CHALLENGE 10/31/2011: Eerie Environments
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: Collaborations/Challenges
Forum Discription: Submit pixel art project ideas/templates or contribute to an existing pixel art collaboration.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13283
Printed Date: 07 September 2025 at 11:36am
Topic: CHALLENGE 10/31/2011: Eerie Environments
Posted By: administrator
Subject: CHALLENGE 10/31/2011: Eerie Environments
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 12:05am
Replies:
Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 1:01am
Rough sketch. The basic plan is a misty forest, but there's a few options I'm considering. 
Maybe I'll go for 4 colors? There's 3 so far, although only the pure black is a confirmed one. 
I think I'll go for more colors just to get softer transitions of mist and more details. |
Posted By: a3um
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 3:24am
colorless wip
update 
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Posted By: lolyogurt
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 9:33am
Guess what ? Another spooky forest :> |
Posted By: Delicious
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 2:13pm
| Already awesome WIP entries! :D |
Posted By: Chibiwing
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 9:18pm
| =.= That's just wrong, guys. |
Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 31 October 2011 at 11:42pm
It still has a lot of work left. |
Posted By: skamocore
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 12:11am
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>__> Don't be lazy and just ordered-dither the water =( give that water some texture. ------------- |
Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 12:43am
| The water still needs all of the tree reflections and wisps of fog, so there'll be a lot of variation and not a lot of plain water showing through. I started doing scan line type dithering, but it's always confusing when I first start out something with that. |
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 2:37am
I'm being lazy again.
And an update: 
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Posted By: surt
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 2:49am
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Originally posted by Mrmo Tarius Yes! This. ------------- 
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Posted By: Chibiwing
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 4:58am
| Dun be lazy, Mrmo-man! >:o Your skills are too epic to not give your all. |
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 5:46am
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I'll try and polish this some more then :P
Here's an updaet! 
still can't pick colors properly, tho :P |
Posted By: skamocore
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 5:59am
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Mrmo - Hm, I liked the initial version more D:
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Posted By: lolyogurt
Date Posted: 01 November 2011 at 7:01am
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Cute graveyard mrmo :D Interesting pattern on the mausoleum. I'm agree with skamocore, the previous version is more spooky :) Big pieces are fun, except for my carpal tunnel :)  |
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 02 November 2011 at 4:46am
Tried some gloomier colors. Also added a ghost-like... thing :P
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Posted By: DawnBringer
Date Posted: 02 November 2011 at 5:47am
| @Mrmo: The first, darkest palette is best by far. I'd lose the clouds; they spoil that moody "alone in the dark" feeling. Add a few more trees instead perhaps or a classic moon with some silouette clouds on top. The checkered pattern is a bit distracting, esp. with a brighter palette. |
Posted By: AirStyle
Date Posted: 02 November 2011 at 8:09am
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@Mrmo I completely disagree. The Checkered style is perfect. It matches your style and is not distracting. I like the color change to make it a little creepier. The trees thing is alright, but the clouds adds a nice background.
Now honestly, your style does not suggest creepiness, but I always like it because of its filling effect: after looking at your pixel art, I feel aesthetically satisfied. Don't change anything. This is great. |
Posted By: Friend
Date Posted: 02 November 2011 at 2:28pm
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Originally posted by Mrmo Tarius Tried some gloomier colors. Also added a ghost-like... thing :P That ghost and those greens really add a ton to the piece. It would be cool to have the clouds a lot more faded into the sky, and have them sliding slowly across the bg, some sliding in front/behind others. Don't know if that's possible, but maybe it'd be a cool effect. Sorry, I just like sharing random ideas sometimes :p |
Posted By: onek
Date Posted: 02 November 2011 at 4:03pm
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@ mrmo
im digging frosts idea with the paralax scrolling then u should also animate the glow and i think u should loose the checkerboard pattern on the tomb... on the ground looks nice , but i would onkly keep it there.. also im with dawnbringer, liking the initial palette MUCH more.. hes right about the more lonely feel without the clouds too... maybe just make them in a darker color or interlaced/ dithered... but definetly keep them ... and animate! ;D maybe some skeleton hands peeking out here and there also i think u should leave out those foreground bubble things cool piece nonetheless... actually REALLY cool entries all over!!! |
Posted By: a3um
Date Posted: 02 November 2011 at 10:59pm
wip3. Refining and polishing this gonna be a pain...
