Applocity Master Project [WIP]
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=25620
Printed Date: 30 June 2026 at 9:33am
Topic: Applocity Master Project [WIP]
Posted By: Chironyx
Subject: Applocity Master Project [WIP]
Date Posted: 18 February 2017 at 2:28pm
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Heya! I've been working on my first game (story based platformer) for a bit now, with the intention of basically improving as much as I can from start to finish (While minding the scope of course).
Currently working on the "city stage" of the game, which I have to finish in order to finish the opening scene (the intro to the game, which is 50% done). So, here are the main city buildings I'm working on: The house of the main character, which is a music store: 
It was previously standing on it's neck, people told me to flip it upside down as it seemed weird, so I did. I'm aware that the color gradient doesn't look pixel-arty, I couldn't find a fitting substitute so I settled.. a few civilian regular houses, the bricks are made out of various types of human-sized-apples (this is related to the story of the game and its theme): 
An important building to the story, the apple corp. company HQ, they are in-charge of the city's development in alot of departments, and are part the main reason everything is fruit-veggie based (the robot on the curb is related to a pre-intro dialogue that occurs, he gets thrown out of the window): 
The Passionfruit arcadia: 
The berry twins bakery, owned by Blue Berry and Straw Berry, my latest "finished" building" 
The currently thought-of-design of the final building, or at least it's general shape, a combination of a car-shop and a mechanic-garage, owned by Abe Ocado called "Abe's Auto-Mobile"), the lower part is a garage for fixing cars, to the left is a car elevator leading to the a parking-lot, partly filled with new vehicles for sale), in the frame is also the main character, and a black line partly showing how big the player-view-screen is: 
Apologies for the huge post, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the best pixel-art forum there is to get opinions on..? I'd love criticism, because most of this was made without any criticism from an actual pixel-artist (only 1 or 2 actual game devs, any other person being a non-pixel-artist) After the building are done, I need to add more street-details (ally ways between the buildings, dumpsters, street lights, stuff like hopscotch lines) and a city skyline background to show there are more buildings in the far back. To whoever looked at all this, thank you! |
Replies:
Posted By: d9nis
Date Posted: 19 February 2017 at 3:07am
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Hi buddy Actually, I'm not a big fan of theses works. My main concern are the general balance in both colours and shapes. Did you target a specific platform and resolution? It might impact on the final render and the size of your object. Careful! On some part outlines are just wrong, double sized, of strangely designed. Also I notice you start, at some point to AA, but not everywhere. it's really hurting my eyes :( You need to decide if you want hard pixel art or soft AA design. Most of time I love washed out colours effect but here it doesn't do the trick, colours aren't well balanced as I said. It's look like you do not give yourself a fixed palette. The palette help you to handle coherent tones and, in some way, help the viewer to understand what's on the picture. Also, you don't want to copy paste brick to do others building by simply changing the colors, it look's weird. But maybe you wan't something colorful, but then you need to work on shading and tones. See you and keep it up :) |
Posted By: Chironyx
Date Posted: 19 February 2017 at 4:58am
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Originally posted by d9nis
Hi buddyActually, I'm not a big fan of theses works. My main concern are the general balance in both colours and shapes. Did you target a specific platform and resolution? It might impact on the final render and the size of your object. Careful!On some part outlines are just wrong, double sized, of strangely designed.Also I notice you start, at some point to AA, but not everywhere. it's really hurting my eyes :(You need to decide if you want hard pixel art or soft AA design.Most of time I love washed out colours effect but here it doesn't do the trick, colours aren't well balanced as I said. It's look like you do not give yourself a fixed palette. The palette help you to handle coherent tones and, in some way, help the viewer to understand what's on the picture.Also, you don't want to copy paste brick to do others building by simply changing the colors, it look's weird. But maybe you wan't something colorful, but then you need to work on shading and tones.See you and keep it up :) Gotta hate typing from my phone, my entire response is gone haha I'll start by saying thank you for your honesty, I take my work very seriously and consult as may artists as I can, read as many guides as I can, and try to follow criticism the best I can, your help is very important to me. I studied everything I know from Udemy courses, tutorials, posts and other artists I've chatted with I am aiming for a PC game, with the screen being a fixed resultion of the player's view, I obviously have no experience in exporting a final product for such a "big" project, so I'm not