Great piece overall, and fantastic water tiles, man! Although the water looks closer than other stuff due to the size of the waves.
Reminds me of the Heroes of Might and Magic games. They always had plenty of color and style.
It reminds me of the game settlers somehow, probably cause of the buildings.
This is a great piece, I´m particularly found of the snow, and very specially, that top left chest.
colors are great but not harmonical, I would rather play it on black and white.
"Tweak them until you have a nice feeling" is an option. Some random base color, than darker for shadows, brighter for highlights with a slight hue shift - that's pretty much it. Then I just tweak it till I like the way they work together.
Thanks Gas 13 for replying.
I might have to do this kind of art for contract work, so I see it's a lot of work not to be underestimated, especially given my current level.
Yes, HoM&M 2 and 3 are great sources of inspiration, those guys knew their stuff. The first Starcraft also has awesome pixel art.
One more question about colors:
How do you choose the colors ?
Do you tweak them until you have a nice feeling, or do you have some pre-defined palette ?
Thanks again, guys :)
piiichan, It took me about 2-3 weeks to create background tiles and all the transitions, about a day for every castle (I should note I had great concepts for each of them). Something like that. That was my first RPG tileset but I was examining a lot of tiles on this site, HOMM 2, 3, Warcraft.
Yep, looking so good !
How long did it take to make, roughly ?
And how much experience do you have with making this kind of pixel art ?
Kasp3r, That was my favourite game for a long period of time :)
Thanks again for comments! :)
Yuran, right on target. Who isn't :)
Danori, start selecting with marquee tool, move cursor until you reach same pixel row you have on the other side, do the same moving down until you note same line on top, boom - you've got the tile :) I don't have a permission to share them but there's no problem to get them out of this image if you really want to.
Cool stuff! I also find it overpacked/saturated/nopriority but I assumed that it would be not so in the game, which was confirmed by your comment below :). Great to see you are still at it, and great to see that there are still games made with awesome pixel art!
I really like the ice, and the ice castle is my favorite too!
Wow, this is great, if you don't mind, would you share the actual tiles? I'd love to learn how you arranged these all so well :S
Gus, I can see that you're a fan of the game "Heroes of Might and Magic 2"
:D
Great! I love it all, especially that water and treasure chest.
Thanks for the comment, Adarias. The way I put it together is not really the way it looks in-game, I just wanted to drop in as much as possible to showcase what's been done :) Probably gone over the top. Normally it's not that detailed, 2-3 tile types for a large location and you can't find screenshots of the game with more than 1 castle - http://www.lordmancer.ru/images/mobile_ready.gif
Still I agree with the reading issues. No mockups were made beforehand, there were separate "characters" and "tiles" tasks and the only things I had in mind to make characters stand out was the outline and the shadow.
Thanks for the other comments, guys. Always appreciated.
I feel like the whole thing, while gorgeous, suffers from some serious priority read issues that would ultimately make things very difficult on the eyes when playing.
I would suggest killing the local value-contrast on the non-functional (i.e, bg) elements. you can preserve all of the tight pixel work and pleasing color usage, but allow the characters and buildings to really pop. http://i.imgur.com/NR1MU.png
This is top quality, great work. It looks like a happier version of "Heroes Of Might & Magic II".
What Iceberg said. To have this skill and make a game in this quality...then I could die hapily.
I've just one thing so say: OH MY GOD! THIS IS LOVELY!
How the hell you guys are so good at pixel art? XD
looks nice~