So where to begin. Hi my name is Chaosvine, I'm brand new to this forum and pixel art. I'm using Rpg Maker VX ACE to attempt to make a game. I am including some screenshots of what I'm guessing would be considered a mockup of the tileset I've made.



In particular I need some feedback on the roof of the building. That's the part I'm currently working on. Any help you guys could give would be greatly appreciated.

I will be updating this thread with more shots as my work progresses.

Thanks for the reply :)

I'm aware the trees are out of proportion with the house. I need to fix that.

I'm working with a larger scale than the normal rpg maker sprites so I'm adjusting the height of everything accordingly. My sprites will be approximately 27x43 pixels. I got these dimensions from the Mack style sprites as this is what I'm modeling my game around.

The grass and dirt are hand pixeled. Why is there a problem with it?

Oh and the blue/black squares are empty space. The doors show up as events thats why you can't see all of it.


Edited by chaosvine - 21 July 2014 at 8:30am

Hmmm now that you mention it they are. I'll put it on my list of things to fix thanks. :)

No really, but for pixel people that much pixelling is always confused with a brush or just plain ugly.
Most players understand that brown and green tiles are dirt and grass so you don't have to pixel every grain of dirt and every blade of grass. Suggestion in game art often goes much farther than actual details.
This goes for every single thing in a game.

I have been experimenting with all sorts of techniques to make grass. I did these kind of random patterned grass tiles after studying some tiling from secret of mana. Do you have some better techniques I could use to create a more realistic grass and dirt tile?

Update!

A new main character sprite. The only thing semi not original is the hair. It's a recolor of a Mack sprite hair style that I liked. This sprite has the proportions that I mentioned earlier in the thread.

Also new trees! Found a wonderful tutorial on trees and this time think I've made something really quite special. They look much nicer than what I had before. I've also made sure that my wood colors between trees and frames around the windows and even the shingles match somewhat to create more consistency. While these trees are quite a bit bigger than the previous trees, I'm not sure they are tall enough still proportionally to the building. I'm not quite sure how to keep the perspective they are in and make them significantly taller. Any help or feedback would be appreciated. :)








Edited by chaosvine - 22 July 2014 at 8:31am

Update! fixed some issues with the new tree's highlights and added more of 3d trunk design like Justin suggested.

I understand what you mean, but the Mack tileset and sprites are apparently freely available for use, from everything I have found. And I did mention that part was not my work and gave credit to the original artists.

In truth, the hair style is more of a place holder anyways until I figure out how to finish the sprite precisely myself.

Also, I apologize if I broke any rules by posting that. It is my intention to change the hair on the sprite to be my original work. I just haven't done so yet.


Edited by chaosvine - 22 July 2014 at 11:02am

Oh ok, good to know.  I'm in the process of changing it to original hair. Wish me luck. :)

You can slide by...barely 

lol, thanks. Well I meant no harm in the first place. Also this will probably be edited more as I progress. I'm not even sure I like all the colors I put on the hair yet. They may need to be adjusted. Also the positioning of the highlights I think is a little off.

Trees and grass are pixelart holy grails.
You just have to fight thru this without crutches and hope for the best.
Just keep at it.

Major update!

New bushes flowers and shrubs, added shadows to the grass tiles and other ground tiles, in the process of tinting all the shadows towards dark blue for consistency, updated the door, it's no longer basic and ugly. Also made the cliffs color palette consistent with the dirt color palette.

I think those rocks need a spot of work, because they don't really feel... Rocky right now. You don't need to outline every facet of a rock for it to look correct. Less is more with internal outlines.
For some reason, the green on the character bugs me. I think it might be too dark. On another post in this forum, there was a discussion on visual organisation in games. It's common for various elements in a game to be drawn with specific brightness and colour choice as to separate them from the other, unimportant-to-gameplay assets. An example would be characters, in this case the character has a light face, and red hair. The tan of the face and the red of the hair appear very scarcely in the other assets; almost everything else is green.

Credit to Tsugumo and their excellent tutorials, already posted on this topic
Looky here. If things are all drawn to be just as interesting as each other, they cancel out and look horrible. Try making things like the windows, the bricks, and the rocks less interesting, and the character a little less green.
Finally, the statue needs some tender loving care in terms of form and lighting. If you have trouble drawing something, look up reference pictures, or better yet, go to someplace that has statues. Walk around them, take in different angles (or angels, if it's a church), and examine the way they are built and how they interact with light. It helps a lot for creativity to take a break and look at something else after a lot of work, anyways. Fill those breaks examining the closest real-life equivalents to what you've drawn, and soak up the differences for when you next get back to drawing. I hope this helps!