I sent you an e-mail, and I am interested :)

Thank you for your mockup Wormwood.
Unfortunately I have decided on another artist for the project. I do love your style however and will contact you next time.

Cheers

Yes, I am.

Hi Phi

Thank you very much for the feedback. It was generous of you to do that. Now I don't feel quite so rejected considering that the artist you chose used x2 pixel size instead of x3. No disrespect to the work he's done, but obviously it's much easier to create an impression of depth when there are more than twice as many pixels to work with. For example my player ship sprite is 13 x 9 = 117 px, and his is 21 x 14 = 294 px.

I intended to try improving the impression of depth at such low resolution by giving each of my sprites a short continuous animation loop, such as the enemy ships tilting from side to side on their horizontal axis.

Your artist has done a great job of reinterpreting your original sprite designs. I especially like the bug eyed enemy ship. The player ship is a bit squat and beetle like for my taste. I would rather pilot something more hardcore in style, like the drop ship in the movie Aliens.

It is interesting that you have changed from x2 pixel size to x3. That is possibly a wise decision. So long as the pixels are noticeable at x2 size then the game will be considered retro, but pixels at x3 size might just be too large for many gamers to accept. 160 x 106 pixels is lower resolution than even the original Game Boy. Although having said that, I think a game made well at x3 pixel size would still be worth publishing.



Edited by wormwood - 15 August 2012 at 10:14pm

But now, with your reference to the artwork in both the Passage and Sworcery games, you are talking about very different aesthetics compared to what you were aiming for with your initial artwork for your game. Passage simply has an overt pixel style. Sworcery is drawn in an abstracted rectilinear style that makes almost no attempt to give an impression of depth to the sprites, except for some non hand drawn overlaid light and texture effects.

It is also a style that makes no attempt to compensate for a lack of resolution, and so it avoids anti-aliasing. Adopting this flat hard edge style means that characterisation is easier to achieve at lower resolutions because individual design elements can be drawn with just one pixel. But to give that same element any kind of depth, or smoothing, usually requires at least two pixels.

BTW, in case you aren't aware, making your game at x2 pixel size means that it's the same resolution as the Game Boy Advance screen, 240 × 160 pixels. Nice one.