The Resource WIP Thread 3

They both look good to me! One might argue that B might be a tad too ramped up, though. Which one do you feel is more suited?

I personally like the first one better.

Me too. :3 We cannot always trust our clones!

@Sanyee I think what's looking odd to you is the lack of shoulder movement. If you have those move along with the rest of the arm I bet it'll look better.

@Benny Jackdaw Your B version doesn't have enough contrast, which is why you think it looks worse. Don't be afraid to play around with brighter colors, I did a really quick color edit (played around with the shading a bit too, just cuz I wanted to) to show how they could look. But since it seems like you just want to be able to make simple sprites for your game, then I'd recommend testing it out in your project to see how it looks and tweak colors based on that.

So since I'm back, this time with a non-overworld snow tile and some ruined castle tiles.

As always, criticism and advice are always appreciated! :)

@shadefoundry seems that snow fell from a hole in the roof!

That was the idea. :p

@shadefoundry Nice stuff!

What I notice the most, regarding corrections is the lack of highlights or shadows.
Your pillars have the same color from top to bottom, the light source is ambiguous. I notice that the base of the pillar has a brighter blue on the left, and darker blue to the right. But both colors are very similar though, so it's hard to notice a difference.

You may want to darken a bit the pillar's top, vertical part (under the top square). The top square part is larger so it would naturally cast some shadow underneath it. Don't darken the entire vertical pillar, just about a quarter of it at the top.

These are finishing points though, to consider once you're certain about your design and color choices. So it's better to wait 'til you get other advice concerning design and colors.

Create a consistency too, where the shadows and highlights go on the pillars, walls and floor, so it is obvious where the light comes from.

I realize this is a map you put together as an example, but if this were a final map, I'd say the lack of shadows on the floor tiles is something you can fix.
Just like you have shadowed floor tiles to the bottom left, such dark tiles need to go elsewhere too, consistently. If they go on the right side, put some shaded floor tiles next to the pillars' right foot too.
It'll make the map look less flat, and more dimensional. :)

I can finally show the ships I can share and I wanted everyone's impressions. (Also I know some decals are just plain weird but if you can identify a few vehicles functions... I will be happy)

Eh, it's me again. I tried to go for something a little more basic. People say it to start your project small before going onto harder projects, so I'm trying to make an authentic NES Style game instead of the one I was planning on doing. I am trying to go for an authentic look, and work with the limitations of an actual NES game, such as only three colors per 8 by 8 square. Once again, I'm not entirely sure of the Sprite.

@Benny Jackdaw I'm sorry, I really wasn't trying to be difficult. This is something I'm trying to understand but I think I'm coming across as demanding instead of curious. I really can't comprehend someone trying to do art without being an artist. It makes no sense at all to me, those things are indivisible in my head. Especially when I consider how much art you're talking about doing. To me it seems easier to just learn the hard thing and then make everything quicker rather than trying to spread out the hard thing to each thing you make. I could be wrong, maybe that's the way you need to go. I'll try to be more supportive instead of inquisitive. I'm also struggling with a constant migraine right now and sometimes my thoughts are coming out sideways when I think they're straight and I don't have the energy to make as many edits as I'd like. I've barely looked at the forums lately. Hiddenone's edit of the brown version expresses some of what I was trying to get across. I think this seal has come a really long way and looks loads better, so even if it got frustrating I hope this process was useful.

EDIT: Oh, so you're going for a more Dragon Quest style now? That sounds fun! It should go faster too, so that will be nice. My only suggestion would be to make the body a little wider. If you cut and paste the lines on the side it should be a pretty easy edit.

@hiddenone You're awesome. Thank you.

@shadefoundry I like your stuff. I personally prefer stuff to be without noise/dithering, but I recognize that it's a style choice and can be done well. I also don't ever use it so I can't tell if it's good or not. Sorry! I don't know what's bothering you. I did see a problem though. You should be careful about making things with the same pattern sizes. I'm not sure if this will make any sense. Um. So you have the brick pattern on the wall, and an either identical or very similar one on the floor. It would look a lot better if the stones of the floor were either bigger or smaller than the ones in the wall. Or spaced more sparsely. Something to make it different in visual weight than the pattern on the wall. Or you can change the wall, whichever. Even if the patterns are completely different, if they're the same noise level, using the same amount of positive and negative space, it can get exhausting to the eye. Break it up a bit with some variety.

@Marquise* Ah, those ships are really bold and interesting! I'm terrible with spaceship designs, personally. At a glance I didn't notice the differences between the orange ships, so if you want them to be distinct I don't think it's enough. Maybe try something more bold, like the types of paint jobs you get on muscle cars? I did notice them when I looked closer, so it's fine if it's meant to be subtle.

@Sharm You're not doing anything wrong. I realized what I was doing might be a bit advance for me so I'm just trying something easier. It's nothing you did.

