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[beestings]

Okay so Im definately new to pixeling, though I have been an admirer of it for years. I have been programming (very basically) for the past few years as well (with some action script 2, and more recently c++). I have always wanted to create my own game... but producing the 'feel' I wish to create is increasingly difficult.

I've been running with this game idea recently and am really trying to work at the art and style.

Background to the game (art-wise): A small boy, on a deserted planet. Most places you can roam are completely filled with foliage, trees, shrubs, and rocks. I kind of wanted a somewhat retro look/feel (hence the pixel art). I want it to be a dainty sort of art style, quiet, happy sort of place.

 something kind of similar to this (though the player would be walking through the forest, so the scenery would be much closer and involved)

The main character is a young child, with shaggy unruley kind of hair, I want him to look really cute and completely represent happiness and youth (he's also naked through the first part of the game) .
Im really fond of Jason Boyer's work, and his light feeling run animation here

along with this other well rounded animation

this is what I have so far
When I add the hair, I cant make it so it the character seems cute (any help with that?) and the overall character... I just would like some tips on this art work, maybe you could tweak it a little and show me an example so I better know how to fix other problems later.

also, dot eyes, or eye eyes? and eventually in the game, the character will have to fetch some makeshift clothes, he's in a forest world, what should I have him wear and what should it look like?

[beestings]

An update on my character... still not right though.

[JWK5]

Everyone's got a different approach, but before you get too crazy with the details I recommend just filling in his silhouette and focus on animating his general form. I find it makes it easier to animate the character as a whole and allows you to test things faster.

For example:


It is a shitty animation and by no means do I recommend using it as any kind of basis, but the point is it I was able to lay the groundwork for some basic movement in mere seconds and it is something that is easy to tweak and adjust. Once you have the form moving smoothly it is only a matter of going over it with the color masses and details.

[beestings]

this is such a good answer thank you! I really appreciate this answer. I will definately try that method as I continue working on my pixeling.

[JWK5]

Another thing that might help is this image, which I made a long while back (where it says "line a spring" should be "like a spring"):



Movement tends to be circular and happen in arcs (rotating horizontally, vertically, diagonally, etc.) They rotate from various axis points on the body.

[Kevin]

Here's my take on the character. I didn't notice your updated sprite, and you've already addressed some of the stuff I picked up on, but I'll recap what I did and hope it's of some use to you.

The major issue with the sprite is a lack of balance. In the original, the size and position of his head relative to the rest of his body makes it looks as though he's likely to fall over backwards. You basically fixed this with the update, thought I'd still suggest pulling the head maybe 1 more pixel forward.

The major problem with the hair, I think, has to do with the way it's sort of haphazardly shaded. The dithering is suggestive of a rough, kind of bristly texture that doesn't reflect the outline, which suggest smoother, softer, more flowing hair. I tried to address that in the edit, as well as playing with the bangs a bit to make the hair fit over the head without obscuring the face/eyes.

The only other thing I played with was the palette, which I was able to pare back to just 10 colours (not including transparency). the palette you used in the hair was mostly fine. It had decent contrast and made effective use of hue shifting but did contain a few shades that were basically made redundant by being too similar to the shades closest to them in the ramp. This mostly affects the outline of the hair in the original sprite, so I tried to play with that a bit. I used a heavy, pure black outline which might be a bit heavy handed, but I wanted to convey the importance of easily definable contrast between shades. Basically, if you can't (or can just barely) tell the difference between two shades at x1 zoom, it's best to consolidate them and simplify the palette.

Hope something in this was helpful. Best of luck!

[beestings]

Here's my take on the character. I didn't notice your updated sprite, and you've already addressed some of the stuff I picked up on, but I'll recap what I did and hope it's of some use to you.

The major issue with the sprite is a lack of balance. In the original, the size and position of his head relative to the rest of his body makes it looks as though he's likely to fall over backwards. You basically fixed this with the update, thought I'd still suggest pulling the head maybe 1 more pixel forward.

The major problem with the hair, I think, has to do with the way it's sort of haphazardly shaded. The dithering is suggestive of a rough, kind of bristly texture that doesn't reflect the outline, which suggest smoother, softer, more flowing hair. I tried to address that in the edit, as well as playing with the bangs a bit to make the hair fit over the head without obscuring the face/eyes.

The only other thing I played with was the palette, which I was able to pare back to just 10 colours (not including transparency). the palette you used in the hair was mostly fine. It had decent contrast and made effective use of hue shifting but did contain a few shades that were basically made redundant by being too similar to the shades closest to them in the ramp. This mostly affects the outline of the hair in the original sprite, so I tried to play with that a bit. I used a heavy, pure black outline which might be a bit heavy handed, but I wanted to convey the importance of easily definable contrast between shades. Basically, if you can't (or can just barely) tell the difference between two shades at x1 zoom, it's best to consolidate them and simplify the palette.

Hope something in this was helpful. Best of luck!

This is such a great response! I really appreciate the commentary, and absolutely love the character you did. The hair is really well done as well.

Thanks for adding what you did (:  , I will really try to work on the points you made!
Man, I still cant get over your help.

update on my character:
still not completely satisfied but I really like how its coming along 

**Also in the game, another human lands on this kids planet... The adult doesnt have much of a personality, and I kind of want his face and body to be blank/emotionless. He's not happy or sad, but very serious, and very 'adult' in contrast to the main characters youthful-ness. I want him to be very tall in comparison as well... But I'm not too sure where to start on him. any ideas?

