So, your advice is to make it dependent on the situation, if an outline makes sense or if you better go without one. And it's not so bad to mix the style with and without outlines in one and the same tileset? That would be great. I thought that once you decide to use outlines, you have to add them to everything, for consistency. But, tbh I didn't pay attention how the artists of the SNES era solved it *cough*, yet.
Regarding the bamboo: I see. No problem! Here is the bamboo in raw form.
That one particular floor in the practice is nasty. It doesn't look good, even if I reduce the color count. Probably another one will do. I still have some up in my sleeve
Trying to get a friend to help with the gnome from earlier. Went ahead with another battler I'd drawn:
A reoccurring character in my project. He was partially influenced by Jr. Troopa from the original Paper Mario: a ne'er-do-well who's not much of a challenge to start off with that only becomes less of a challenge as the story progresses.
Darkened the inside of his vest. What else can be done? Perhaps I cold do something with the eyebrows? (Did that!)
@Lestroth I don't mean to say that consistency isn't required, it is, but there's a bit of flexibility within that. For example having a bold black outline around a character sprite doesn't mean that you have to have a bold black outline on all objects, but you'd better have that type of outline on every character sprite. You can use outlines to indicate depth by having things that are far from the ground have a bolder outline, or you can use it to indicate something is interactable or all sorts of things, but it should be consistent on some level or the look won't be cohesive.
I messed around with the bamboo. I think the best thing to do is to simplify the shading on the leaves. Right now you've lost the silhouette or shape of the leaves with all the shading, and the more you can keep that looking whole and not broken up by color changes the better. The leaves are just too thin to handle much. It also looked pretty good to take the darkest shade of green and do an outline only on the shadow side of the leaves. That way it had some of that separation but didn't feel as closed in and cartoony as it would with the full outline.
On your last post I'd at first missed the part about doing the floors later and so I had thought that you weren't going to. So at the time I made a quick edit to show how much clearer things are with a simpler floor. I think it'll be useful here to show a possible edit to the floor that could work. Remember, none of these things are supposed to work on their own, so don't worry too much if it looks ugly by itself, only worry if it looks ugly with everything else.
@MobileSuitSonic The character design is solid. It would be good to fix up the eyebrows, it's got that same anti-aliased to white problem that your last image had. It could use some shading too before you call it done.
@Lestroth I don't mean to say that consistency isn't required, it is, but there's a bit of flexibility within that. For example having a bold black outline around a character sprite doesn't mean that you have to have a bold black outline on all objects, but you'd better have that type of outline on every character sprite. You can use outlines to indicate depth by having things that are far from the ground have a bolder outline, or you can use it to indicate something is interactable or all sorts of things, but it should be consistent on some level or the look won't be cohesive.
I messed around with the bamboo. I think the best thing to do is to simplify the shading on the leaves. Right now you've lost the silhouette or shape of the leaves with all the shading, and the more you can keep that looking whole and not broken up by color changes the better. The leaves are just too thin to handle much. It also looked pretty good to take the darkest shade of green and do an outline only on the shadow side of the leaves. That way it had some of that separation but didn't feel as closed in and cartoony as it would with the full outline.
On your last post I'd at first missed the part about doing the floors later and so I had thought that you weren't going to. So at the time I made a quick edit to show how much clearer things are with a simpler floor. I think it'll be useful here to show a possible edit to the floor that could work. Remember, none of these things are supposed to work on their own, so don't worry too much if it looks ugly by itself, only worry if it looks ugly with everything else.
@MobileSuitSonic The character design is solid. It would be good to fix up the eyebrows, it's got that same anti-aliased to white problem that your last image had. It could use some shading too before you call it done.
That is too complicated a question for this format and I don't personally feel inclined to do an entire tutorial on shading at the moment. Thankfully the internet has loads of those and a quick Google search will likely give you everything you need. I think the style that would suit your art best would be cel shading.
@Sharm Okay, I understand, so you have some leeway in case of outlines. I wasn't really aware of that. The first things I made for that game were plants with which the player can interact with. They all have an outline, because back then it was easier for me to have one. So, regarding the flora/the outside, it would then be wise to be more thoughtful when using outlines, as far as I understand.
I haven't yet layed hands on the bamboo, but your suggestions shouldn't take long to implement. Especially interesting is the use of the darkest green as an outline only on the dark side. I think I haven't seen something like this before. Do you mean to use the darkest green on leaves that are... umm, more in the background or do you mean to use it on the edges that are closest to the ground? Looking at your first paragraph, it even might be the latter.