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Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 4:46am
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Dammit a3um, that looks amazing. Can't wait to see it finished.
I've made some updates to this piece: 
Animating it would be kinda cool, but would require complete restructuring of the piece, as I've been drawing it on a single layer in grafx2, plus animating the ghost would be a huge pain :P |
Posted By: onek
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 8:02am
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no lazyness accepted
separate layers for you ;DDD 
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Posted By: CELS
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 11:51am
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a3um, that looks wonderful. I'm not sure I like the composition (I feel like it's excessively cropped), but the motif and technique is fantastic. |
Posted By: Gecimen
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 1:44pm
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@a3um; awesomeness! @mrmo; go for the parallax! @lolyogurt; seems nice, more crossovers between layers will be even cooler. |
Posted By: failureboy
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 6:25pm
Any pointers on where to learn dithering? This is my first attempt at "a canvas-style" piece. Shrunken from an old piece that was much larger and made with many tools. Mainly I'm looking for basic C&C. @Mrmo your piece is great but I agree with Dawnbringer that the first dark palette is the best |
Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 8:43pm
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You really shouldn't use pieces you already made in these challenges. It's actually against the rules... It does look nice though. Could use quite a bit of aa though...
I finally got to starting this piece. I actually attempted last night, but the moon was an absolute failure, so I approached a different style tonight, and I think it turned out nicely. Quick question, do the clouds do good or harm? I have them in a separate layer, so removing them won't be a problem. 
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Posted By: dpixel
Date Posted: 03 November 2011 at 9:18pm
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One of the most awesome challenge threads I've seen in a while. tanuki - I looks like the canopy should come down a bit and maybe some shrubs in the front to frame it. Or maybe the canopy comes down in the background to create dark/distant perspective. It seems like it could be more dramatic. Love the idea. mrmo - I really like the contrast and scale of the stones in all versions. This one I like most.            ..Ok..so it's not the most eerie, but it's still my favorite.
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Posted By: Chibiwing
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 1:33am
| Mdog - the clouds are bad. |
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 5:24am
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I tried experimenting with parallax scrolling, but to make it scroll smoothly, I'd need something like 200 frames and a LOT of time to make everything seamless :/
Maybe there's a way to do it quicker? |
Posted By: onek
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 6:48am
|
u should use keyframes...
its possible to do in photoshop.. (tho the PS instance im using currently doesnt support it... i think its just included in the extended version...:/ ) but yeah, u said u use grafx2 ... but maybe u have an opportunity to use PS somewhere.. or flash... with keyframes its an easy job i suppose |
Posted By: lolyogurt
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 6:46pm
Not sure where I'm going with this one, testing a lot of tones and palettes. or: Don't look at the mess at the bottom >_< |
Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 6:56pm
Okay, clouds are gone. I also made quite a bit of progress with the sidewalk and road. Also one building done. I might want to make a different texture for it though. I was going for cracked brick, but I don't think I got that.
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Posted By: Chibiwing
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 7:57pm
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I like the purple one better. |
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 8:00pm
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@mdog95, you have plenty of colors in your palette, resist the urge to dither.
