Messages

[Atmosphere]

Atmosphere: Selmiak
Composition: MeditativePixel
Functionality: MeditativePixel
Technique: Kastchey

The Sound Of Music?

Damn that made me chuckle, I just pictured "Hello farewell" with cage fighters. 

The basic point of my post was it's not that you haven't finished certain parts of the drawing, it's that you need to tighten it a bit (make the details and lines more defined and precise. This will already make the sprite fit better. Achieve what you want in quality, then work on speed.

I'll certainly try edges round stuff in the background.

Just to be clear, I didn't actually mean adding outlines, but just making edges in sense that one thing starts, other begins.

Do you mean the background looks lower quality? Is this due to things like the folds in the curtains and the fuzziness of the globe and could this be improved by picking out these details more? Or have I misunderstood?

I suppose the thing is striking the balance between detail/refinement and speed. I've spent a little while on this background because it's my first go and I'm happy to experiment and get a feel for things, but if I'm to make lots of backgrounds I need to find a style and way of working that looks decent without requiring me to work over the whole image at pixel granularity (I suppose everybody has this problem...). Maybe the way to go is redrawing the character on the tablet... but I suspect he'll look too blurry.

Lower quality as in not managing to match styles, not the actual drawing.
I don't know how strong your motivation is, but speed should not be that much of a factor and yes, you'll need to find a balance, but you'll get faster with time and experience. Even in pixel art, you still can determine how detailed you want your style to be.
You should really check out some of Ben304's work here on the forum, that'll show you how to paint backgrounds but still keep the drawing tight: LINK I think that's what you're going at right now.

Is there a good way to do this in gimp? (I'm using gimp... is that embarrassing? Should I be embarrassed?) Or is it a case of painting back over it in flatter colour?

It's not about the software/automation, just drawing technique. And no, GIMP is nothing to be embarrassed about, use what you feel comfortable with.

First of all, I hope the things that are unfinished are the things I think are unfinished.  In general everything looks nice, but background still needs finish.

Second thing would be that in some places you're very close to matching the background style with the sprite, why not just do it? Straighten up and harden the edges (do this even if you don't try to match the sprite style) and clear the surfaces a bit (so they use less colors and sharper textures).

Personally, about people minding the discrepancies in the style, in a game most people try to create art that reflects the story and atmosphere, but different styles between sprites and backgrounds just interferes with that. Also, as in your example, it looks almost like the backgrounds is in a different resolution which doesn't indicate any style choice but bad quality (as in as if you can't match it, instead of you not wanting it to match).

Big tip - in the future, please post in original resolution, not enlarged. You have the background and the sprite you can put one on the other in these occasions in some art software, but don't post in game screenshots of full screen if you want somebody to draw over your stuff.

Just a small tip - forum now has [imgzoom ] tags, so when you put an image link inside it, while hovering over you can change the image size. 

Smaller eyes, larger forehead (to even out the proportions) and the pupil is now the color of the pants (saves you a color in the pallete, plus it's darker thus more contrast). Changed the color of the nose (it looked like a snout in black). removed almost all inner darker lines (because you want to save pixels on this low resolutions). Changed her left (our right) shoulder, tried to make it buff but still feminine). Moved the lower part of the legs a pixel to the back, so the stance is changed from slouched the menacing. Changed the hair style a small bit. Changed the skin outline color to something with less saturation but kept the contrast by making it darker.
I tried to keep your style as much as I could.
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/qfhMG0b.png[/imgzoom]

Damn, I won't make. Well never mind, lots of great entries.

EDIT (for Trampoline):
Humblest apologies my good sir,
and my changes causing a bigger slur.

Shame my pixeling did not conclude,
and I am sorry if I seemed rude.

But there's still hope, do not fret
I am not finished with Blitzes yet!

Soundtrack seems cool, trailers are fun ("apocalypse had an apocalypse" made me chuckle). but I don't like the aesthetics of the Cryengine for this. I think it'll just look weird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKcfYX9Oqm0
It basically looks like Farcry but in different color palette. There are apparently a lot of references and jokes, but just my personal preference is I don't like Crysis/Farcry gameplay.

We'll adopt everything  you did (if you don't mind) except the 3/4 nose as it does make the character somewhat, eh, anime-pitiful-ish, won't describe it right.

Sure, no problem, I just slightly pushed things around.
And yes, might be too animeish, you need to work that one out though. Maybe add 2-3 pixels of the outline skin tone (experiment) to indicate the nose.

How about this:
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/ku48Rgi.png[/imgzoom]

Added nose, fix the hair to match in all views, narrower face in front view, moved head back in side view, stretched the jaw and moved the eye more to the right in 3/4 view. Moved some shadows (like under the jaw in 3/4 view), hope for the better.

The 3/4 view face was just too narrow and eyes to together. Also he was missing eyebrows. Nose in side view is hard, but when I moved his head back, a 1 pixel nose doesn't look that bad.
As a tip, it's good idea to keep consistent outlines, don't put them on some edges of the sprite, then don't do at other places. When between objects (as in when it's not an edge of the sprite but between clothes and skin etc.) you can choose not to use them, because number of pixels is limited and you don't need the outline as much as you do to separate the sprite from the background.

