The Resource WIP Thread

[SolarGale]

@Digital_Raze

Hey that's a nice sprite, really like the proportions there.

 

[RyanA]

@Ezra: There's a point where the fanservice just morphs into "wtf are those boobs doing", though! Her breasts would totally be bouncing (since they are ginormous), but not like, well... this:

I'm going to make the really weird suggestion to go google breasts bouncing -- and not cartoon boobs, real boobs (cartoon boobs are a terrible reference and should never be used ever)! They don't bounce nearly as much as one would think, and when they do, they go with the rest of the body/gravity/all that jazz. If you have a busty girlfriend or close cousin/sister/friend that wouldn't mind you using her breasts for a reference (it's to improve your skills, okay, it's not that weird), get her to jump around a little bit so you can see how they move with her body. I have definitely hopped in front of a mirror to see what goes on down there, and it helps a lot. XD

Also, for this one:

I think you need an extra frame in here in which she squats a bit, or you gotta remove the pause when the animation loops. Right now it looks a little strange!

Haha that's the wierdest suggestion I heard since someone told me to listen to Lady Gaga's new album for song ideas. I think those sprites are great though and you are super skilled. The top one is a little bit strange and I agree with Emmchy.

 

[Holder]

It's been a while since I've done any tileset work, especially when it's not pixel based, got the reference image in there aswel:

 

[hyde9318]

Oh holder, those are freaking cool as hell. Will you be releasing those?

 

[Holder]

Certainly, I'm trying to learn how to do Ace tiles so it's pretty much touch and go how they'll turn out. It'll definitely be an XP release since I'm used to how those autotiles work.

Cheers

 

[Des]

Not bad! Especially if it's your first time painting tiles. My one crit would be the floor tiles; imo the thick lines on them are too thick and too dark and draw too much attention. For something like the floor you actually want less contrast to help keep the focus on objects in characters. keep at it bro; post more when you can

 

[Lunarea]

It's awesome to see another artist branching into tilesets. It's definitely one of the areas where there's a lot of requests and few people who can fulfill them.

Now for the criticism ...

You need to up your contrast a little and work on adding a bit more depth. I've done a quick and lazy edit of the wall tile just to illustrate:

Here's what I did:

- Upped the contrast by 25

- Added depth via the burn/dodge tool at various points. Normally, I don't advise people to use burn and dodge because they add pure white/pure black and that's not how shading is done properly. But it can work when your palette is mostly gray. They can also add a sort of "shiny" feel and a lot of contrast that's good for metal.

The wall doesn't look quite like your reference anymore, but sometimes you need to exaggerate details so they don't get washed out by the texture. If you wanted to keep the smoothness and subtlety of your reference, you'd probably need to get rid of the noise texture and make the colors lighter.

I hope that helps.

 

[SolarGale]

Wow great tiles there holder, and great critique Lunarea, I think anybody interested in tilesets reading that will surely find it helpful! :3

 

[Ronove]

You know what's fun? Working on old-schoolish looking tiles/characters.

I've really never tried limiting myself that much (it's super fun and simple) so I wanted to know if everything was still looking all right or if any of you super-pixelers had any tips or whatnot that could help me out. The grass/flower tiles came from Emmych, but I did the sprites, the houses, and the dirt path. Now I need to figure out how to make water work. So any tips or anything would be sweet!

 

[RyanA]

Brilliant! Very original gameboy! Would love to see a color version of that set too though!

 

[Lunarea]

So cute, Ronnie! <3

As for water ... You could try the Pokemon version and do dark shade with squiggly white lines, maybe?

Spoiler

 

[slaQ]

@Lunarea

In graphics I don't really think there's any right or wrong way of doing something. In the end all that matters is the result. Wether it was achieved using burn/dodge tool or by coloring it by hand

or using layer effects, doesn't really matter. In fact the way I work, is if I can fake/cheat my way out of difficult stuff to make it easier and more efficient to create the same or at least a similar end result,

I will probably do that. Harsh as it may be, but most people really don't care if you worked on something for days and weeks or just half an hour. They care wether it looks good or not.

 

[Lunarea]

@slaQ:

I'm not saying that using tools/layers/effects/whatever is bad. I know there are people out there who feel that everything should be done by hand, but I'm not one of them. If you can use a tool to make it easier to make a resource, go for it.

However, I think you should at least have an understanding of the basics and be able to create them without tools. You should know how shadows behave, where they go and how they add depth. You should be able to achieve this result without tools (though you're welcome to use tools to make things faster for yourself down the line).

My reticence in suggesting tools when someone is learning how to sprite is mainly because I don't want to encourage people to develop bad habits or to make things harder on themselves. If you're trying to emulate a particular style (such as the RTP) and that style doesn't use burn/dodge, you will have trouble imitating it while using burn/dodge.

So, while I agree that end results matter, I feel that you should understand the style you're using and when/how to use tools vs just manually painting something.

 

[RyanA]

@slaQ:

I'm not saying that using tools/layers/effects/whatever is bad. I know there are people out there who feel that everything should be done by hand, but I'm not one of them. If you can use a tool to make it easier to make a resource, go for it.

