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[Tukimitzu]

Hello friends,
I'm developing this game and I would like you guys to comment on the overall art-style. When I start polishing everything up, what improvements you think I can make?

Thanks!  

[nnyei]

I think your biggest problem is that a) your game doesn't seem to have a consistent style at all, and b) it doesn't stand out in any way. It looks like you're using store-bought or fair-use assets. Not that there's anyhting wrong with using those! But it rarely makes for a cohesive or unique style, and I think you need that to hold people's attention to even get them to look twice at your game nowadays.

I'm going to point out what I mean concretely (incomprehensive and in no particular order) when I say it looks inconsistent. I'm going to refer to this particular screenshot from your latest post:

• I'm seeing 5 different trees, 3 of them are in the same style (they use dithering, and use 4 colors for their leaves), and the other 2 are completely different (one is lit from the left side and gets gradually darker towards the right, all the while using more than 10 colors for their leaves; the other one uses what looks like 3 colors (but there are 2 colors in the shadows so 4) with very dark shading and no hint of dithering.) Regardless of which one you might like best, they don't look like they were made for the same game.
• I'm seeing a lot of characters with a varying number of frames for their idle animation. The blonde woman (?) has 2 frames, which doesn't make for a smooth animation; the person in red (a mage? a princess?) looks more fluidly animated, but I'm personally not very enamored with her pelvis thrust; the knight's arm is blinking in and out of existence; and I'm not a big fan of the person with the twitching triangle hat either.
• The little towers with the waving flags look like their highlight is coming from the right, clashing with a bunch of props in your scene (the tree that is lit from the left, the pot with the red flowers in them that is also lit from the left).
  
• Both the cow and the horse have a dark outline around their sprites, but it's dynamic in the sense that the outline gets darker where there are shadows and lighter where there are none, whereas all the human characters consistently have a solid black outline everywhere except for directly under their feet. And their weapons don't seem to follow any consistent style at all: the halbert of the knight has no outline at all, whereas the sword (knife? dagger?) of the blonde woman (?) has a solid black outline
  
• There's a lonesome dark pixel on your grass tile, and two dark green bluish pixel that stand out against the rest of the grass. Might only be really noticible if you zoom in slightly, but if this were my game, that would drive me up the wall.
  
• The art assets in general seem to vary in quality. I really like the barrels, the bucket with the water in it, and the small wooden hut. I like the shading on the cow (or is it a bull?), but I don't really like its proportions. Its muzzle looks more akin to a horse's, and like I said, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a cow or a bull.
  
• Varying shadow intensity all over the graphics. The stones have a very suble shadow (I'm talking on the sprite itself, not the shadow that it's casting under it) whereas that one tree uses dark shadows in its leaves, which is a stark contrast. The little purple/pink-ish flowers even have a dark shading on them that looks like it's solid black even.
  
• Some sprites deliberately use a lot of color, whereas some sprites worked with a restricted palette.
  
• In your UI you use these brown circle with the portraits in them, but the 2 that depict the player character and the enemy look blown up, making them look washed out compared to their smaller counterparts.
  

Okay, I think that's as far as my 2 cents go with regards to the consistency of the style. As for making your game more unique (or at least, give it more character)... well, there are many different approaches, and I don't think I can expound on that too much here because you can go in so many directions. I could point to many different games that have a unique style, but I'm not sure if that would be of any use to you. Considering your last question, you've already at least thought about hiring an artist, so maybe that's the way to go there. Or if you want to try your hand at it yourself (I'm convinced at least some of these assets weren't made by yourself considering the wide range in techniques and quality), maybe the points that I made can at least somewhat help you with keeping the style consistent.

Anyway, I hope at least some of my ramblings were of some use to you. Good luck with the project!

[Tukimitzu]

Thank you very much for your input. Now let me exploit your expertise.

If I were to sum up what I see in my own screenshots I would say (and hope you all agree): "It is clear what the artist wanted to do with the art in general, but he didn't quite achieve what he was looking for." Then there are 2 questions to answer: what was done right? and what was done wrong?

I'm ignoring your personal taste (for the characters in particular, I mean, the "pointed hat character" is clearly amazing, no sarcasm  ), but you've made some impartial points that I would like to expand on.