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Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 8:08pm
| I'm actually going down the grays one color at a time, and it looks really harsh without the dithering... As for the building, it wasn't really meant to be dithered, but it somehow happened... |
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 8:12pm
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Then adjust the colors one at a time until it works visually :p
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Posted By: [thUg]
Date Posted: 04 November 2011 at 9:08pm
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Originally posted by Mrmo Tarius I tried experimenting with parallax scrolling, but to make it scroll smoothly, I'd need something like 200 frames and a LOT of time to make everything seamless :/ Maybe there's a way to do it quicker? @ Mrmo Tariu: The quickest way here must be using ImageReady tool if you got Photoshop CS (Moved under another name in 1st menu in CS5). This way you can set each part on a different layer, set a number of frames and just slide layers and ImageReady will make all frames (as I can remember, I used this long time ago to make parallax or sliding menu mockup) |
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 10:55am
I'm not entirely pleased with how this came out ;P
Also, it seems it doesn't loop? :/ |
Posted By: skamocore
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 11:08am
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I don't know what program you're using, but usually there's an option to loop the animation indefinitely. Anyway, that cloud movement looks ultra tacky >_> Generally, I would avoid animating anything unless it actually adds something to the piece. ------------- |
Posted By: Gecimen
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 11:49am
| It does add something to the piece. If you can manage to loop it. |
Posted By: Victor Rojo
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 2:36pm
|
Hello Mrmo Tarius as I can see, the clouds have moved Interpol, but you have not calculated the total pixels wide, so there is tacky or shaky. You calculate; For 200 pixels wide = 200 frames (the clouds move gently in a pixel loop each time) In 100 frames back into position, get soft clouds to 2 pixels at a time (faster) If at 50 frames back into position, you will get more fast clouds to four pixels, which means that the loop of 200 frames these clouds pass four times. I suggest this calculation so you can create a perfect loop uncut and combining three types of clouds or scroll speed. Hope this helps, if not give me a hint. |
Posted By: Friend
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 4:19pm
@Mrmo I'm sorry my suggestion is not shaping to be so successful and perhaps a waste of your time :(, but if you still have intentions on going with it, some further suggestions would be to make the clouds a little less saturated to blend better into the background, and make the animation slower. The way I envisioned your environment is to have a flickering apparition like effect with flickery background parallax clouds  |
Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 7:34pm
A little more progress. I hope I can finish this before the deadline... 
I just fixed a few things. The glare from the lights just didn't look right, and my friend described them as "hump shaded", whatever that means, so I shaded them to both light sources. |
Posted By: Friend
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 9:03pm
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I'm really confused by your perspective and palette Mdog. Is the brown part the street like in your earlier edit? if so, then your perspective is a bit messed up. I don't understand why you have so many colors, and what are you going to do with all of those bright yellows and reds in an eerie pitch black night piece?? |
Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 05 November 2011 at 9:31pm
I thought I would use those for a certain effect, but I don't think it's gonna happen. I just didn't take those out yet. As for the brown in the street, I remembered that buildings shaped like the ones I'm making probably weren't built in the time of asphalt roads, so I changed it to dirt; I'll put more details in it toward the end.
I'm probably gonna animate the lights flickering once all of the buildings and fine edits are finished. |
Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 06 November 2011 at 1:39am
I haven't really done anything on this for the past few days until just now. Pretty much everything is still being worked on. Current color count is 7. Things left to do- • finish/fix water texture • finish grass • figure out tree reflections • add reflection on that one tuff of grass that doesn't have it • figure out texture of background trees • finish background branches and foliage |
Posted By: Chibiwing
Date Posted: 06 November 2011 at 3:50am
Here's a super unfinished wip to show where I'm at in my piece (I clearly won't have it ready by tomorrow night). Incase some of you didn't catch it in the challenge comments I've accepted the extra slum panorama palette challenge. Such a soul crushing palette...
 |
Posted By: Friend
Date Posted: 06 November 2011 at 10:22am
Mdog, if the brown is indeed the road, then youre mixing an aerial
perspective with a head on perspective o.o The strip above the brown
road is the sidewalk right? so the buildings and street lamps can't
just sit in top of the road :p  |
Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 06 November 2011 at 1:18pm
This is the kind of look I'm going for. I took the picture myself just to get it perfect. I guess some adjusting of the sidewalk would do some good, but there really isn't much I can do about the street. And in old towns, like a lot of old mountain towns I go to, the buildings are right on the sidewalk, like so 
Trust me, I did a lot of studying on this perspective before I even started pixeling. |
Posted By: a3um
Date Posted: 06 November 2011 at 9:45pm
I tried optional challenge suggested by Manupix just to check out the palette. Those colors aren't very friendly, I must say |
Posted By: mdog95
Date Posted: 06 November 2011 at 11:28pm
I submitted my final piece.
It was actually my first attempt at an animation. Even though it's dangerously simple, I think it went over pretty well. |