@Sharm Thanks Sharm! It meant a lot to me as starships looks way more abstracts architectures (and Lord I hate doing buildings) than the giant critters that usually do and wiggle all the place around. The truth is that I make the big body shop for testers but I wanted to release the vowel inspired ships (AI here) for the whole RPGM community so, well I just changed the ones on the left so anyone wanting to practice and have a modding fun with them (Believe me that color is easier to workaround) only the blacks are done to help. There is a construction one down left and a taxi one up right, the rest is a police shuttle and ambulances you can switch windows and other elements also easily. I want to keep consonant based spaceships for a DLC if I improve. But I continue to release vowels for all. I decided just not to start a tread about them before I was certain it would pass the Sharm QC! :D

@starlight dream You're definitely right that there needs to be more definite shadows in/around the pillar. I'm messing with different colors for it right now so it's kinda up in the air still with how the finished product will look color-wise, but I think it's around where I want it to be.
One of the things that's planned to eventually be in place is a set of tiles that I can use to mimic shadows, ideally creating something a bit more dynamic than just "large block of semi-transparent black here".

@Sharm Oh my goodness thank you! Your Tiny 16 pack is what inspired me to start drawing my own assets so it really means a lot. :) Dithering is one of those things that I feel like I should avoid since it can function as a crutch, but I don't really mind it in smaller doses since it can be incredibly useful when trying to imply specific textures and in-between colors. I did however go a bit crazy with the dithering in my ground tiles, so I might need to reduce that a bit. You're right about the tiles for the floor and wall being too similar as well (don't worry, you're making sense :p). When initially drawing the floor tiles I was noticing that it was a bit close to the wall, so I added more texture to it (which doesn't seem to have worked as well as I'd hoped since that resulted in more dithering). I've had a new floor tile or two on my todo list for a while now, so I guess I'll escalate that to the top of my list and try to get the visuals cleaned up for this map as soon as I can.

I edited Luciel the sea lion a bit, plus made a nice looking castline font. I also drew a Sprite for the gamesvsecond protagonist, Wroth the walrus. There is two other protagonist X characters, Bernie the macaroni penguin and Daimond the Arctic Fox. I also realized there's a way around the three colors per box rule. I noticed some Sprites have more than three colors per 8 by 8 tile, and that's because Sprites that have more than that are often times multiple Sprites pasted together to create one Sprite, so I use that analogy year for the walruses teeth and dumbbell.

Be afraid to offer tips and criticism.

I'm... going to assume that this is a typo.

Also, I'm definitely not an artist, so take my criticism with a grain of salt. The only thing I noticed is that Wroth's pupils are too bright. At normal scale, they blend in a bit too much, IMO. Since it's a unique color, I assume you could tweak the color without exceeding your color limit.

Also, Luciel is adorable and reminds me of Earthbound Beginnings.


Anywho, I'm currently trying to edit a portrait made using the character generator. I'm trying to make him look like a robot, but I'm definitely not good at this. Someone suggested I make him look more metalic by adding highlights and increasing contrast.
So far, I removed the ears and added some extra highlights. Then I darkened the shadows and sharped them a little. I also made his pupils glow a little more than normal. I'll be experimenting with extra glowy bits, but still trying to figure out where...

Fortunately, for my current project, I'll only be making a total of two face edits (and the other one is really similar to this one). The rest will be characters and sv battlers, which I can handle.

@Autofire It depends on how human you want him to look, but you could get an even more robotic look by removing more features (a robot doesn't need a nose, after all). And instead of black pupils, why not glowing dots like they're actually cameras? There's also the option of adding in lines to show where the metal panels that shape the head connect.

@Autofire I love your right edit. :) Sometimes the Bluman group makes me wonder if they are humans? ;)

@Autofire Adding highlights is a good way to make him look metallic. Try being more specular than broad with it though. So instead of the rim light and the larger head highlight use smaller ones in more places, especially to emphasise edges. You can also do the same with shadows, adding a little extra shade and angle to make the face seem more rigid. To make the eyes look less human, I agree with the pupil thing. I also think if you lower the contrast and make the shine smaller it will flatten the dish of the iris out. Eyes are hard to make look robotic, honestly, but I've found that taking the shine away does a lot to make someone look soulless. Because of that you could keep the contrast and just remove the shine entirely.

I did an edit (today is a good day!) I used a light blue instead of pure gray for the highlight, since gray metal tends to reflect a little more blue and it adds some dynamics to the flat gray boring ramp. You could add a little tiny bit of orangy red to the shadow to punch it up a bit there too. Sorry the edit is so sloppy, I was using my mouse.

I want to lean more towards the human side of the scale, but I want players to be able to tell that he isn't a human. My original plan was to was to give him unique ears (i.e. something akin to microphones), but I opted to remove the ears because it probably will look better than whatever I could come up with. I could drop the nose, but then I'm afraid his face would be too boring.

I like the metal plates idea. Though I'm nervous to try this on his face, I might try "mechanizing" the neck a little. Or I could even try adding a few seams here and there. I don't want to go overkill with this, but I'll see if I can come up with something that I like.

Looks up "specular." Ah, yes, I was trying for something like this. I'm not really sure how to reproduce that kind of reflection here, but I see what you mean.

Hmm.... oh, I have an idea! I don't know how viable it is, but it might end up looking pretty good.

Woah, looks pretty good! I think the blue is fantastic idea; it helps the reflections look like reflections, and less like grey smears. I'm not convinced about the orange, but I'll experiment with it. Also, kudos for shading the upper lip without making it look like a milk mustache.

Do you mind if I work off the edit you've come up with? Or should I continue with my own?