The Resource WIP Thread 3

Hard drive decided to die so... back to square 1.
I didn't lose anything but I lost major updates...

@Rukiri Dang, I've lost my entire project to hard drives ...three? Four times now? It's a pain. Do you have any of your work posted here you can use to catch back up faster?

i'm creating a floral throne for my game. it will have green crystal petals like the crystals by its side. What do you think?

Trying icons for real now! Using shapes of the rtp from MV as guides, I did these lil things:

@callmedan I like it, but I don't like the mixing of mediums between the rest of the scene and your new flower. It makes it look very out of place.

@Guiguimu I think you really need to decide if you're doing pixel art on those icons or if you're doing digital painting. The mix of mediums makes it harder to give advice on how to fix things. Either way you need more contrast on the inner forms. The colors are muddy right now. A use of real world references would really help you, especially with the design of the sword. Also you need to do something about that black outline transition. Either redraw with a softer brush or add in some anti aliasing. It's just really harsh and jagged looking, especially next to all the soft shading. The form on the feather and running guy is nice.

Thank you @Sharm! ^^ Now that you mention it, the sword doesn't look good... Neither does the running man, if fact, something with his neck. And I want the digital painting, but got afraid when doing the shapes... Will redo.

Thank you @Sharm ! As for the scene, I made to see if the flower's colors fit the other tiles.

Doing a somewhat major redesign of my game, so I decided to start with the logo!


I think it gives off a bit more of a serious yet fantastical vibe, similar to lots of Square Enix's design. For comparison, the former title is in my signature/game thread. Thoughts?

@callmedan The colors match fine. It's the hard vs. soft look that's the problem. To match the tiles you would need to switch to pixel art. You could use your flower as a template and trace over it maybe? As a new image, not a modification of the one you have.

@Hero_Claive I like the new one better for a start screen, but you might want to work something less huge out for banners.

Hi, so for the last day or so, I've felt like whipping up some tiles that I may or may not use in my project, and while I'm a decent photoshop user, I'm a mediocre artist so I decided to rehash some of the default assets into something (hopefully) suitable for an ice dungeon/cave/mountain/all-of-the-above-I-suppose. I hope. So 1) are they any good at all, and 2) how could I improve? Here's a sample of what the tiles look like on a map:

@Sharm Ohh, I got it. But creating it with pencil tool only is really hard for me, so I just sharpen it.

@Aesica The tiles are looking pretty nice but that map is no good, might be getting in the way a bit of judging your edits. What's the line underneath the ice floor? Is it the default transparency thing or is it part of the tile? What are the black lines?

@callmedan It does fit better now, especially with the lighting effects being soft. I can't tell if it's uncanny valley territory or if that's just me because I'm a pixel artist. The sharpening made it look like pixel art, but it made it look like strangely unfinished pixel art. I don't like it but I suspect that might be a highly personal opinion. You should probably get another person's who isn't a pixel artist to weigh in.

Yeah, the map is a hunk of junk that's just meant to show what the various tiles look like. I snapped the screenshot from within the editor, so the black lines are the editor's guide lines. As for the white line beneath the ice floor, it's due to the fact that the tile is partially transparent, and meant to appear more transparent than the default ice tile. When a bunch are lined up, it looks like an array of ice cubes, although I also made one without that line as well. Here's a better map, although it also looks blah since it's meant to show off the tiles rather than to be an actual map. It's hard to make a map look good without any placeable widgets, and I haven't started those yet. :D

The various "ice cube" tiles
I made all my autotile frozen lakes as compatible with other tiles as possible
Same goes for the chasms and pits
I'm noticing that my cliffs need the edges refined a bit. And yes, that's a yellow snow autotile. I'm not sorry.
Some frozen cliffs and wall autotiles I didn't get to display anywhere else

So yeah, ways I should improve in terms of colors? Should they be more saturated, less saturated, etc?

Oh yes, that's much better for seeing how well the tiles work. The colors for the stuff that's been colored blue is very monochrome, it's going to make things look flat and boring. You should consider thinking of ways to strategically reintroduce a bit of color. Look at some paintings of snowy landscapes and see where they mix it up a bit and consider why they're choosing the things they are to be colored differently. Another thing that would help and look very good is to add a bit of variety to even the straight ramp of the blue/white object. If you use Photoshop or GIMP you can use the curves adjustment to do it. Maybe a bit of red into the shadows, a bit of green into the highlights. Mess around with it, make it more dynamic. This sort of thing is called hue shifting, where the hue shifts between the shadow and the highlight.

^ Aah thanks, so I guess abusing colorize as heavily as I did was a bad idea. The whole concept of color shifting is completely new to me, so that should give me something to play with for awhile. I knew something was off with them (hence why I posted here for advice) but I couldn't put my finger on it. It makes perfect sense now. :D

This was mainly for fun, will likely revisit it later when needed.

I'm currently in the process of learning how to draw Final Fantasy-styled forest tiles, while also getting used to how Dawnbringer's 32 color palette works as a base. Not entirely sure if I nailed the zoomed out tree look but I can hope right?
Any feedback is well appreciated! :)

Ah cute trees! I think you should use a lighter color for the trunks and be a little more consistent with the sizes of the trees between the inside and outside. Overworld grass is hard and yours is fine, I wouldn't worry about it. You don't have to be good, it's okay to be learning, but you're better than you think.

Welp, I've had some time now to take @Sharm's advice and have updated my trees. It's a bit subtle where the changes are but basically the trunks are lighter and more defined, the shaping's a bit less straight and I've tried to make the sizes of the trees in and outside the border a bit more consistent. Not sure how well I've pulled that part off since honestly drawing overworld tiles to actually look nonuniform while also making sure they're able to tile correctly is surprisingly difficult. Overall though I do feel they're looking better than they were last night.

As always any and all feedback is well appreciated. :)

I agree, they look good.