[Kevin]

The new hair is an awesome improvement on every front, and the pose/stance has way better balance. Also, you managed to put the hair on his head without having the weird mullet-effect that my edit had. Nice work! ♥

[beestings]

thanks a ton  now for the hard part, animating and clothes. I'm super excited for continuing work on this game

[Kevin]

I don't know what you're planning, but animating the clothes shouldn't give you too much trouble as, with a sprite this size, you can leave them pretty flat. no need to worry too much about folds and wrinkles and pockets and details and stuff and, in truth, adding too many details to something of this size would likely have more of a cluttering effect than anything.

Keep it up! I'm Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

[beestings]

Not much of an update here, but I'm just wondering about some color scheme sort of stuff.
this is my current progress, containing my most current color scheme of the character (whats in the gray box)
Like I said before, the setting of this game is a forest on a different planet. But... should the scheme of the rest of the game contrast or compliment or what the main character? should I be looking at a warm hued forest, or a cold hued forest? Not sure if i should do more of a tileset or just a creation of each game scene/area. Thanks for any help here.

Also, Kevin, I agree that the clothes part would be pretty basic, but I want his clothes to consist of some type of foliage, (like a toga sort of thing maybe made of a large leaf or something). thanks for all your help so far though

[Miko Galvez]

1. This should be in Workshops.

2. Why is this taking so long? It's been a day already you still haven't done the rest of the body. Just do it.

Do you want to make base sprites for everything BEFORE spriting the rest of the clothes? (Seems like a bad idea if the main character is the only one that's going to use it)

Definitely you'd want the setting complementing the player sprite. In other words, the player sprite's colors should be based on the environment he's in.

Example:

Ailit's Samus in Super Metroid



The Samus (custom) doesn't belong in Super Metroid because SM's colors are depressing. If you put Samus in something like Zero Mission (vibrant colors) it would fit. Despite the sprite being the same character. That means the player's colors is always based on the environment. This is why making a sprite that's colors are in the medium (not particularly supposed to blend with light or dark areas)

The settings don't adapt to the player. This is because somewhat, the player, is part of the setting

[beestings]

thanks for your response I really appreciate it, and i posted to the other forum but havent received any help ):   ... i completely see how mixing of colorschemes can either destroy or make a scene. I dont know how to really compliment two colorshemes besides making them just as 'happy' or 'depressing', not sure how to do it with color choice but i gave it a shot with a colorscheme i liked.


this is a general update on scenery,


not sure how to make the 'room' look as though its the inside of the tree... ): i think i did an okay job with the leaves but the rest is really shotty work. any advice?

[JWK5]

This is why making a sprite that's colors are in the medium (not particularly supposed to blend with light or dark areas)

The important part is to maintain a hierarchy. Generally, any "active" sprites (that is, the player, enemies, projectiles, hazards) should carry the most contrast from their environment (in terms of hue/saturation/value). The player's character should should carry the strongest degree of contrast over any other element (with the exception of special effects, but sparingly).

Madevenx is right that the environment plays a big part. I usually keep ranges for each layer in the hierarchy so that the background never exceeds certain hue/saturation/value levels, and then there is a range that is slightly higher for the midground, and another slightly higher than that for the foreground, and so on. This will guarantee that your hierarchy layers will never merge (i.e. the player character won't blend into the background, for example).

[JWK5]

Thinking about it now, maybe this will make a little more sense:

[beestings]

I've seen you post that on another thread and it was really helpful to me (: i actually have the picture saved in one of my reference documents! The second picture was even more helpful, I brought down the saturation on my background, and even though its really subtle (dropped it down 15-20 points from where it was, and raised the character up a tad) I think that its gonna be these little things that really pull the art together! really appreciate all the feedback!

[JWK5]

You can (and should) adjust the ranges as needed for your art. For example, if you want more bright and cartoon-like graphics you can move the ranges up higher in the hue/saturation box and if you want more mute graphics move them down lower. Likewise, if you are going for a darker atmosphere you can stick to lower ranges in the value (brightness) bar or change the spacing of the H/S/V ranges altogether to create different levels of contrast.

[Miko Galvez]

Take a look at Yoshi's Island. At first you think the big red flowers can detect collision. But once you find out for the first time that they're NOT, you'll notice that anything with a large outline (foreground stuff) don't do anything, collision-detecting sprites have a medium outline and background stuff have NO outline.

[beestings]

@Medevenx , That is pretty interesting, I think I've even played that game, and never really noticed that. It reminds me of these pictures I always see with the spelling really messed up or using half numbers and letters, and at first its hard to read, but once your brain realizes whats going on, it naturally begins to read the words as if they were normal.
I guess if I go a really unique way on any game, with persistence/consistency the player will gradually understand with ease.

@JWK5, Yeah, I got a little farther on my tree picture, and was just thinking about changing up the color scheme in just the way you're talking about. Medevenx's picture really shows what you're saying (especially in the background). I am looking for a really playful happy sort of style, and an adjustment of colorscheme might better do this

I feel really stupid for posting so many threads, I would delete the others if I knew how (or if I even can) I'll be sticking to this one (it gets the most feedback) .

I'll give an update in a few on another scene, more of a mock up. Thanks everybody so far!

[beestings]

Oh, quick question, anyway I can make my pixelart bigger? As in, instead of each pixel being just one pixel , having one = 4 pixels. I know I could do this manually (redrawing the whole picture but instead of using a pencil using the small square brush thing) , but it would take a ton of time . any ideas?