The Resource WIP thread 2

[AcetheSuperVillain]

@mlogan Thanks, I removed the arms to focus mainly on the legs for now...

This V-shaped pace is a little weird.  I would suggest keeping the legs straight or swinging them inward instead of outward.  If you google (front walk cycle) or something similar, you can see some examples of this.  


Here are a couple good ones:  

Spoiler

^In this one, the foot sliding from side to side is not ideal though.  Better to have the lifted leg swing around it.  

 

[Rukiri]

@AcetheSuperVillain When you walk you walk straight.


The legs are moving front to back proportionate to how the legs were drawn for the idles.   


It's a little weird as it's not smooth, I just don't feel like creating 8-frame animations for the template...


I'm only using the key frames for now.  

 

[McSundae]

@Avery That looks very promising, people are probably learning alot if they are willing to


@Rukiri Your template looks already very good, just dunno if the perspective is right, i'm excited to see it in action


Since i finally finished 90% of the On-Map Tiles and Chars i started working on animations for the game, starting with a simple smoke animation:

Dunno if this is already good enough, it will be used for things popping or jumping on the ground

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I have made a new base template:





Proportions are more heroic, arms and longer because the short arms got weird in the animations and hands are added because I realized I can and might as well.  I found a way to control the edging color, so instead of black lines everywhere, I can do dark brown lines around the skin, dark red lines around the dress, and so on.  Head IK has been changed so she should not tilt around as much.  Because the rig is different, I need to pick through the emotion and battle sprites and check for messes, but that should go quickly.  


I'll need to redesign the male character.  I want the freebies to be something that would be useful in a couple different themes, so I need to think of what the equivalent of a cheongsam dragon girl is for males.  

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I had a thought.  One of the things that I would want and I feel like customers would want is the ability to modify these sprites, and the high color depth would make that difficult.  So what if I made them with a lower color depth?  Here are the results:





First is just two shades of diffuse color, no edging.  Second is that, plus edging.  Third was rendered at x2 resolution and scaled down linearly, so there's a softer edge around the character and between color zones.  


An interesting experiment.  I don't know if I'll want to use it for anything.  

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Here's the new emotions sheet:

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I've started some characters.  The first set will be some extras/villagers/etc for a He-Man/Thundarr/Galtar style Sword and Sorcery setting.   In order to expand the available characters, I will also release some head swaps.


I lowered the total color count because making palette swaps for the original was a major pain.  The current color level is much more manageable, and should be easier for people to edit on their own if they need to.  


The males are a bit androgynous, but I don't know if that's a problem.  

 

[PixelLuchi]

Testing my old and new resources side by side. I've finally dissected the anatomy of those blasted auto-tiles. xD

 

[Caitlin]

I've been working on a message box, to use instead of the regular windowskin... (o.o') I am happy with it, only I think it could be much better than it is... if you get my drift.... Here is it in action

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Testing my old and new resources side by side. I've finally dissected the anatomy of those blasted auto-tiles. xD

I can't tell which is old and which is new.  I would say I like the character on the left best and the tiles on the right best.  The left grass texture is a little too "busy" I think, it doesn't really look like anything.  Similarly, the light-dark contrast on the right hand character is a too high, it's hard to "read" the actual body shape of the character.  


EDIT:  Actually another sort of advanced idea to consider is to try to make the backgrounds and characters in a noticeably different color set so that the characters or active objects pop out a bit more.  This is not a particularly heartfelt attempt, but this general idea:





They use this principle in some cartoons, like a very bold character on either a dark or pastel background.  In can be in color choices too, for example, using the same neighborhood of browns for the character and the soil can make it a little hard to see.  

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I've been working on a message box, to use instead of the regular windowskin... (o.o') I am happy with it, only I think it could be much better than it is... if you get my drift.... Here is it in action


View attachment 48819

Since everything else is pixelated, consider using a harder color transition for the metal shading instead of the soft gradient you have now.  If the design is supposed to look round like a cylinder, you can make the sections towards the top and bottom shorter and the sections toward the middle taller to make that effect.  Like this:





On the curves there's a little hiccup where two long pixel chains are intersected by a single pixel.  It looks a little squiggly.  If it was supposed to look like a smooth curve throughout, try to keep the longest chain in the middle and unbroken.  Like this:  

 

[Caitlin]

@AcetheSuperVillainThanks!  I did as you suggested and it looks much better than it had before.  (o.o) I knew that something was off, but I like the way it looked... (^_^)/

 

[Amysaurus]

Right now I'm working on redrawing MV's generator, which has been... an adventure so far. 


