We all think the same thing about colors (cept maybe DB).
Every single person who make pixels and always use great colors never feel that they do.
Some just give up and use the same palette forever.
The colors you have here are nice.

@Jal
Perhaps you're right, it's hard to think that other artists have problems with their palette when it looks so amazing though.
At least I won't stick to the same palette forever :P

@Daruda
Yes please! I'd appreciate that. If they are hard to find don't worry about it though, I'll also go and look for more papers or tutorials on colour theory jazz.

And that is a very good idea too, I should try taking advantage of the option to change colour opacity more and do what you said.

Update. I just re-read the "COLORING "I dont get it"" thread again, I think it helped. It's getting closer to that Chasmy colour look I think. The Chasm character palette seems to go all over the place in terms of saturation though, not sure what to make of that.



The face seems to be a bit flat looking, so I'll have to see what I can do to fix that.

I was also thinking, that perhaps I should also try redoing the palette for the environment and try to "link" it to the character palette so everything doesn't seem out of place.

Edited by ADrawingMan - 17 July 2014 at 4:06pm

I think you may be being a little hard on yourself as well. I totally saved a copy of the sprites you posted here to look at later. That mask is great.


Edited by JustinGameDesign - 17 July 2014 at 5:20pm

Gonna echo that it's wise to keep foreground/background, (inter)active/passive objects separated by using contrast in lightness and in saturation, and possibly in hue.
One thing I'd try to do in your sprite is to have a bit more complementary coloring. First of all the color ramps seem to all be the same hue/sat, which makes for boring interaction between lights and shadows. Secondly, your overall palette is very brown/orange; at least Aand has those arrows for a bit of spice. This is just when looking at the sprite in isolation, though. When you put it in a game you might end up with very valid gameplay reasons to limit your palette.

SuperTurnip - while that approach is valid to a degree, make sure you don't rely on it completely. After all, contrast in hue+sat is very important and to change a color in grayscale may lead to it looking worse in the endresult.

@MuffinMan
Yeah, very good point, and good examples too. With WingedDoom's project, I was thinking that he is able to pull off a blue background with blue enemies due to using black outlines (something that I am not using)? But yes, undoubtedly you are correct, having a consistent background to go with the characters will be very much needed. I'll be sticking to that cool blue from now on (and tweaking the enemy colours so they stick out more from the bg):D

@Justin
Mhmmm maybe, but I don't know, something honestly seems off with the sprite :P. Glad ya like em though!

@SuperTurnip
I see why you say the original colour scheme is balanced, but I don't think I want to stick with it since DawnBringer pointed out that the red is a very alarming colour -though it does make the sprite "pop" quite a bit. But yea, the greyscale really does help a lot with seeing the technique of it all though.

But I think why one is not better than any of the others when in greyscale is since there is no actual colour besides grey which could make one of the sprites look more pleasing on the eye than one of the other sprites (that probably goes without saying though). Doing it in greyscale does help with a lot of things though, thanks for the helpful tip :D

@PixelSnader
I tried doing a bit of complimentary, it's more of a sloppy edit in terms of colour but did you mean something along the lines of this? (perhaps the green should be shifted more towards the yellow and the blue towards purple?).




@DawnBringer
Yeah, I prefer the second version too. I gave blueshifting a shot, not sure if I did the right though, but I think it makes it pop more imho.



The orange looks considerably more vibrant after doing it, but I'm not sure if the difference in the darkest red looks noticeable or not. I'm concerned that blueshifting the red will make it blend more into the background.

I was also thinking, what if the palette for the main character changes depending on what environment he is in? So far, I have seen no 2D game do that, I know it would definitely be feasible, but is it something that you would want to do when making a game?

Will be posting another update in a bit.

Edited by ADrawingMan - 18 July 2014 at 3:18pm

I feel that the right sprite is better than the left one, it's more colorful so it pops a little more.
About the tile, I like it, it's really good, but I tend to focus on it watching the mock-up because it feel more bright overall.
For the color theory, I think you know most of it.
Well, if you want take a look at this, it's one of my favorite, check part 2 too.
http://www.deviantart.com/art/The-Color-Tutorial-Part-1-186760922
I wanted to share the pixel related too, but seems the user got angry after some rip and decided to remove all the material and I don't feel right to re-upload it.

