Mockup

[GreenBoy]

I've been thinking about starting a new game, something a bit more ambitious than last time.  But before I get to carried away with the art side of things I thought I would get some opinions on what I could improve with both the general style of it and also some more pointed advice with the sprites etc.

It's 320 x 200 16 bit colour (Though thats only for my ease, could easily be 256)

I'm not really convinced with the character portraits, I'm not sure whether I should have them at all.  What would you prefer?

[Anian]

That looks nice.
Overall sprite style is cool, relatively simple yet effective (I tried that myself but it got messy fast). Just a bit 5 minute corrections. Maybe move his left leg a bit more over his right leg (just a pixel), might give more volume. Also you might wanna stretch woman's portrait a bit so it fits with her sprite and with the style the guy is in (his face is a bit prolonged, while her is not so). Also her eyebrows look a bit too masculine. And on her sprite the necklace and breast line seem to connect which gives a weird look.

On the background, maybe more stuff/items in the scene, cause textures of the wall, roof, grass etc.) seem detailed but as a whole the scene lacks eye candy (a bucket, rake, a snail, rat, flower pot,some corn hanging from the roof...you know, village house details).
Also the path looks weirdly untextured compared to everything else.

On a personal preference, the "take/grab/pick up" hand icon, always looks strange from that perspective (from the side). It's just that the silhouette doesn't automatically associate with the shape of a hand...still that's just my little peeve. Icon looks nice as it is.

Hope that helps and again, it looks good.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Characters of that size and detail simply don't need portraits.  You could add them, but the important question is why do so when you can clearly see their faces and facial expressions already?  Remember, portraits were traditionally used in Sierra games when the character had a face that looked like silly putty, so why not save yourself some added effort?

As far as the style goes, I quite like it but the colors are far too whitewashed.  Bright and cheery is fine, but even bright and cheery needs effective color contrast and shadows.  As it stands, the fence literally glows like it's a light source.  Dial down the colors with effective shading, make the shadows a slightly different color (not in the same range!) like blue-green for the tree shadow, blue-grey for the thatch shadow, and so on.  The character would likewise benefit from a dose of contrast, and a shaded dark outline to your icons will help them to stand out well from the backgrounds.

I've made a contrast edit to your characters below as well as a couple of small fixes.

1.  Adjusted contrast of colors to separate highlights from shades.

2.  Widened shoulders of guy to make the head fit better with the torso and to match the female sprite better.

3.  Lowered eyes on both one pixel to bring them more towards the center of the face.

4.  Minor face reshading to bring out natural shapes.






I think the sprites have a lot of character and some attention to contrast and anatomy will help them to look even better.

[Jim Reed]

I think the female has too wide shoulders, or/and too narow hips.

[GreenBoy]

@ Anian:  Cool thanks, I'll look at changing the leg and the necklace and see how it looks.  

The background is still a little bit of a work in progress, I'll probably add some more lived in details when I decide how or if it's going to be used.  Originally this was going to be the house he grew up in but the plot has changed quite a bit since I started this scene.  The plot is also a WIP   :.  Good point about the path, not sure why I didn't do that.

@ ProgZmax:  Yeah the only reason I really started making them was because before I even really started conceiving this game I thought it would be cool to use a portrait.  You're definitely right about the extra work, I think I rather concentrate on getting the rest of it right.  

Colours are something I really struggle with and I have gotten a lot better with them, I tried to add a bit of blue into the shadowed areas but obviously not enough.  

Nice edits with the sprites!  You still managed to convey their personalities in their sprites.  I think I may steal them, with your permission of course.

@ Jim Reed:  I'll definitely have a look at that, I was trying to capture her attitude in that sprite.  She's quite independent and tough while he's a little naive and well... a bit simple.  Guess who you get to control!


Thanks very much for your help and I'll be back to show you my progress.

EDIT.  Ok, here they are with a few adjustments, I changed some things.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Without ruining the cheery effect of the bright colors, I made an edit to your background to show you how to employ more effective contrast and color usage, and more importantly since this is a pixelled background, color savings.

1.  Reduced the background to 32 colors to make it easier to adjust the various color values.

2.  Shifted the whites slightly into the blue range and down in brightness for a highlight, midtone, and shadow color.  This process was repeated for the thatch, grass, fruit, and tree colors.  Borrowed the thatch colors from an image reference.

3.  Made the thatch a bit looser looking to compensate for some of the lost detail.

4.  Adjusted the stones on the wall for some that might be of a different shade or missing, and adjusted lighting on them as well as rounded the edges along the window and casement.




You could certainly add back more colors to further detail the stones and thatch since I did it mainly to make an edit easier to work with.  One thing you might do is add a casing of stones around the doorway and window since I've rarely seen even traditional homes without their own support structures around windows and entryways.

Hopefully you can use the color contrast in this as a reference for varying up your colors and making them a bit bolder.

[Khris]

On a completely unrelated note, it's not "Pallate", it's "palette". scnr.

[GreenBoy]

  Hmm I thought I checked that to.