(Note: I haven't drawn eyebrows, mouths, or clothing yet. That's why the expressions are all super smug atm. )

 

 

[Lunarflame]

I've been working on this for quite awhile...Maybe I should make her smaller? I feel I need to tweak her some more. Any suggestions?

 

[PixelLuchi]

Kept my old sprite, redid the texturing on the cliffs and grass.

 

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Kept my old sprite, redid the texturing on the cliffs and grass.


(picture)

The plants are all looking wonderful.  There's an odd boxy effect on the stone cliffs, kinda looks like it is drawn on folded paper.  If this is an auto-tile, examine carefully the edges of your tiles and double check how they look when they are "looped".  Try to make the shading uniform across the tile, for example, don't make it lighter at the top of the tile and darker at the bottom.  

 

[PixelLuchi]

Ok, so I fixed up the cliffs again.


Now I'm asking those pixel artists ( or anyone with a sharp eye, really ) to see if anything looks odd or off in the below screenshot. =) I love getting feedback because I know it will only make me better in the long term. One could almost say I'm greedy for C&C. xD

 

[chungsie]

I've been working on this for quite awhile...Maybe I should make her smaller? I feel I need to tweak her some more. Any suggestions?


View attachment 49335

that is amazing! I can't think of what to change really. maybe add an outline to the skirt thing?

 

[Sharm]

@Crunchino  Good for you for wanting really thorough critique.  Most people don't want it and can't handle it, but you're right, it helps you grow faster.  I hope that more people than me take you up on this and give you good feedback.  I'm pretty good but I'm still learning too, there's probably going to be a bunch of stuff I'll miss.


I see you've used a lot of mirroring.  In some ways that's fine, since it'll cut down on how long each part takes to create, but you need to go back over it once it's mirrored and touch it up so the mirroring isn't obvious.  It's the most obvious at the seams where you're getting whole rows of double headed blades of grass and thicker than average shadows.


The cliff walls have a very obvious dark line running through them and there are a few places where they don't match up when tiled differently than the norm.  It'd be good to add a few more brighter spots to the dark line and break it up, plus add a little of the darker spots to the main section of tiling.  It'd be also good to have a little more variety in size with the clumps but I'm not sure how much work you want to put in on this.


The trees are looking very plasticy right now.  Part of this is the high contrast of the colors, part of it is the high saturation in those colors, and part of it is the pillow shading. Here's my favorite tutorial for explaining pillow shading.  It's not a lot of text but the pictures make things very clear.  I think once you fix the pillow shading the colors will look less jarring, but it's something to consider tweaking at some point.  Right now the trees look ripped from a different game.


The hollow log looks out of perspective.  The opening on the one end is possible from that point of view, but if it was really like that the inside would be shaded very differently.  I think the easiest way to solve it would be to put the log at an angle and add a bit of cast shadow.


I think with how you've got everything else colored it would be good to up the contrast a little on the metal on the treasure chests.  It's not very shiny right now.


A lot of the problems I'm seeing are difficulties with the way tiles work.  Do you have a good method of checking how things tile as you draw?  I'm a really big fan of Pyxel Edit for this, since the only other way I know to do this is by mapping and checking and fixing and reimporting and checking and fixing, ect.  It's rather tedious.  I'm fairly certain there are other art programs that let you map tiles and draw on them (ProMotion?), but I like how Pyxel Edit does it best and it's pretty cheap.


Overall I'd say you're doing a good job.  The colors are rich, the textures are interesting without being overbearing. there's a good balance of high to low detailing and overall it's pleasant to look at.

 

[Lunarflame]

that is amazing! I can't think of what to change really. maybe add an outline to the skirt thing?

Hmm... I could try that. You mean just the apron or her white capris?