That's defnitely possible, but like Jal said, you have to add the code for every switchpoint, and have to make the sprites, which can get messy.

And yes that could work in terms of complementary colors, but it's not what I mean. If you look at the one collage with 3 sprites, you see that the bottom one has a bit of a purplish red. That pushes the shadow towards blue, as a complementary of yellow light.

Here's an extreme example by mulletdulla:

Was trying to figure out skin colour, also made an npc old man to test it out on. The main change is that the darkest colour for the skin is no longer a deep red but rather a low saturated brown. I may stick with the red.

I'm loving the new palette and the sprite of the old man.

Glad to see you've reached a consensus on the palette. It's definitely something that bugs me out everytime I start a new sprite. That being said, I really suggest that you experiment with colors on future projects. Like, go crazy in color theory. I've just seen your gallery and it seems that you have so much potential for that. Getting out of your comfort zone is always a good choice, imo.

Also, I agree that you should build a universal palette for your game. The logic is the same as placing all characters in one sheet. Do they match? do you need to add more stuff or is it just fine the way it is?

Anyways, keep up the good work. Really looking forward to your work in this project.

I'm pretty sure you can go to your original post (the first one), edit it and it will give you the option to change the title. That is what i did with my current thread.

Yes, the reddish.
I love high contrast generally.
Well, maybe not really a Universal palette, I noticed that most artists use always the same darkest color and some midtone. You may need just those.

Looks great so far. Don't sweat it if the player does blend in with certain assets. Players rarely stand still in exactly one place long enough to actually make isolated color issues matter.


Edited by JustinGameDesign - 27 July 2014 at 11:40am

Someone told me I shouldn't focus too much on detailing the scenes immediately, so now I'm moving on to designing the pinnacle. Planning for this to be a cutscene type of thing that shows after you beat the boss. Will be touching this up and the forest mockup later.



I don't really know much about perspective, so a lot of stuff was just eyeballed.

Edited by ADrawingMan - 02 November 2014 at 11:34am

I'm just a little stunned. You are an extremely talented artist! I've got a few things to learn from you...

For the perspective view, what is happening in the space between the mountains and the pinnacle (which is gorgeous, by the way)? It is empty, and even a fade into mist would help give it a sense of space. For the forest background, I'm not a fan of how you drew the leaves in poofy spheres. Try fluffing them together a bit, like the roughed out leaves on the closer trees.

I love the new palette. Definitely shows two distinct areas. Great start to this one!

Looking good ADrawingMan! Since you like Feng Zhu look up Scott Robertson for perspective stuff. He has a youtube channel and was the guy who taught Feng the draw through method.

Small-ish update. Also started drawing some some building designs.




The buildings are really cartoony looking atm, so working on fixing that. I'm trying to go for a washed out, almost dead village.

Edited by ADrawingMan - 10 November 2014 at 1:28pm

Yeah, I'm ditching the outlines completely now and just trying to make the base of the building, working out much better this way now.

Haha, yeah, by 'dead' I don't mean small population, but more like the plants are dying, the buildings are washed out looking, stuff like that. These two pics are a good example of what I'm shooting for http://www.pencilwoodstudios.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/050_184_B.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0u4v0vUqHLE/RsyGpikU44I/AAAAAAAAARk/VzXhqAhiAfk/s1600/050_318.jpg

Also, Korgoth of Barbaria is what I'm trying to get the inside of the Inn to look like, a cross between that and the refs above (with a touch of medieval in it?). In any case, I'll try to work it out :P

Great point about the height of the buildings! I'll switch that up so they're not so tall.

Oh yes, I'm definitely going to try to make things as modular as possible (shingles on roofs, bricks etc).

Thank you for the valuable feedback! I'll be posting another updated image soon!

Edited by ADrawingMan - 12 November 2014 at 8:03am

Thought I'd post a few things again since it's been a bit more than two weeks.

I've gotten a lot further with buildings, gone through so many iterations and it's still not close to being done. It doesn't really have that 'dead' feel that I wanted to have, but so far the design seems to be working pretty well (and now it doesn't look as medieval-ish as the previous wips)
I'm now trying to sketch up designs on paper before just starting to sit down and immediately go to pixelling, the process takes wayy too long -even when I don't procrastinate a ton.




