Roots' RPG Art
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12328
Printed Date: 19 May 2026 at 9:20pm
Topic: Roots' RPG Art
Posted By: Roots
Subject: Roots' RPG Art
Date Posted: 11 June 2011 at 5:43pm
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Hi everyone. I'm a novice pixel artist and hoping to learn from the community here. I've been working on a free, open source role-playing game called http://www.allacrost.org - Hero of Allacrost for the past six years, primarily as a programmer and a writer. Lately though I've been working as an artist both to fill our dire need for new art and to try out something new to me. I'll be using this thread to post various pieces of art that I've been working on to get feedback on. The artistic style of this game is a 3/4s perspective similar to Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI and uses 32x32 pixel tiles. I posted a couple samples of our map artwork below so that you can get an idea of the style and perspective that my art is intended to fit.    ------------- Hero of Allacrost, a free RPG for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD http://www.allacrost.org/ |
Replies:
Posted By: Roots
Date Posted: 11 June 2011 at 5:43pm
The first piece I'd like to share is a stone column that I've been working on for about a week. Below are the iterative drafts showing how I've progressed. I've come a long way since my first draft as you can see, and did have some help from some folks in an IRC channel so I can't take all the credit for realizing my own mistakes.       I think I've got form, perspective, and color selection down pretty well now, but I'm still struggling with shading and lighting. In particular, the following are points of concern for me on my latest draft. - The edges of the base I feel may be a little too prominent and don't blend in well with the surrounding shades. - The shadowed parts under the top piece are a little rough to me, but I'm not sure what I should do to make it look more natural. - The shading along the side of the top piece is a little odd to me, particularly how the angle of the barrier between two shades changes as you go from left to right. Did I do this correctly? - I think that maybe the shading of the sides of the platforms along the base may be a bit too bright. Maybe I should go back to the shade I was using for those sections in the previous draft? Once I feel satisfied with this, I plan to make several variations to it such as creating square base/top pieces and making some columns that have more texture to them. Thanks in advance for any tips you can give to help me improve! :) ------------- Hero of Allacrost, a free RPG for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD http://www.allacrost.org/ |
Posted By: Roots
Date Posted: 13 June 2011 at 11:23am
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One unsolicited comment that was made elsewhere about this column was that it used too many colors. I can't say I agree. I've definitely heard people argue before about having fewer colors, but I'm skeptical that decreasing the color count is going to make this look better (feel free to prove me wrong). I used dithering in the first draft but another artist told me that there's really no need to use dithering for shading and to just use a different color, since we don't live in the old days where there really was a hard limit on the amount of colors you could use. I'm sure there are some people that disagree with him and strive to use as few colors as possible, but honestly I'm only interested in making my work look as good as it possibly can be. I'm interested to hear what others have to say about this. Do you think the column would look better with fewer colors? Should dithering be used for shading instead of just using a different color? ------------- Hero of Allacrost, a free RPG for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD http://www.allacrost.org/ |
Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 13 June 2011 at 3:46pm
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The grass in the first images looks especially good, although I think you used a gradient in the light around the campfire which is adding a ton of colors to it. The other one looks very good, but has 115 colors. I'm not sure where they're all being used, but I reindexed it with 35 colors and I can barely tell the difference.
Original vs reindex edit 
I don't think the column has too many colors at all. There's 12 on the third from the left, the first complete column, not counting the background color. The other columns to the right of it seem to have 13 colors. While it's possible to make it with fewer, doing so would probably only decrease the amount of detail. Dithering can reduce colors needed, but dithering itself nearly always adds a sense of texture that you may not want on a smooth object. While modern hardware and software can support millions of colors, there is value in keeping the number low. For example, when looking at a scene as a whole, repetition of colors strengthens the overall balance of an image. There's also such a thing as bad color combinations, and the more colors there are the harder it is to make sure they all agree with each other. Try leaving the column's colors as they are, but just reusing those same colors on other objects that'll be in the same scene. I think the light source on the columns is a bit confused. I know not all of the columns have the exact same lighting, but let's look at this one- 
Because of the strong shadow at (1) the light can't be coming from the right, or that would be lit. The light must then be coming from (2), which means it must be hugging against the side of the column. (3) would be a good direction for it to come from, but the darkness of the shadow on (1) has already ruled that out. Because the lighting at the bottom is the same, the light must be coming from between (2) and (4), which would be (5). If the light is there, then the center of the column should be much brighter than what it is. |
Posted By: rustEdge
Date Posted: 13 June 2011 at 3:52pm
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I don't think it's about having too many colors per se.
