Cyberpunk's Room (WIP, looking for a little C&C)

[CoyoteJack]

Hi there, pixelites. I've been working on and off on this room for the last, oh, week or so, an hour a day, something like that. Everything is hand-sprited, and it's most definitely a work-in-progress (note that the middle floor tiles are completely devoid of shading, for one amongst many key areas needing immediate work), but I was wondering if there is anything I should focus on specifically. I've tried to do my best so far as lighting goes without any professional art grounding (I cannot draw to save my life, my main talents lie in website design, writing and  editing, but I dabble in pixel-art and the like nonetheless), and that's something I'd definitely like help with. That orange thing on the desk actually has a standby-mode in my PSD, but that's the standard glow. If anyone can think of something to suggest or wants to attempt a paintover of my shoddy work, go right ahead, that'd be much appreciated. Now that I look at it there are probably ridiculous perspective problems with the thing, but we live and learn. Thank you very much in advance.

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P.S.: That thing there in the bottom left corner is a mattress with an internally lit frame. I cannot draw blankets to save my life, but I think I did well with the wrinkles, that brown thing is a stain. Now that I look at it it looks more like a big fishtank, but I have not idea what to do about it.

EDIT: I might add that there are a lot, a lot, a lot of what I now recognise to be useless, nearly invisible shades in there. *cringes in shame* Man, at the time, when you're putting these things together, you think you're doing well but then you take a look around and yikes.

2ND EDIT: Changed the file from a .PNG to a max-quality JPEG, noticed that the fine details were a little better in the JPEG.

[ManicMatt]

This style reminds me of "Dreamweb" or Valhalla.

I couldn't possibly say about shading and perspectives..

I'm being a hypocrit in saying this, but it could do with some more colours, and less grey.

Your mattress frame looks like blood. How about some orange? And in the end result it should be animated.

My best advice is to wait for someone who is better at this stuff than me to tell you!

[Darth Mandarb]

I don't mind all the grey colors ... there's just not enough contrast between the objects.

Adding shadows would, I think, help to seperate the bed and other objects from the floor.  With a "top down" perspective like this it's easy to lose which objects have "depth" if you don't have shadows.

Also, I think a Zelda style perspective on the walls would help pull this image together.

Here's a [ very ] quick paint-over to show what I mean:


- added perspective to the walls
- moved bed and desk stuff "up" the walls to add depth to them.
- added a door

There'd need to be some depth added to the steps as well but I didn't have time to do that!  I hope this helps!

[big brother]

With pixel art, you should generally stay away from completely desaturated colors. Grays will always look better if they have a slight tint to them (for instance, try using a gray with a subtle yellow tint for one end of the color ramp, and a darker gray with a subtle purple tint for the other end of the ramp).

One important concept to learn involves edges. The closer together contrasting shades are, the sharper the edge will look. Many of your edges in this piece look inconsistent.

As for dithering...I'd stay away unless you're trying to convey texture. This opinion can be highly contested by other pixel artists, but it's just one way of doing things. I recommend this approach for someone at your skill level. It's easier to get a grasp of things if you simplify.

It'd be easier to recognize objects if this scene was rendered in an isometric viewpoint rather than straight-on top down. With top-down, many objects need to be more iconic than representational so the viewer will recognize them easily.

[ildu]

I'd like to add to Darth's assesment that since the objects show depth, so should the stairs. Now they look flat. And as Darth said, shadows will help.

[Phemar]

I think it looks cool. I like the style, good work. Darth's edit is kick-ass, but I think you should carry on with the floor!

[DanClarke]

I like the style, but id recommend mixing the pallette up a little in order to distinguish things like chairs etc from the floor, working with shadows could also help this. Remember, backgrounds are as their name intended, a back drop for the action, so try not to go crazy with the detail or it'll be too much on the eyes.

Good work!

[CoyoteJack]

Yipes, cheers for all the overnight comments and criticisms, all of them helpful in the extreme.

ManicMatt: Nicely picked, I was actually going for a very Dreamweb feel to my graphics (in fact I have a screencap from Dreamweb in my .PSD for reference in moments where, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how something should look in a top-down perspective (not that it, in the end, helped so much, as evidenced by the many inconsistencies of the piece). I've tried hard not to directly crib from the game's style, though. And the bed really needs work. However, orange tones = excellent suggestion, I hadn't thought of that.

Darth: Cheers for the paintover! That's an excellent idea, actually, and I think I'll go with that. Mucho gracias. And shadows, shadows, more shadows, definitely a good idea.

(In fact, I have at this point realised the people commenting on my work are ones with big AGS/pixel street-cred, considering not twenty-four hours ago I was drooling all over Dan Clarke's sprite-work and jaw-dropping to the tune of Big Brother's Sprite Jam submissions. Hell, everything impressed me. )

Big Brother: I was beginning to get the feeling there was a little too much grey in the picture, yar. The subtle colour-tint is a good idea, I'll go with that, too. Isometric is another interesting idea, since I can't see top-down working the whole way through. I will see once I get this thing finished in a top-down state, I may go back and redraw the whole thing in isometric, though that will present its own bundle of hellish perspective problems, since, as an example of my being non compos mentis where perspective is concerned, my idea of a vanishing point is where the bunny goes back into the hat and reappears as a string of flags-of-all-nations.

