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Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:52 pm
by Marscaleb
I'm working on a forest scene. I've only got the dirt tiles made so far, but I'm sharing it because I'd like some feedback.
Please critique it openly; I welcome all feedback. Tell me what's wrong; make me cry.
I already see dozens of errors, but I've been staring at it too long so I can't tell what are the ones other people are going to notice too.

I'm going for something about the capabilities of the SNES. I'm not actually counting the tiles, but I'm trying to keep the tile-count down, and I've been constricting them to 8x8 tiles in 16x16 chunks.

Main character sprite included.
Image

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:02 pm
by psycopathicteen
It looks acceptable, but if you want criticism I think the color gradients can be balanced a little more. Some shades are too close or too far from eachother.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 7:13 pm
by OmegaMax
Those trees are beautiful and very realistic :) ,seriously though I wish I could pixel like that,looks good to me.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 7:53 pm
by olddb
Looking good so far.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:55 pm
by Marscaleb
So I already knew I wasn't going to have much time these last couple weeks, so I decided to make some water instead of starting on the trees.

Here's a sample with a water tile:
Image

And here it is a detail with the water animated:
Image
It uses three frames, but they are offset which makes the animation six frames long.

By the way, while this is a work-in-progress, I would appreciate it if you critiqued the art as if it were a finished product; (barring the obvious placeholder elements of course,) because I'm generally not planning on going back and revising any of this if nobody seems to notice any flaws.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:15 pm
by Rahsennor
That water animation looks a little too... bouncy. Not enough of an artist to suggest a fix, other than slowing it down a bit.

The ground tiles are also awfully sharp, and could use a bit of rounding like the background tiles, if that's possible in your setup.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:40 am
by calima
Yes, the water is far too fast. It looks like a rapid killer stream.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 8:36 am
by Marscaleb
Uhg, it's taken me three months but I'm finally able to work on this again.
Here's some trees, or at least some bark.

Image

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:33 am
by lidnariq
Feels a bit more glossy than trees ever are (with the exception of birch, which has a very distinctive and different pattern)

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 12:17 pm
by nocash
The colors are a bit boring. If you must use the same palette for trees and ground, maybe it would help to use fewer bright pixels for trees, to get some more contrast between trees and ground.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 4:25 pm
by Marscaleb
nocash wrote:The colors are a bit boring. If you must use the same palette for trees and ground, maybe it would help to use fewer bright pixels for trees, to get some more contrast between trees and ground.
The trees are a different color from the ground, but yeah, they look very similar.
The colors aren't really meant to be final yet; I want to get all the elements in so I can see how well the colors all work with each other before I start tweaking the palette. But I will bear your comment in mind when I get to that point.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2019 7:02 pm
by nocash
I would also agree on what lidnariq has said, it looks a bit too perfect, more like a bark-less machine-cut table leg from ikea, not so much like a tree in the wild. Concerning the shape, your old sketch looked more natural and realistic : )

Doing an image search for tree+drawing and for tree+pixel art... detailed bark is often omitted, some tree drawings look more like twisted ropes, or have only some shadow and texture here and there, eg. only on one side of the tree.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:15 pm
by Marscaleb
Update!

Image

Image

I tweaked the color for the tree bark to help it stand out against the dirt.
Making the canopy has been a huge challenge; I had to try several different methods before I got to one that felt passable. Even now, I feel like I need to make a dozen different tweaks. But I think it's good enough that I should at least share it with others who will see this with a fresh set of eyes; I'll wait to see if the problems I see are noticed by anyone else.

After this, I've got to draw the background layer, maybe some bushes and/or grass, then I'm ready to start tweaking colors, fixing errors, etcetera.

Please let me know what you think so far; I welcome all feedback.

The final game on a standard monitor would be zoomed in to 400%.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2019 4:11 pm
by FrankenGraphics
Canopies are hard! Nice to see progress. The leaves look nice. Not quite sure what problems you're asking to have affirmed, but here's some notes..

The light/shadow angle seems to be from the viewer towards the viewed, just slightly tilted left and up. There's not yet much of a separation of light and darkness. I think that'd work well if you leave a shadow off the trees behind them in the yet to be drawn far background if this is the intended light source angle. It also seems to imply the trees are either sparsely populated or that the scenario is situated just at the edge of a forest, but you could, if you wanted to, work around that by criscrossing parts of the foreground with shadows from objects not seen in front of the camera but are casting shadows towards the seen. Else, you might want to work with heavier shadows in and under the canopy to have the light seem to come a bit more from above. Plenty of options depending on what you're going for.

There's lots of repeated detail in the canopy. Eyes tends to seek out the details, so if everything's a detail, it can be a bit noisy/straining to navigate. Of course, you have a great opportunity to balance the level of detail with broader strokes in the far background, but if you wanted to work a bit more with shadows in the canopy, you could also conveniently hide (safely remove) a bit of detail in the same fields of shade.

Overall, i think some the darker colours in your palette could benefit from being a step or so "colder".
Reversely, you could perhapse make highlights a step or so "warmer" to counterbalance.

Re: Forest Scene (WIP)

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2019 6:12 pm
by Marscaleb
FrankenGraphics wrote: It also seems to imply the trees are either sparsely populated or that the scenario is situated just at the edge of a forest, but you could, if you wanted to, work around that by criscrossing parts of the foreground with shadows from objects not seen in front of the camera but are casting shadows towards the seen. Else, you might want to work with heavier shadows in and under the canopy to have the light seem to come a bit more from above. Plenty of options depending on what you're going for.
Do you mean to describe that there should be signs of trees... between the camera and the player? To suggest more of a full 3D world?
As best as I can follow your suggestions, they honestly seem to clash with every example I have seen from other side-scrollers. Most of the side-scrollers I've seen with forests tend to have very indirect lighting. In truth, that's the general effect one sees in a forest; the thick canopy makes most of the lighting just bounce lighting scattered all over the place, so shadows are extremely soft and nigh imperceptible.
FrankenGraphics wrote: Overall, i think some the darker colours in your palette could benefit from being a step or so "colder".
Reversely, you could perhapse make highlights a step or so "warmer" to counterbalance.
Hmm, that sounds like a good idea. I will look into it when I get the background finished and am ready to start tweaking colors.