However, I think you should at least have an understanding of the basics and be able to create them without tools. You should know how shadows behave, where they go and how they add depth. You should be able to achieve this result without tools (though you're welcome to use tools to make things faster for yourself down the line).

My reticence in suggesting tools when someone is learning how to sprite is mainly because I don't want to encourage people to develop bad habits or to make things harder on themselves. If you're trying to emulate a particular style (such as the RTP) and that style doesn't use burn/dodge, you will have trouble imitating it while using burn/dodge.

So, while I agree that end results matter, I feel that you should understand the style you're using and when/how to use tools vs just manually painting something.

Well said, I feel the same way about music. Pointless trying making a pop song if you don't understand why it sound's the way it does first. I second the wavy pokemon style water bits too for Ron, they would go down a treat with that set! :3

 

[Des]

ronove—

love the style and colors

the grass tile is jarring; the pattern is too uniform and noisy. when you're working with color limits like that, i would suggest using a single color, with a few tufts here and there. look at A Link to the Past to see what I mean.

also imo for the blonde-haired character, you shouldn't be afraid to use the darker color to outline the hair. it would help make the sprite stand out against the background.

also imo maybe the bottom outline of the houses shouldn't be the darkest black—it would look more like it meets the ground if you use a different color, or even if you broke it up with some little grass bumps

 

[Ronove]

@Despain: Of course you'd love the style; I was staring at old!Pokemon tilesets trying to figure out what to do, haha.

I actually thought the same about the grass, I just wasn't sure how to un-busy it. But I think I'll try the solid colors and tufts of grass showing up instead of tuffs of grass with a solid color here and there. Thanks for your suggestions! It was stuff I was thinking of doing but since I've never tried this I was iffy on if I should just give it a try. If I get any more substantial pieces, I'll definitely post them up here for some suggestions etc.

 

[Ezra]

I'm going to make the really weird suggestion to go google breasts bouncing -- and not cartoon boobs, real boobs (cartoon boobs are a terrible reference and should never be used ever)! They don't bounce nearly as much as one would think, and when they do, they go with the rest of the body/gravity/all that jazz. If you have a busty girlfriend or close cousin/sister/friend that wouldn't mind you using her breasts for a reference (it's to improve your skills, okay, it's not that weird), get her to jump around a little bit so you can see how they move with her body. I have definitely hopped in front of a mirror to see what goes on down there, and it helps a lot. XD

@Emmych: I just googled "anatomically correct 100% real life human female (definitely not made of pixels that is terrible) bouncing breasts effected by battle damage and newton's law [for non anatomically correct female pixel art character reference]". Then I asked my fiance to shake it and I took pixel notes. That helped a ton, thanks. . .

Please be more constructive next time, instead of talking to me like I do not know a thing about gravity/art/breasts. Could it be improved upon, definitely. In that case, let's talk about pixel placement/movement so the animation gets where it needs to go.

Haha that's the wierdest suggestion I heard since someone told me to listen to Lady Gaga's new album for song ideas. I think those sprites are great though and you are super skilled. The top one is a little bit strange and I agree with Emmchy.

Thanks Ryan, and I agree the battle damage animation needs some work. I should have a solid V2 soon.

How did the gaga inspired song's turn out?

 

[RyanA]

How did the gaga inspired song's turn out?

Urrr.....I'll just say I didn't feel like a real musician afterwards.

 

[Ronove]

@Emmych: I just googled "anatomically correct 100% real life human female (definitely not made of pixels that is terrible) bouncing breasts effected by battle damage and newton's law [for non anatomically correct female pixel art character reference]". Then I asked my fiance to shake it and I took pixel notes. That helped a ton, thanks. . .

Please be more constructive next time, instead of talking to me like I do not know a thing about gravity/art/breasts. Could it be improved upon, definitely. In that case, let's talk about pixel placement/movement so the animation gets where it needs to go.

So telling you to learn from life isn't constructive? That's where you should base your pixels on (and honestly, looking at your sprites, you could tell you hadn't (I mean, breasts moving in the kneeling pose when the sprite didn't even move? I know you fixed that one, but it's evidence that you didn't look at life at least for that one)). Sure, pixels are tiny and sometimes you need exaggerated movements, but for art, the best thing to look from is life (and then look to see how other pixelers did it, etc. etc.). So you know how it moves and then apply that to pixelated breasts. When I look at your sprites, I don't think the breasts look right at all. However, I don't know how I would improve it except try to look at what breasts do in real life and see how you can apply that to your pixels.

 

[Chaos17]

Pixel art as drawing can be really different compared to reality it depends of the style you do, there are a whole bunch of different things that are imaged.

All you can say is that his standing pose isn't good because boobs shouldn't move when a character doesn't move that way.

So, this is not a problem with the anatomy, but rather the animation.

Emmych

I will show you an example for your idle pose

Source: http://abysswolf.dev...llery/#/d4qfesd

In this example you can see how quicly she move and how she bend her knees, allowing big movements.

But since your character isn't in same pose, here's another example which is close to your standing pose.

source: http://browse.devian...khoryl#/d2lb2aj

As you can see the difference with your pose is that the boobs go vertically, which look more logical in this pose.

If you want an advice, go to pixeljoint, people over there will be able to advice you with your animations problems.