And I will keep the edges in mind, definitely.

Ildu: At the time of submission, I'd worked a tiny bit on the stairs regarding shadows (basically, I added two parallel lines in differing dark shades to the right hand edge of each step, that was the entirety of my work with shadows. )

At this point, my main problem is lighting. I have absolutely no idea where my shadows should come from, whether I should repaint the whole thing without implicit ambient roof-mounted lighting and just light it using the lamp and the glow of the computer and the bed, or what. I have contesting light sources and not a clue which way to go, so up to now I've been winging it.

On with the reply, though, enough of my belly-aching!

Zor: Cheers for the support, it's much appreciated.

DanClarke: Thanks, truly, for the support, also much appreciated, particularly coming from someone who seems to turn out pixelicious works of art like it's rapidly going out of style. There is perhaps a little too much detail in some places, methinks I need to go back and optimise the whole deal.

So, from this I take away: shadows, generally look to drop the dithering, fix the lighting, Zelda-ise the walls, sharpen the edges, subtly modify the grey tones of my work, add some warmth to the bed lighting, add depth to the stairs, and probably one or two other things I am forgetting to to write down but not forgetting to implement.

[big brother]

Nice recap! It sounds like you're going in a good direction.

Just a side note: isometric doesn't use any vanishing points or perspective. It's a flat projection with the illusion of depth.

[CoyoteJack]

As an addendum, and because I'm the kind of creative butterfly who will flit from idea to idea, I've paused work on the room to work on a cutscene idea. I'm going to piece together a bunch of panels into 320x200 cutscenes, ala comic book styling. Basically, my player character is going to walk in and out of the panels in each. This is a small example from a larger work, which I'm submitting here just to make sure I'm on the right track. I've put together some of the suggestions made for the top-down room and used them here, C&C here would again be much appreciated, though I'm probably asking a bit much for two seperate critiques of WIPs in the same 36-hour period. 

I don't think it's quite isometric, but I'm getting there.

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29 colours (really trying to cut down on shades as best I can, there are plenty of optimizations there, I know it). Light source is an implicit roof-mounted light. I'm no good with explicit lighting. The door doesn't have a knob, I'm still trying to figure out how to work that one in.

Also: A question: How do I cut down on blank space like I have there in that shot? Add extra details like, for example, rooms below? Or just choose a perspective that doesn't allow for blank space?

[big brother]

Here's a link to some good tutorials on the isometric style:

http://www.zoggles.co.uk/asp/tutorials.asp?tut=1

[CoyoteJack]

Cheers, BB. Them there's are some nice tutorials, very helpful!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Here you go, I cleaned up some of the perspective issues and changed the colors a bit.  It may give you some ideas anyway.

[CoyoteJack]

Oh, man, thank you! That really gives me a hand with figuring out low colour counts, shading, all of it, as applied to my own work. Cheers to you, Big Brother, Ildu, Darth, Zor, Dan Clarke and Manic Matt for all your various support, assistance and constructive criticism. Now, if only every community were like this one.

[CoyoteJack]

While I simultaneously work on those stairs and consider the pros and cons of a top-down environment (pros, nostalgic rememberings of Dreamweb, cons, far too bloody many to even consider added to the fact that I have not much in the way of artistic ability and representational iconography is definitely not where anything approaching my best work has been done in the past ), I present the scene of my intro sequence, in a side-scrolling style. It's a dingy hotel room where you go when you need to hide. No frills. I plan to make it a good deal dingier, but for now this is it. Criticism, support, comments and paintovers all welcome in copious amounts, I figure I need all the help I can get.

Original:


2x:


Areas of concern for me are the back wall, I feel I could add some more shading but I know not how to go about it, and maybe some ripped plaster, a few more cracks, I need to think of other things I could add to the room (oh, and the lighting around the window, I like it but no doubt there is a better way to go about it ). Suggestions, again, are always welcome, especially at this point. I've tried to incorporate a lot more colour than in my previous offerings, as was suggested by many when faced with the other submissions contained within the thread. I might add that the colour count was pretty down until I ham-fistedly used the Burn tool in PS on the pipe to the far right, at the top and bottom, instead of just darkening the shades of the lines a few points. I'll go back and fix that at some point. Right now the colour count stands at 81, but I know I could get that down by about, shit, nearly forty, since that pipe is made up of about, oh, 42 (count 'em) shades. :

Anyway, cheers again.

P.S: And I just realised that adding the blue and green glow to the city was a shockingly bad idea, it was actually really well defined as an object before I added the glow. D'oh well.

[CoyoteJack]

Nothing I should really be focusing on here, then? I'm actually out of the country right now, so it's not like I'm in a position to touch that up yet anyhow, just wondering how well I did in this, my third attempt.

[Elliott Hird]

The glow - you're right, it sucks . It might've worked if it had more colours (something i rarely say), but as it is, dump it.