Regarding the floor tiles, I'm really glad that you showed me your version, because I wouldn't have had the courage to reduce the color count to basically two colors. It makes a huge difference and both the furniture and the characters are way more visible. The characters could also use a darker outline, I think.
Still, I'm a bit torn on the floors. The advantages are undeniable, but my detailed wooden planks really grew on me. It costs me quite an effort to go back to such simplistic looking floors, to be honest. So while I'm still fighting and bargaining with my inner devils, the only thing I changed until now was to lower the contrast and soften the brighter colors of the floors.
At the moment they look like this:
I'm really curious as to how the pixel artists of the SNES era made their detailed floors work, as these games often serve as references for me. Okay, they of course had only a limited amount of colors available, which explains some really horrible outcomes. But even their good looking maps often have detailed floors with a somewhat stark contrast. Is it because their floors are often so dark?
Oh, and before I forget: Again, thank you very much for your indepth explanations and advice! They are - as always - so very useful to me
Next are the bamboo plants and then the exterior tiles. Then everything should be up to date.
...Now, this may (probably) take a little longer
[EDIT]So, regarding the bamboo, this is all I could do for today. I temporarily changed the colors to the tree-leave ones so that it's easier to distinguish them from the grass. It's definitely better and more voluminous, but still needs some more work - tomorrow
Tried out some tweaks for prettier editor mapping :3 There are some stray pixels, but otherwise the A2 normal water instead of ugly waterfall autotile-water works pretty well
@Avery Also very cool. I can't edit the higher resolution stuff like that.
I feel like I'm progressing along with my 16x16 work. Turns out Dawnbringer's DB32 palette is a default selection in PixelEdit, so I have been having fun with recolors. Picking colors really is a talent.
This is the first time I have started shading my objects.
I also like your tileset! I just noticed that you have a tendency of using banding. It's especially visible on the roofs and the transition from grass to dirt. I think for the latter it would look good to use the grass border of your cliffs or something similiar.
Other than that I don't know what else to criticize
@Lestroth The Roof I know I had banding on, I was just too lazy to work it out at the time. I need to get bette at pillow shading (I think that's what it is called). I think that's the solution for some of my issues with transitioning from one surface to another. All in due time!
I don't think I have messed with that dirt path asset since I made it the first go around. It's not even supposed to have those notches in it either, I think those are there because I need to make the dirt part larger.
Hello everyone! I'm currently working on sprites and custom tilesets for my rpg, I'm wondering if its possible to get feedback on what I've already created. I'm using paint tool sai for the sprites.
It's hard to say, everything is too separate right now. If you're going to be making a tileset then I recommend starting with a mock-up first and then focus on refining the tiles. It's very easy, especially when starting out, to get too caught up on the details of pixel art and lose sight of how it should look as a whole, and you'll want to do whatever you can to get things working together as soon as you can. People will forgive really terrible art if it goes well together but will bash game art that only looks good in individual pieces.
It's hard to say, everything is too separate right now. If you're going to be making a tileset then I recommend starting with a mock-up first and then focus on refining the tiles. It's very easy, especially when starting out, to get too caught up on the details of pixel art and lose sight of how it should look as a whole, and you'll want to do whatever you can to get things working together as soon as you can. People will forgive really terrible art if it goes well together but will bash game art that only looks good in individual pieces.
A tileset mockup is in the works, don't worry! I really need to work on the "aesthetics" of the game world and see how it matches with the character sprites.
Ok so I have the first frame finished for a sprite for my Doctor Who project
It is the character Ohila, the High Priestess of the Sisterhood Of Karn (fans of the show will know what I'm talking about)
The problem I have is that the character wears robes and I really need advice on how to make the robe look right with the stepping animations.
Any advice on this subject would be greatly appreciated thankyou.
@DiscoInFEARNo Animating the bottom of a robe is exactly the same as animating the bottom of a skirt. Take a look at some existing sprites and see what you can learn about how they did it. I recommend looking at taller sprites like XP, Mac, and Looseleaf, it should be easier to see what's going on with the clothes in those.
@callmedan It looks pretty good, but I think it would look better if the seams for the stair steps showed up in the second frame. Right now it's a little confusing and you could view it as something thin being folded into a step shape.
i can't wait to drink some ice after struggling with my illness in 9 days. 9 days is really bad for me,i can't focus with my shop and even can't do something with my project
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