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Looks much better. Sign is facing down, not that it looks weird, but gives the whole background a distorted look. Normally you'd see the bottom of the sign where the supports are attached and wouldn't see the top of the sign.

Bar shape looks really good. I think this floor layout will work great for a game. Interesting depth and shapes.

There's a lot of flatness to the walls that make the counter look like it's at the same depth as the walls. Part of it is the lack of shading behind the counter. The left wall is really flat too. My edit looses a lot of that neat saturation, but I was lazy.

Color of the screen is what makes it look, like, plasticy. You could make it semi-transparent or have there be a shadow cast through it when the character walks behind it. Shadows make it look convincing. The angle of it makes it look more out of place than the color. Looks like it's falling towards the screen.

And though the perspective is right, the weird angles of the walls bothers me. I'd place the vanishing point a bit higher so all of the lines move upwards.

I layered white over the windows and dropped the opacity to about 10ish. Then I added some lines to make glares around the edges. Not great, but somewhat convincing.

Made the blue more greenish to make it look more hospitally. I think that fixes the strangeness of the non-textured walls.

Well, I guess it depends on what you're trying to do for your project. You could mod a cheap radio, or harvest parts for a custom circuit. You could look at RC car receivers too, though they are expensive.

Played around with the stance to make him less boxy. Did some basic shading.

It's good that you know not to pillow shade, and what you did wasn't too bad, but you're starting to put shadows where they would be on the shape, rather than on the figure. Imagine where folds would be on your pants or on your shirt. You'll want to simplify that a bit, but think three dimensionally.

Not a lot of information on what this character should be. His arms looked a bit beefy, so I kind of hulked him up a bit. Face still looks a bit babyish. Again, not sure what this character's persona is. Wasn't too sure what was on the bandoleer either.

Arms seem too long. He has a weird stance, but that's mainly because he's "facing" right. Most fighters have their bodies facing more forward. If you google sprites from fighters like Street Fighter, you'll see what I mean. It's still pretty hard to make it look not awkward..

I liked the look of Andail's sprite, but I liked the way the outlines look, so I had a go as well.



Mine looks kinda crappy, as his legs aren't quiet proportionate, but the arms seem a lot less bulky.

I was trying to mimic what was already done, because I thought that some of the graphics choices pertained to other, already completed backgrounds.

I agree with the brass. Layered metal is hard to make look convincing. Changing around the grain direction and texture might help too.

I illuminated the buttons because it looked like that on the original. I love the idea of illuminated buttons, but it doesn't work unless they're all illuminated, and that would make it too messy. I think if you put a lot of effort into making the buttons look like they're recessed in a pre-cut hole, a slight embossing is all you will need.

It would be fine if you used this graphic, but I'd recommend playing around with it a bit. Especially matching things like fonts and colors to what you already have for your game. There are a lot of things that could be changed functionally. Like, apply and okay are sort of useless. Either set the options and hit okay to apply, or cancel and revert back to original settings. Other menus could have a default button if necessary.

If you use Photoshop, here's the PSD with all of my layers. I was also playing video games while doing this, so nothings labeled or organized very well. If you've got any questions about anything send me a PM.
http://www.harryday.com/images/options_buttons.psd


Also, does anyone else find that when writing comments in the Critics Lounge, that most of your paragraphs start with the letter "I"?

I had so many comments, I just made my own to show you what I mean. Not great, but hopefully it'll help.



Didn't have much time to fix some of the embossing, like around the lighter gray boxes, to make them look more like they're attached. Same with the "indents" around the illuminated buttons.

Well, for what we love (adventure games!), AGS is the best for us.

But none of us are afraid to promote other engines. AGS isn't (and probably won't ever be) compatible with 3D. Platformers take a lot of programming and effort, almost too much effort for AGS. There are a lot of other downfalls to AGS that other programs handle better.

However, from my experience, AGS has the most helpful and kind technical support. And you can't beat that. People have done a lot of innovative things with AGS and finding programming information for your puzzle idea is super easy.

Plus we have a large following of artists, so AGS Forums is really the whole package.

I did both a ninja assassin and a samurai warrior. Old school fighter style in 3 colors!

The saturations of these characters is really weird. The skin is rather dark, and white of the jacket is too gray. I played with the second characters face, didn't really spend much time on the first. I'd recommend making the colors a bit lighter and more contrasted. There are a few problems with the shading, but once you get shapes right, you can play around with the shading.



Also, when posting images to the forums, try posting in a format that doesn't loose quality. Though they appear to be solid color blocks, when I was tring to change some colors around there was a lot of variation in the colors making the dump tool useless. Gifs are the best. For some reason PNGs can save loss-less or not.

I just love that two uber-geeks were given a show where they don't have to pretend to be ANYthing ... they can just be the glorious geeks they are!!

That's what I love about this show. It's not the Myths, not the explosions, not even Kari (nom nom nom!). The best part of the show is watching the cogs turn in their head while they are creating and solving problems. When Jamie and Adam have competitions, I'm always fascinated by their final products and what directions they take. It's a very inspiring show.

Unfortunately, there's very little of episodes on Youtube and TV is something that.... wastes valuable computer time so I haven't watched really for years. Not even with a TV card.

I watched a lecture Adam Savage did for some geeky-con thing on YouTube that was outstanding. It was all about his additions to science. He even played clips of his drunk fall, and getting slapped in the face by Jamie. It was all a great insight into how he thinks and works.

If I had a cat, I'd name it Brad Esposito.

No, I think about this stuff too. I tend to think more about Medieval times and the 1950's and pulling a Back To the Future Chuck Berry guitar solo thing.

I'm sure it's possible to communicate ideas with people, I'm just not sure how well they can comprehend those ideas. If you went back 100 years ago and tried to describe the internet or computers to someone, they'd have a really hard time understanding.

You really need to look at them both at the same time to really tell which looks better. Some of my friends bought two TVs and played the same videos symotaneously on both TVs to compare contrast and color differences between their two choices. Depending on your budget, it's not always easy to buy two TVs at once, but if you've got a friend who's also looking for a TV, maybe you could convince them to buy the other TV.

Reverb and layers can be your friend when it comes to making samples sound real and have an authentic flow, just don't go overboard.

Did you have the drums slightly panning left and right? Something about it felt like it was moving slightly, like it was recorded live.

As far as quality goes, it sounds fine. It's a little quiet, but once the guitar starts, it's an okay volume. It is a very typical punk beat, but it works. You're going to want to have some interesting drum change ups. Every few measures have something a little late, or an extra snare hit, just to make it sound less digitalized. Once you have some of those things in there it'll sound less loopy, but may make the quality of the sample stand out more. You'll just have to play around with it. If the music is good, no one will even notice or care about the drum quality.

So sad about Bettie Page. I had just given a presentation about her for one of my classes on the day she died, when someone mentioned that she had recently been hospitalized. When I got home, her obituary was online.

You mean one of these?

This reminds me of some of the work by the group Eye Beam. Steve Lambert came up with this idea for "Shopdropping" and did a workshop a few weeks ago at my university.

http://www.travelistic.com/video/show/2369/Culture-Jamming-101:-ShopDropping

I'm not a huge fan of guerilla art or advertising, but the creativity and motivation of some of these groups is unbelievable.