Also a tileset that I may or may not end up using. I was going to use them for the forest, but I'm not entirely certain if I will.


The really cool thing about using this type of perspective in a side-view game is that you don't really run into the problem of the character's legs floating above stairs :P


@Limes
I think the cartoony style looks pretty neat too, but it just wouldn't fit in with all the other assets.

Edited by ADrawingMan - 27 November 2014 at 2:46am

brilliant pixels! i only wish i could pixel like this haha

@Jal
Hey thanks Jal! Trying to be a little weird with the sky palette, I'm getting some cool results :P

@revolver
There's always time to learn!




@PixelSnader

Sorry for my bad response time!

I was considering making the planks look like that, but imo I kind prefer the more curvy style that I have atm, it gives it a more magical feel, I think (though they obviously still need a lot more touching up on). I did however change the shadows on the bricks, with that reference being super helpful.

I think the colours of the grass are looking better now imo (maybe too saturated when compared to the building though?), but the actual pixelling is still pretty messy and reeeally repetitive -but I'll be making some tiles to break up the pattern when I get a hang of what I want the general feel of the grass and cliff to be. Also, the rocks kind of look like they are being viewed from a weird perspective so I'll be changing that (and making them more triangly).

Not so sure how the stairs look at a 1:1 ratio, but maybe I just executed them poorly? Also still trying out your hill idea (still very WIPy)

Yeah, that would be kind of a big waste if I just ditched them. You're totally right about the straight slant on the ramps though, I think that I can give them one more shot and try to spice them up and make them more natural.

I'm also aware of the wooden supports near the top of the building looking weird (working on fixing those too) :P

Edited by ADrawingMan - 29 November 2014 at 2:35pm

@Mr.Fahrenheit
Thanks man! Hearing that gives me a lot of motivation!
Doh, maybe it's the rocks that's making it worst than the previous version? I did redo those tiles though, so maybe it's better now?



Only problem now is that they kind of differ in style from the grass.
Now I'm torn between switching the grass, or switching the rocks again :(

I also made a second version with reduced highlights so it doesn't pop so much.



Edited by ADrawingMan - 30 November 2014 at 10:07am

Hey, I took your suggestion and made 2 more. The third one tiles both horizontally and vertically, yay or nay?



Yeah, I'm not planning on the rocks to fade to black or anything like that, that's just like that since I'm still experimenting with tiles. They won't be there once I make some more progress with the rocks.

And yeah, there's no real particular reason why I made those ones 64x64, was just goofing around I guess and they turned out that way :P I will be sticking to 32x32 from now one though (with the exception of the 32x64 tile above).
---

Also taking a shot at a rocky texture for the building. I'll try to finish the the whole house up the next time I post.



I'm also thinking about how I can make the pillar have a darker side, and lighter side that is made out of tiles like this http://www.dpadstudio.com/images/otusIsland.png

Edited by ADrawingMan - 01 December 2014 at 3:02pm

@DMM

I see your point about the rocks, and I totally agree! However, I kind of have to show the rocks under the pillar because of this problem http://i.imgur.com/DCvSXUZ.png (hyperlinking isn't working?)

I have to figure out a way to tell the player that they can walk past pillars like the ones above and the only way I can seem to do that is with showing all of the rock below the grass. There's no good way for the player to realize that they can walk past pillars like the one in the pic above if there's mostly black underneath the grass. It's an annoying problem, and you're right, it does really make the workload a lot bigger :(
However, I will be able to use that method for things that don't take place outside (inside buildings, dungeons etc) and for platforms that you wont be walking under. Unless I do manage to think of a method where I can use black and just reveal a bit of rock near the surface of the grass like you said, then I will definitely roll with that. But until then it's a super annoying problem :' (

The house is pretty much done though. I know the palette needs a re-working, and I'm not too sure how good the wood looks (especially the wooden roof), but a second pair of eyes to give some crits would be appreciated!



edit: @DMM nvm, fml I'm stupid, I can do it like you said. They make it work using your idea in this image pretty well http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/7608/z79x.png
. Guess I'm going to go with that method now

Edited by ADrawingMan - 03 December 2014 at 6:59pm

Update. Rocks don't tile, but they will soon :P

Have to think of what to put in that huge blank space on the front of the house.

Edited by ADrawingMan - 04 December 2014 at 7:35pm