If you just look at your pillar by eye, it looks like it only has around eight colors, yet your color count is at 13, sans the background. Don't know if it's intentional or some recoloring mixup, but it would be better to merge very similar colors. Either for easier palette swapping or just to get used to optimizing colors. (Looking good doesn't have to mean you need to use more colors. With fewer colors, you train yourself to be more critical with how you deal with pixels. Even traditional painters use very small palettes. They make it look like they're using many colors by blending pigments the same way we dither our pixels. Look for an oil painting in your local art gallery/museum. Close-up you'll see what I mean.) Some might also comment that there's too few colors, as you've got tons of banding in your pillar. Regarding dithering, it'll depend on what effect you're after. Is the pillar smooth marble? Is it weathered marble? Is it concrete? Don't forget that dithering isn't done with only checkerboard patterns. There's also a lot of funky stuff going on with your shadows/highlights. It almost looks like pillow shading that sort of follows a light source. The specular on your pillar is in front, to the right. It suggests a light source in front. Yet you have dark shadows on the left, suggesting there's a very strong light source coming from behind the pillar. Here's a quick edit on your pillar: 
Palette's reduced from 13 colors + BG to 8 colors + BG. Unified the lighting by shifting the shadows on the base further to the left, aligned the placement of the specular highlights. Used rough dithering on the top slab to suggest hewn stone. (Also helps in reducing some of the visible banding.) |
Posted By: Roots
Date Posted: 13 June 2011 at 9:57pm
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@tanuki The images in the first post are not my own and were simply meant to give a context for the type of art I'm creating in this thread, but I appreciate the feedback nonetheless. And I certainly agree that 115 colors is far too many for that grass image. I can't tell much of a difference either between your edit and the original. Glad to here that you think the color count on the column is fine. That's what I originally thought myself, but seeing as I'm a novice at this I wasn't fully confident in my opinion. I understand that having too many colors doesn't buy you anything, especially since the human eye can't tell the difference between very minor changes in color anyway. I understand and agree with everything else you shared about regarding color selection, thanks. I think its going to be really difficult though to manage the color selection amongst all the other pieces of art, since this column could and probably will be re-used in many different maps (castles, ancient ruins, dungeons, etc). Of course I can easily make several different versions of the column with different colors to fit different environments, but I think its going to be an act of futility to design pieces like this with all the other artwork it could mesh with in mind. Regarding that particular column draft you pointed out, yes I know the light source was confusing on that one. Its one of the reasons why I changed it entirely. The perspective is more head-on than it is top-down and the top piece I created for that draft was simply the base of the column flipped across the x axis (I just wanted to see how it would look if I did that). @rustEdge I was going for a very smooth texture with that pillar, hence the banding. I have plans to make variations of it in the future with different surface types and texture, but want to get this one as nice as possible before I move on to that. I see what you mean regarding the weirdness of the shadow/highlights. I think I just brought the dark shades on the left side too far forward. The light source is intended to be to the top right. I think I've got an idea of what I need to do thanks to your quick edit. I'll play around with it some more and post a new draft later that will hopefully fix these issues. Thanks! ------------- Hero of Allacrost, a free RPG for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD http://www.allacrost.org/ |
Posted By: Roots
Date Posted: 14 June 2011 at 3:59pm
Alright, here's what I got after taking into account your opinions. I did not reduce the number of colors, but did try to follow the edit that rustEdge did. The latest is shown below on the left, with the previous revision to the right. I'm having a mixed reaction to it right now. I think that its more correct in terms of its light shading, but it looks a little more rough/ugly to me. I think this is because there are large patches on the column that have only a single color, whereas the previous draft didn't have much of that at all. The shading on the top looks a little rough to me as well, and I probably should have extended the lighter shade more to the left and receded the darker shade more to the top. Looking at it now I'm noticing areas where I brought one shade out too far in certain sections so I'll need to tweak that for sure. I don't know, what do you guys think? ------------- Hero of Allacrost, a free RPG for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD http://www.allacrost.org/ |