Bookmarking is made a lot more easier in Chrome however my account/computer is always the main thing I'm on. I got to other peoples houses like family and stuff and I can't expect to log into chrome and recover that one book mark.

^ Best bit.

The whole post is a brain exercise, like whatever is opposite to an IQ test.

Looks much better.
Two things though - the bottom of the stairs looks a bit high to step on, maybe add 2 stairs that lead from the ground to that wooden box part and in the middle of the tree it looks like a thick branch stops and then a thin leafy branch grows out of it, you might want to move that around a bit.

I am currently jobless. 

Apparently I just got a job, kind of a low paid internship, but still great. 

Did you just refer to your inflated number of facebook friends and in the same breath deny that you are attention seeking? Mister, that's pretty much the definition of attention seeking.

Oh, in RPG terms?
At some point you found the sword of Attention-Grabbing + 4 and now you've leveled up so much you've mastered it. You're not allowed around children since they develop ADD just from being near you. When you have visited a town, it takes them ten years to replenish their attention level, because you depleted it.

Wow, I had to read this to understand what icey said. His posts started (and they remain) with bad grammar and spelling, but now his sentences are just not cohesive nor understandable.

First of all, you need to stick to standard resolutions, is this without the GUI? Because it says the image is 800 àâ€" 498px in size.

Second major thing is perspective. Take for example the path that goes through the gates. If you really could see the path outside the walls like that (kind of above it, then think how you'd see the stairs that lead upstairs, you'd see them from above, not from the side. Horizon is definitely too high and it looks like a two point perspective, but it's not really that.


The stairs actually look nice, except they'd make a shadow below them.  Where the stairs end upstairs, the drawing just gets weird and I don't really understand what I'm looking at. You also might be overworking Photoshop brushes a bit too much, you might think it's not noticeable, but it is. You need to keep the consistency of style and texture - for example the path has a "realistic" detailed texture, while the door on the stairs is blurry and it's closer to the viewer so it'd be sharper.

Don't you think Batman movies are much better recently than the older ones but the actresses are less hotter now?
Kim Bassinger or Michelle Pfeifer, you can't beat that!

Nolan Batman movies have awesome male, but horrible female casting.

Look and style of the game is defined by the story you want to tell and what atmosphere you're trying to achieve.

Personally, I find photos weirdly looking in games, something always looks inconsistent. Horror and surrealist style usually is better suited for photos, just because of that "something is off" feeling.

You can try FMV or stop-motion as well, whatever works for you. Since this community usually deals with freeware games, only thing you really have to lose is that nobody will play your game, but other than that you are given a nice tool to try whatever you like.

I'm really scared of all these newcomers with their mad skills, taking over competitions, I might not even enter this time. Nah, I'll enter, they have to beat somebody to win. 

Excellent! Everything proceeds as planned. *rubs hands* I figured some cool guy will teach me these opacity shortcuts if I sound desperate enough, thanks guys
and yeah, v and space are also really handy! Also useful is m for the marquee tool or ctrl+click on layer to paint within some boundaries. We should just have a 'useful shortcuts for paint programs' sticky thread in an appropriate forum. Maybe even with shortcuts for mac users

Well Mac/Win for Photoshop is basically just substitute Alt for Option etc. (they're basically the same combo of keys).
Also cool things - Ctrl+J copy a selection into a new layer,
Ctrl+click on the layer picture in the Layer panel turns everything in that layer into a selection (good for making masks quickly),
Ctrl+D deselects,
Alt+holding right mouse click and moving it changes the hardness and size of the brush,
if you can't see what you're selecting because of the "ants" around the selection -> Ctrl+H (after you're done, don't forget there's a selection active though)
if you want to select some element but you have many layers and don't know which one it is on -> Move tool(V) then Ctrl+click on the element and it'll jump to that layer...
For people using tablets, combination of Alt and Ctrl and buttons on the pen are awesome for zooming and changing the brush size

And why the heck is Wiener Schnitzel so popular? I HATE it. Currywurst, yes, yummy, but what's so great about some gristly slab of meat powdered with bread crumbs and SERVED WITH A SLICE OF LEMON?

Cuuuuurrrrryyyyywurst!

[ontopic]
Nice pic, dBoy!

I first tried currywurst in Berlin (didn't see them before either). I think it's Germany/Austria thing, I live closer to Austria so basically you have Wiener Schnitzel on every restaurant menu. And they're awesome, especially with a side of French fries.

Fine... maybe just full human bikini girls kicking it up, then.  Maybe if there were animal props on them, it'd be fake fur.

Maybe you should keep some fetishes to yourself or make your own game with it.

Why haven't anyone mentioned Persona 3 and 4 yet? Those are absolutely delightful and very likeable games about going to school, making friends, hearing their sad life stories, shooting yourself in the face , fighting weird demons that may or may not be twisted reflections of the characters' inner selves and collecting Pokemons cards. I wholeheartedly recommend both of them, with Persona 4 being the slightly better one, although playing it first might make it harder to enjoy Persona 3 because of the small interface and gameplay improvements in the 4th game.

No one mentioned it because it's exactly that - going to school. I do not want to play a game where I go to school, those are called memories and nightmares. Not to mention it's a bunch of kids with the whole manga world stereotypes. So it's not for everybody.
And while Pokemons do battle gameplay, in Persona games you get battles plus going to school, arranging your time table to go to the gym etc.