3-color isometric practice
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=25488
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 8:06pm
Topic: 3-color isometric practice
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Subject: 3-color isometric practice
Date Posted: 24 November 2016 at 4:37am
|
In my spare time I was messing around with the idea of making an isometric tileset with as few colors as possible- turns out 2 colors is more than viable, but 3 colors give somewhat better results :) Turns out it also allows for a good degree of improvisation. It also includes transparency, but it's not really necessary. I took my "underbase" piece as the starting point, there's currently no "nature" (stone etc) tiles, but I might add those in eventually :) I'm still very new to isometric stuff, so I made the tiles in Grafx2 and used Tiled to compose this test piece. I'll try and continue expanding upon this!  |
Replies:
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 24 November 2016 at 5:29am
|
Looks good! Very good choice of a warm "black" too. I've been thinking of making a 3+T colour game myself, and it's always good to see good examples :] You could probably AA some of the edges. The AA on the tank looks great, and makes the un-AAed parts of it and the tiles look worse by comparison. If you were making a game with only 3+T colours, you'd probably have the "black" serve as the backdrop for the entire game (because what else could be there that wouldn't be distracting?), in which case you'd not have to worry about the AAed parts being seen against anything other than "black". I didn't notice the characters at first, but I think if the game screen were e.g. GBA- or SNES-sized, they'd be easier to identify since there would be less of the environment to distract from them. Of course, animation/movement would help with that too. An option to consider: perhaps the characters could use different midtones instead of blue, perhaps depending on their faction. It wouldn't increase the colour count much (the actual assets can even still be 2-bit), but it'd probably make for much better gameplay if you were to make this into a game. |
Posted By: DawnBringer
Date Posted: 25 November 2016 at 3:18pm
|
Looking good! Iso normally demands a rather high color-count, unless you go monochrome/grayscale like here.
However, so much of the brightest color could strain one's eyes, esp. if the background ends up dark. |
Posted By: Mrmo Tarius
Date Posted: 26 November 2016 at 12:23am
|
@eishiya: thanks for the feedback, that's a neat idea about the different color character factions. I've tried it out with red and green guys, and they sure pop out more. Will also try to make a simple 2-frame animation for them. @DB: what would be the solution there? Use middle color as primary somehow? Mute the brightest color to make it less eye-straining? |
Posted By: Niding
Date Posted: 07 December 2016 at 9:50am
|
I think you are safe with middle colour as background.
Personal I would prefer a separate colour for background. Anyway I think a too light background could strain the eyes just so much as dark would. |