sure what kind of impact it might have or if my work form is wrong... I don't believe there's going to be a problem from the way it seems though, just a few more seconds of loading the city, it's just pixelart sprite after all, right? Now, to the work itself, I can't know which parts of it are strangely designed or double sized, if it looked wrong to me I wouldn't need others to help me P= But this one is on me, I can't expect you to point out specific flaws on each and every one of these building /= From what I understood when I learned about AA, I'm supposed to use it to make certain lines more circular, and to smooth out lines that feel too sharp and square right? So I tried using it only where it seemed necessary according to the tips I got, does it look like a bad mixture of using AA in specific places while laxking in other areas? If so, I 'll try going line by line and adding AA in places I might have missed.. But now to the biggest issue, the colors, I tried reading and watching numerous guides on creating a pallete, the bricks are supposed to look like a painted variety of the same brick, and I wanted yellow and purple bricks for the Arcadia for example, is that mix wrong in your eyes? Or are the values of the colors the problem? I tried to play around with the colors to make them look like paint on bricks For the shadows on the sides of buildings, I used a black fill and gave it some opacity until it looked like a nice shadow to me, and for the guitar, I color-picked color-codes from an actual guitar and made a gradient of between the orange and black.. Is everything wrong? Should I manage the pallete in another way? Aside from the stuff I mentioned I did, I used hue shifting for the rest of the colors, Perhaps you know a guide that addresses my exact issues? No matter how long, I'll study all of it and practice it, color is the life of a pixelart piece, I have to get this right! And the bricks are recolored versions of each other in order to save alot of work-time, from what I understood, it's a common thing in the industry to recolor enemies and areas to create new ones, isn't it? I'd love some further help and tips on all of these areas, this means alot to me, there's nothing I want to do more than to develop games.. I can't have my sprites be terrible, and your help is crucial 
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Posted By: d9nis
Date Posted: 19 February 2017 at 5:35am
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Hi again :) The impact of the render is not on time loading but in the design process. If you have larger screen, you might drew more pixel and more details. When you fix the resolution, you have good idea on how and what you want to draw. If you don't know your screen resolution, dealing with too large scene you pixel indeed, but there will be flat empty surface since you don't know or don't want to render some details. Put in other words: Think about information density in your picture. For example, about the guitar house, I'm pretty sure you don't need some much space. I think you should minify your picture so the density of detail will be balanced. But you also might want to keep it as it is, but then you need better shading. And shading is quite difficult, you need to practice. I'm strugling hard myself on this topic sometimes xD About AA it's not only about pure technical rendering, but also about style. Indeed, not every artist use AA. I do, but there is a lot of people who doesn't. You can mix AA on some part of your picture but you need to be absolutely sure about what you're doing. Indeed it make sense to save times, but careful, this way your picture might look like empty or repetitive. It make sense to repeat pattern, but again, be sure on how it will look like. Does pattern fit the purpore? Does it match with the environment, the style, or anything? Finaly about strange detail, there is a lot unfortunately, but don't desesperate! - the electrical wires have some really strange physics, look's unnatural. - On some building you're using some shadow, but not inside, turn to something flat and difficult to read. - Apple Corp entrance doesn't make sense at all on the stairs. Orientation and shadowing look's really weird - And so on... Indeed, I cannot enumerate everything. But don't feel bad. With practice you will do it like a rock star :) My advice: - Start from scratch - Begin with small pictures, let's say 320*240 - Compose. Spent a lot of time on the design of your stuff before actually pixeling it. - Don't go too fast, try some shading, texture, effect. Since you're dealing with small picture, it's easy to fix or redo and you will learn faster. - Avoid as much has possible large picture unless you know where you're going (the guy saying that always dealing with large pixel xD). - Because your picture should be smaller, you will be able more easily to find correct colours set. Yep. The more your scene is large, the more you need colours. If it small it's looks good AND it's easy to deal with. Well it should be a good start. And practice, practice, practice. Drink and eat sometimes, and then practice, practice practice... Also, I'm saying that a lot on other topic, but it's hard to become pixelartist when you don't know yet how to hand-draw. You can, but you will spent hard time. So be sure to also draw by hand. It will give you more confidence in what you're doing on computer :) :) |