CHALLENGE: Aftermath

Depict a destroyed settlement (village, city, etc.).

Canvas Size - Max 200 x 200.
Colours - Max 16.
Transparency - No.
Animation - Optional.

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CHALLENGE RULES

• Participants have until this upcoming Sunday at midnight (12AM Pacific) to submit their entry (strict). Don't forget to check the 'Submit to weekly challenge' checkbox.
• Only new pixels allowed.
• Open to all members.
• Posting WIPs in this thread or in new threads in the WIP section is highly encouraged, but ONLY SUBMIT YOUR FINAL ART.

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CHALLENGE JUDGING

• Every Sunday at midnight (12AM Pacific) the previous week's entries are judged.
• Every week a new voting poll will be posted for previous week's entries.
• Winner announced the following week.

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CHALLENGE PRIZES/GOODIES

• Top three finishers will receive an award displayed in your PJ gallery profile for all to see and envy.
• Top finisher gets to call the following week's challenge...sweet.
• 'Participation' ribbons will be given for all who enter.
• No matter what happens you get challenged :)

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CHALLENGE VOTING

Vote now for your favorite pixelart in this week's challenge!

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CHALLENGE AWARDS

The Aftermath pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:



Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge!

What happened to the image?

Well I've been lurking around here for a while (not to mention staring at pixel art in games for years wishing I could do something like that but idly assuming I didn't have what it took...) and I finally decided yesterday to try one of these things.

Having fun I think. Just made a few "small" palette/colouring decisions in fact that instantly increased my motivation when I realized it seemed to tie things together a lot better.

I went with 200x100 for a more panoramic feel. So far I've just got the major elements of the scene down in lineart with some early colours blocked out:



It's some sort of ancient Greek-looking temple ruin on a cliff, overlooking the sea, a background mountain, and an extant modern city, while some kind of container ship leaves port. All at sunset because I like the idea of a red sky and I want to try lighting objects up with external colours and see how that works, inspired by the likes of the following effect from The Chaos Engine:
http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/162/Chaos%20Engine,%20The_1.png

To Do:
- I want to add some kind of pier and a crane.
- More of an actual ruin feel; I like the idea of some kind of stone tablet, and various bits of broken architecture. Probably some kind of moss growing from cracks too.
- Dithering. I want to practice that.
- The idea of trying to create a reasonably acceptable sunset sky fills me with dread and excitement. Mostly dread
- Replacing the black outlines with softer shaded outlines will be "fun".


Edited by HeWasAgainstIt - 22 July 2015 at 6:57am

You are going nicely and trying to get better which is great.
You are still being a bit careless and unprecise with your pixel placement.
Remember that you are not drawing you are pixelling.
Review the sticky reads in my sig links :)

The top two posts should be tutorials on pixel art, those are what you should read.

Tyvm . I'm partly trying to get half-decent at pixelling so I can knock out some game sprites that look remotely like what they're supposed to and get motivated for game development again.
It's people that gives me the biggest trouble, but I guess that's normal...

Here's my latest WIP anyway:


Think I have all of the main features in place now. Started some shading, but still haven't really started colouring things in properly.
So far I think some things have worked out better than others... I'm reasonably happy with the dithering on the sun and the sea... but I'm not sure what to do with the mountain, or that bright orange attempt at having the sun highlight its edge, and I definitely need to make the foreground cliff scene more interesting. Also the stone tablet is extremely ugly ATM.

Not sure about the clouds either... definitely a lot of colour/shading decisions need to be made overall... perhaps I should look for some more subdued, pastel-looking colours...



IMO, definitely the clock. That's what first drew my attention and made me think it looked interesting.

It seems to act as the centrepiece and replacing it with the window frame gives it less impact, I feel. Looking up close, the clock is quite simple, but I think it improves the look of the architecture around it and makes you wonder about what the building looked like before it was destroyed; maybe some kind of courthouse? Railway station? Fancy library? The window frame makes it seems more pedestrian to my eyes, and you already have the broken windows in the background so there's less repeating if you use the clock.

I like the brick work a lot.


Edited by HeWasAgainstIt - 25 July 2015 at 7:50am

Thanks for the feedback! I was leaning towards the clock myself but needed a second opinion.