The Resource WIP Thread 3

@FleshToDust

Tilesets aren't my forte, sorry. However, it is looking much better.

@Everybody-Else-Seeing-This

I've been working on the adjustments everyone suggested for the profile sprite. Here's an updated version, with the shading removed temporarily until the hair's movement is finished. I also cleaned up her walk cycle and clothing slightly.



Any critique, as always, is appreciated.

Looks pretty smooth to me :)

@Robert-Character Creator
Thanks. I started liking the black less and less the longer I was looking at it.
She looks great! I'm not experienced enough to give any useful criticism though.

@Rukiri Oh so that's normal?

I'm liking this colour a lot more than the black.

@FleshToDust You haven't done anything to the top right square of your autotile. That's where the information for the inside corners go. Hmm, this is tricky to explain. If you push the straight lines of your tileset to the outside edges of the autotile it would make the top left square correct, because there's no room between the two tiles for a curve to be, the two edges would match up. But the more you pull away from the edge the more curve you can have on the inner corner because there's more of a gap between the two straight edges intersecting. But the further you draw the line in the less room you have to have a curve on the outside corner before it starts getting into the center space. Right now with where your edges are you can add in a little bit of white space and curve to each corner of the top right square and your inside corners will be smoother. But unless you pull away from the edges a bit more on the bottom tile you won't have a matching curve. Does that make any sense at all?

@Robert-Character Creator I like the hair movement a lot better now. I agree with the earlier statement that the part in front of her neck should be erased though.

@Sharm Oh ok. I think I get it now.

@Sharm

I tried removing the hair there entirely, but it looks odd. Perhaps I can further reduce it to one pixel, though. Oh, and when they mentioned removing the hair, they were referring to my diagonal sprites. However, the same concept applies here.

Edit: Ignore my post. Looking good.

It still needs some work, but I've added the hair's shading.



Please, tell me what you think!

It's good. I would personally like to see a little more subtle shifting in the top of the hair too, but it works as is.

That's planned, I just wanted to get the hard part done first. :)

@Robert-Character Creator What do you use to get 8 frames of movement? It looks good.

No, I use Victor's Multi Frame Sprites to get however many frames I need, and Galv's Character Animations 2 to get the different sprites when running and idle.

I experimented with making the grass really detailed but it was a lot of work and I don't think I'm good enough to make it work. As I was looking at default mv resources, I saw the grass tile with a dirt path and it used a lot of dithering. What are your thoughts on dithering? I thought it became less valuable after LCD tv's became common.

Are the grass tiles done pixel by pixel? Looking at the dirt path I saw at least 10 shades of brown and thought it looked too much like it was done with a brush than pixel by pixel with a pencil.

Your style is fairly reminiscent of Undertale's early graphics, actually. Your style is simpler though, and reminds me greatly of OFF, which I mentioned before. Personally, I'd add a little detailing here and there, but I'm not sure exactly what you're aiming for, you know?

You're right, the default resources of the new makers aren't pixel art. The sprite are, the tiles not so much. That's why they have so many colors, some of them seemingly placed arbitrarily. That's because it's not meant to be pixel perfect and some of those pixels are placed arbitrarily. If you want help getting an RTP look I'm afraid I won't be any help. Never figured it out. But if you want pixel perfect, I'm your gal.

Simple could be really fun if you do it right. The games I've seen it done best in pulled it off by putting a lot of detail only in the places that really counted. Minish Cap is probably a lot more detail than you're wanting to go but it is an excellent example of this kind of style with lots of empty space and a few key details. It's also really well done pixel art, so you might pick up a few other things by studying it too. I like going to VGMaps for lots of good pixel perfect images of tiles.

I think the trees would be a good place to start. You've got a good silhouette and good color choices for the shading (though I think the bark and canopy's shadow color should have a bigger difference). The transition between the shadow and the lighter part of the canopy is where you should put your detail, implying the shapes of not only leaves but the curves that clumps of leaves would form. Imply the clumps with the edge of the shadow, and imply the leaves by the shape of that edge. With the right amount of detail that edge will make the entire tree look like it has that same level of detail. Brains are really good at filling in gaps if you give them enough information to fill it with.

I agree, as always, with Sharm here. On a side note, I made it all the way to the Fortress of the Winds in Minish Cap and never noticed how simple the art style was...

https://www.puissance-zelda.com/jeux/img/tmc/guide/plans/1.jpg

I like the artstyle of minish cap a lot. Will definitely be using it as a reference. mv's default trees and their 25+ colours of green just won't do.

Hmm, that is one way of doing it. I was more thinking like this:



Sorry I didn't explain it well. This is just a very quick and dirty example, and it's completely in my style so please don't emulate it too closely, you'll get the mistakes too. The point is to show how I made the over all shape of the shadow not smooth to imply the internal shape of the leaf clumps, and the edge is a bunch of vaguely leaf shapes to imply that the whole thing is made of leaves. The style you're going for is going to need lots and lots of implying. You could do the details in a different way than me, maybe you'd like to have sections of fully drawn leafs with shading and outlines, or maybe you're doing a different kind of tree. Definitely do your own thing.

@Sharm
Oh so you have to make the shadows a bit rough?

I like that you're doing your own style. This is good, I like it, you did a good job of incorporating my critique and making it your own, I think it looks better. I'm not fond of the outline being lighter than the shadows. It might work in some places, give the impression of reflected light, but reflected light has to bounce off something so it doesn't work on areas that are far away from anything. It's also tricky if you're new to shadows. I personally think you should go darker all around or do multiple shades, where the darker parts have darker outlines and the lighter parts have the lighter ones.

Something I like to do to keep things my own style is to find as many examples of what I'm trying to do as I can, use lots of references. Something I also sometimes do is study the references to get an idea of what I like and then purposefully not look at it as I work, let the fallacies of memory put some of my own spin into the concept.

Do you have a better idea of what I'm talking about with the detailed edges to go on for a while or should we try workshopping another part of your mockup next?