First C&C for background & sprites

[The Awesome]

O.K, here goes.

I'm working on a game, right? But progress is slow seeing as how I can't make a hard decision on what art style my backgrounds should be. A few of my sprites look like this.
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Neat eh?

And my first (almost) finished background looks like this.


Keep in mind it's not 100% done.

I just need to know if people think the sprites mesh well with the background art and look natural in the environment, so to speak.

Feel free to say how cool (or crap) my stuff is

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The background looks fine overall aside from your window showing no depth to the building wall.  As for your sprites, they really suffer from having a much larger number of colors than necessary for good representation, many of which are so similar in value that I had to zoom in to like 12x to distinguish a few of them.  The solution here is increasing the contrast between the colors and adjusting lighting to get away from the pillow-shading effect you're using.  Here's a quick edit I made to show you what I mean.

1.  Removed a few colors and altered the contrast of others to emphasize shapes and features.

2.  Changed the light source to a more top-down approach, lighting the shoulders, top of hair and forehead, nose, breast-line, and for the guy I made his knees a bit lighter as though he's bending them slightly.

3.  Brought guy's arms down one pixel, brought girl's shoulders down one pixel and altered the shape of the feet of both.




I didn't reduce as many colors as I should have but you can see where I'm going with this.  In particular, look at how I handled the folds in his cloak (purple toned shades and cream highlights).  I would also recommend you work a bit on poses since they seem a bit static right now.  Hopefully this helps!


Edit:  and here's a version with the girl's shoulders as wide as her hips.

[ThreeOhFour]

Awesome edits, ProgZ! I like these characters quite a bit, and thought I could show you one way you might consider adding more detail to the face:



While you lose the lovely coloured eyes here, it shows a bit more detail, I think.

[InCreator]

Ooh, I like your style! I mean, I totally love it.

Come to think of it, I think that I've seen it somewhere...

Suggestions about background:
* More colors! Try to use less saturation and more different colors
* Reduce floor area (on future BGs). It's much simpler to draw if floor doesn't make up half of the screen.
Also, it won't feel so empty and detail-less.
* Make window bigger and move it a bit more to the center of the wall. Wall will be less boring then, too.
* When everything's ready, light it up properly. It would add alot.

[The Awesome]

Yes! They like it!!

Wow! I thought my sprites were alright, but your edit makes them look loads better ProgZ! The detail on his pants and cloak are awesome! Thanks for the input guys!

And I also cannot believe I missed that thing with the window. I'll have to tear down half the wall to get it right now. 

[The Awesome]

not meaning to double post, but have utilized some of ProgZ's art tips and have a couple of sprites to show to see if I'm getting the hang of it.

The first is a side-on view:
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and the next is a front walkcycle.
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Note that I'm fully aware that the walkcycle is crappy because he is too stiff when he walks, and the colours on his arms are going ballistic, I just want to see if people think this stuff is better than before.

Flame on!!

[miguel]

Hi, well I really like your character and the walkcycle isn't that bad, get those shoulders moving up and down just a pixel, it will add a more natural movement
good luck

[Nacho]

Not only the shoulders... everything should move a pixel up and down...

Remember (S stands for "Same heigh as the idle static frame", H stands for "one higher", and B stands for "one below")

Contact S
Recoil B
Passing S
High Point H

[The Awesome]

I have created a side-on walkcycle which was made with help from one of the walkcycle tutorials floating around here somewhere and it looks pretty good, I might post it later. I just hate front walkcycles because mine always either look like the character is having a spazzing fit as he goes or, as you can see, holds perfectly still except for his arms and legs. I'll try your advice Nacho, thanks!

[Oliwerko]

The torso movement in front walkcycles is not so hard. Just when you have finished everything else, move everything from torso up to his head up and down. When he is stepping up, move it up. When stepping down, move it down. Only one or two pixels of movement twice a cycle and it is a big improvement. Eric's tutorial explains it pretty good.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Yeah the image Nacho posted is from www.idleworm.com (as it says in the picture), and it's the tutorial I used a few months back to figure out how to make my character walk about.  Idleworm has the front and back, and side views of how to get your character walking.  I highly recommend it.  Good find Nacho.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You don't actually need to do bobbing up/down to make a successful walkcycle, nor do you need more than 6 frames.  A single pixel down on the down step often yields ideal results.

1.  Made him go down one pixel on each down step.
2.  Adjusted torso for some slight movement.
3.  Touched up arm motion slightly so the shoulders appear to move with the arms.
4.  Reshaded neck area.
5.  Made his hair have some movement.



All of the edits I made are pretty much optional aside from the down step, and even that isn't done on some older adventure games (and in most cases it looks fine when in game).  All the down step really does is help fool the viewer into perceiving motion, but if you have a solid walkcycle and convincing backgrounds you may not even need it.  I left the legs alone because I think you've done well there, and the shading has improved quite a bit!  If there was one thing I would say to work on it would be anatomy, since his arms should stretch down to about midway between his waist and knee.
Nice work!

[The Awesome]

That's brilliant ProgZ! I had started modifying my walkcycle with the bobbing motion which made it look more convincing, but it still looked odd. I should post the walkcycle for left/right movement, because while I think it looks perfectly fine, it might have something that needs touching up that I'm too blind to see. Awesome again ProgZ, I always work better after looking at examples like these!


EDIT: Here's the walkcycle for his sideways movement. Keep in mind I made this before I improved my sprites.


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Now that I look at it, his legs are sort of wobbling a bit nearer the top, and his feet seem to get smaller when he lifts them up at the back.

[Ryan Timothy B]

I know it's already been mentioned, just hope you remember to extend those arms a little.  Looks good.
Progz has some amazing pixel power.  I'd rather be able to pixel like progz, than drawing the type of backgrounds and characters I draw (i'm much more fond of the nostalgic look of pixelling-but I suck at it).

[The Awesome]

Yeah, I'll fix the arms in the next edit. ProgZ has been a load of help here because the tutorials I've been finding for art and sprite techniques don't really match the style I have. Most frustrating.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The arm motion is very good, but as you noticed the legs don't move quite properly.  I made an edit to fix this as well as to up the contrast between shades.  You really really need to use higher contrast in your colors because otherwise you're just wasting a lot of them and most people won't even be able to tell the difference.

1.  Altered skin tone contrast and dropped skin colors down from 5 to 3.
2.  Lengthened arms and used shading to emphasize a somewhat muscular shape.
3.  Reduced size of back by one pixel and made the darkest shirt shade darker.
4.  Reshaded legs so that the distant leg is always slightly darker and that they are more lit when exposed to light.
5.  Offset foot positions of left and right leg to reduce confusion and make movement more dynamic.



Before you do anything else, I really recommend you sit down and work out a palette of good contrasting colors.  Note that for skin tones I went with a light pink, a normal pink for the midtone and a reddish-purple for the shadows.  These three colors contrast well with each other, and making your sprite stand out and look interesting is one of the most challenging aspects of pixel art.  Keep at it!

[The Awesome]

Higher contrast, got it.
I would have made the sprites look better using your previous tips, but I just thought 'what the hey,' and posted it up anyway. I might try making my other characters look better for now.