When you say consistency is key, I couldn't agree more. I'm not thinking about hiring a graphic artist (the artist I'm thinking about hiring is a composer), but I do intend to rework everything in order to achieve consistency. With that in mind, this are the guidelines I want to adopt when reworking everything out:

- Consistent "smooth factor" for the animations. Meaning either they are all smooth or either they are all non-smooth, like the blond woman.
- Dark outline at every character body-part and weapon.
- (?) Dark outline at every scenario object/building.
- When picking a color palette, don't use too many colors (not because it doesn't looks good, but because for a somewhat inexperienced artist, it is easier to make something good with fewer colors). And use vibrant colors.
- Shadows shall be cast in 12:00pm and constant intensity.

What should I add/remove from this list in order to achieve something consistent? Can you steer me in the right direction pretty please? 

[JWK5]

[Tukimitzu]

Yo, that info-graphic amazingly helpful. Let me carefully study everything I need to change, and then I'll get back here and you guys will be so proud.

Can you talk more about the black outlines on the characters? In order to highlight the characters I should use lighter colors rather than darker (in the context of this stage at least)?

[JWK5]

In all honesty, you don't really need an outline at all, however since you are using them look at the image of your game nnyei posted. In the upper right area of the screen just under the main line of the HUD there are two square portrait-looking panels (they're brown).

Look at they are outlined, not in black but a darker shade of brown. Something like that is what you're going to want with the characters. This way you have the outlines you want but they are not overwhelming.

Make sure the colors you use on the character mixes well with the environment colors, so that they still feel like they belong there. Right now, the colors on your characters are not as "earthy" as the colors of the environment they are in, their colors are more cartoon-like (vibrant and pop-y).

[Tukimitzu]

Alright, I see now.
Thanks a lot guys, I have a lot of work to do but at least I have nice guidelines.

Just for the funsies, this is what I was sitting at 8 months ago:


I bet my new trees don't bother you as much.

[JWK5]

It's actually not bad, it has a nice ink-drawing feel to it. Not that you have to go back to it or anything, but with some work (especially in the perspective deparment) it could've developed interestingly.

Funny enough, your trees here aren't bad. They at least help describe the environment and you can at least see that they are meant to be trees.

You've got to remember, all the characters, trees, etc. are just icons used to express things. You are creating the impression "this is a tree", for example, and all the details you add are helping to explain things about the tree. What type of tree is it? How is it faring? What kind of weather is it in? What kind of light is it in? All your scene parts together tell a visual story, they tell you of a place and what it is like.

Keeping this in mind you can really improve your artwork as a whole because it forces you to think about what you are "saying" with each part of your scene and how it helps describe the scene overall. It is like words coming together forming sentences, you are figuring out the best words to create the sentence that best gets across what you want to express.

[nnyei]

- Consistent "smooth factor" for the animations. Meaning either they are all smooth or either they are all non-smooth, like the blond woman.

I'd personally urge you to use a minimum of 3 frames whenever you make an animation because a 2 frame animation will always look choppy and amateurish no matter what you do. JWK5 gave you a nice demonstation how to improve the blonde woman's animation, so if you have any other art assets with a 2 frame animation, I'd change those as well.

- Dark outline at every character body-part and weapon.
- (?) Dark outline at every scenario object/building.

Just for the record, like JWK5 I prefer the more dynamicly colored outline, and he's already explained why, so I won't add anything to that.

- When picking a color palette, don't use too many colors (not because it doesn't looks good, but because for a somewhat inexperienced artist, it is easier to make something good with fewer colors). And use vibrant colors.

Don't think earthy or more desaturated colors are taboo. Using nothing but vibrant colors will make your game look garish and at worst even hard to look at (many mobile games fall into that trap). You want to achieve a nice balance between the two. Like JWK5 said:

Make sure the colors you use on the character mixes well with the environment colors, so that they still feel like they belong there. Right now, the colors on your characters are not as "earthy" as the colors of the environment they are in, their colors are more cartoon-like (vibrant and pop-y).

Your 8 month old screenshot actually has some charm to it, even if it's clear that it was made by a novice when it come to art. Just don't try to force a perspective view (the upside down flipped trees) when your game is supposed to be (and works best) in an orthographic view.

But yeah, that's all there's to say for me, I think. There probably wasn't even a need for me to write this comment, but I didn't want it to look like I was ignoring you. Good luck and I'm looking forward to see what your game will end up looking like.

[zebbi]

Alright, I see now.
Thanks a lot guys, I have a lot of work to do but at least I have nice guidelines.

Just for the funsies, this is what I was sitting at 8 months ago:


I bet my new trees don't bother you as much.

you shoulda flipped them anyway and added a post-filtered fisheye lens effect, ala Sonic X-treme