A tile set and background panorama I'm working on. Colour / palette design is my weak point so I'm trying to think a bit about ramps. If anyone has advice about tiling, colour + palette or just general feedback would be handy!





Two images so you can see how I've been developing it and a (very rough) idea about how the clouds would work which I scrapped.

Thanks! It's the starting point for an in-game tileset so I can't use vanishing point perspective but I'll look at fixing the angle it's looking down at and the shading.

@yahkebu

It's theoretically an action RPG. The main inspiration are the mountain scenes from Seiken Densetsu 3 (I did imagine it as a Golden Axe style beat-em-up at one point as well though...)

It's intended to be a 3/4 perspective 32x32 tileset with a panoramic parallax layer.

(Should also point out that when I say it's for a game, it's not actually something I intend to make beyond maybe a tilemap and some collision code so I can see what it feels like to wander round in...)

Here's an edit to the tileset with a tweaked horizon line. There's two different layouts, one with a thinner bridge to see how it helped with the perspective.

Hey! I'm liking this so far! I actually like the more overhead perspective myself. Games break perspective all the time and I know I've seen plenty of games with perspective like that. I feel the trees closer to the bottom should have a bit more contrast. Maybe they should even be bigger but I'm not sure about that.

The far background trees look repetitive but I'm sure you working on that. I think the clouds look a little repetitive too and maybe it would serve your composition better if you had one large massive godly cloud. I still like the clouds and you can save that tiling texture for another area or project!

The clouds you added are making things visually confusing, the things furthest away tend to desaturate, but your clouds do the opposite. I also don't think being able to look down on the tiles and yet still see beneath the clouds makes much sense. Something to think about hey.

This is key. 

The bridge doesn't seem to fit the mountain and the sky shouldn't be visible.  The viewing angle looks like top-down if you want the bridge that way. 

In this picture, you can't see the top of the bridge, but yet you see the sky.  If you rotated the viewing angle of this picture to see the top of the bridge, the sky would disappear.

And another update:



I've skewed the bridge at an angle based on everyone's feedback. I was reluctant to do this because it increases the total number of tiles and as an exercise I wanted to keep the individual number of tiles to a minimum but in the end I think it was the right way to go, it just needs tidying up a bit now.

Reworked the bridge pattern following GameBoy's feedback and added a character to the scene.

First let me echo Mango and say this is really great progress! You asked for color advice, though, and that's something I've focusing on myself, so here's a fix.

The big change here was that I lowered the values on all the foreground tiles to make it blend better with the dark cyan shadows in the lower right, which I really like. I also shifted the shadows towards blue, mimicking natural light and making the scene feel unified (full explanation here: http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm).

Finally, I removed green from the bridge (it's wood) and added it to the nearby trees, which shouldn't be so hazy since they're closeby.



Also, did you use a tablet to draw in the clouds? They look so smooth o_o. I always spend way too much time on big curves, but I'm still mousing it.

So here's a palette edit and reworking of the perspective gradient on the background trees. I've not been as bold as Zodiac with the palette but I think it's an improvement overall. The background colours and the blending between tiles still need work and the characters are still rough but it's moving forward.

As far as sprites, the legs on the white guy and especially the girl seem too short. Is this going to play Golden Axe style? That would rock.

I'd also say to go at least a bit darker on the walkable area, so the character shadows don't stand out so much. Or shift those shadows to more blue or green, so at least their not competing on the same color ramp.