 am by Corsair »

Offline EvilEye

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Re: Chakan: The forever man mockup

Reply #1 on: July 30, 2009, 02:56:29 pm
I do remember this game, though I never actually played it.

Your sprite is too dark. It will be lost on any dark background ( like a space background ). It also looks very flat and a lot of the anatomy is difficult to read ( the feet for example ).

You seem to gradient everything. This increases the flat look. Look at the pillars. They go from dark grey-ish yellow to bright yellow straight across. It just doesn't look realistic.

I also don't understand why you mirrored the pillars. Unless there is some hidden light source coming from the center there is no reason to do this and it will look bad when there are more then 2 of them.

The colors you chose for the background is very uninteresting. Bright saturated yellow to greenish grey? Even though I don't think the original game was very good color-wise, if you look at their bricks, you find desaturated bright yellow, orange, copper, brown, dark redish-brown, and dark desaturated blue.

You realize its difficult for someone to distinguish from a pixel representing detail and a pixel added for dithering? To me the stones look grainy. That's what happens when you over-detail a piece. You need to ease off a bit and allow the user to see more with less, and only add detail where it will be effective. All those tiny pixels everywhere just overwhelm the eye.

On a more positive not, your work here is pretty good. Just a bit flat looking, and maybe a bit over-detailed.

Offline Corsair

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Re: Chakan: The forever man mockup

Reply #2 on: July 30, 2009, 06:00:46 pm
As far as the flipping of the pillars is concerned, the main reason I do that sort of thing isn't so much about lighting, as it is trying to see something in a "new" light; after staring at a bit of work for a while everything kinda starts to blend together, when i flip it, some of the flaws become more obvious.
As far as leaving them there? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that it's been pointed out, I have no idea why.

Anyways, mucking with the colors a bit, attempting to remove a bit of the noise from the brick tiles, redrawing the base and top of the columns, and recoloring the pillar...i'm really at a bit of a loss on it... i *think* it shows a bit more depth byt tha could just be wishful thinking.



Added some brick action, tried to make the sprite more readable/stand out better on a black background.
And a little sandbox there at the bottom.

« Last Edit: July 31, 2009, 12:21:50 am by Corsair »

Offline Corsair

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Re: Chakan: The forever man mockup

Reply #3 on: August 05, 2009, 06:48:58 am
bump with content!


I'm actually having a very difficult time coming up with a decent palette for the background tiles. The colors i used on the ones around the window seem to work independently, but when they're right next to the brighter tiles, they're not *visibly* in the background...
The ones i have *now* look like crap. I know they're way undersaturated but i'm kinda *DURRH* as to what to do with them.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2009, 06:51:05 am by Corsair »

Offline Elk

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Re: Chakan: The forever man mockup

Reply #4 on: August 05, 2009, 07:06:30 am
The color of your "stones" is gold right now..and far too bright IMO
toning down the entire thing and touching up the flames will do I think :3

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Offline Corsair

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Re: Chakan: The forever man mockup

Reply #5 on: August 05, 2009, 07:52:08 am
I do like it, however when put on a background that isn't quite so bright (which aren't good colors to work in front of, you may as well work on plain white.) they appear rather flat, but it DOES show that my choice of palette is a bit too bright for what i'd be doing with it. My initial goal was to have it stand out a bit more from the (what will be) mostly black background, but standing out too much makes it jump out way more than it needs to. i'll have an upgrade out here in just a couple minutes.



Darkened things a bit, found a good color set for the background tiles, retained one of the old colors mostly to highlight thins i wanted to be sorta shiny *attempted* to add some texture to the columns, did some stuff in the sandbox area.

NOW i just need to edit the sprite so he's actually visible on the background....

AGH i just noticed a bunch of things i messed up in the process. nothing too huge; the right side of the arches are all misaligned by one pixel and the "ribs" of the gargoyles on the left side are jacked. I'll fix it later!  :D

more crap.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2009, 12:13:19 am by Corsair »