Messages

It looks ok, but is definately rough around the edges. You need to put a bit more work in to it. The belly just looks odd.

I have an Ipod Touch. It's very expensive and flashy, and It has wifi.

True that most phones these days have mp3 players, but I cant be arsed with those.

Aw, I'd love too, but I am in the south. I like the Idea of fancy dress Tuesdays!

[post edited by darth to avoid a flame war!]

post edited by darth to avoid a flame war!

He does not have a very dynamic pose. His upper body is too long. Forearms are too long.

Highlights on his face are not adding anything to it.

Kill the black, use a dark grey, but not too dark.

Trousers ends do not drape over his shoes. Unless he likes wearing trousers that go above his ankles.

Face. Nose, eyes and ears lower. The pupils should be around the centre line of the head. Hair looks pretty good.

Legs apart! No one stands with their legs that close together unless they really need to pee.

You could have one hand on his hip, one relaxed, make sure the sholders aren't symmetrical. The hip shoulder should be slightly higher. Hip leg straight on, other leg to the side, about six pixels away.

Take some photos of you or a friend and copy the pose if that helps.

eternal_renegade, I really like what you have done on the latest image. The lighting is almost perfect.

A few slight issues i have.

Pure black. I used to use it. We've all used it i'm sure. It's generally not good practice, as no surface is absolute pure black. Well so they say. There is always some kind of light bouncing off or whatever. a minute amount.

For the pipes, I'd use a dark shade of grey. For highlights, tweak the hue slightly towards the yellow side of things, as your lightbulb seems to be on the yellow side. Personally, i'd make the lightbulb yellowy white in the centre, and go towards an orangy-yellow (very light still though) on the edges.

For your outlines, i'd probably make them a dark version of the objects colours. For the hole, just make it darker, not black.

The box the cable goes into isnt very well defined. I had trouble figuring out what it was.

And the box on the left hand side of the image, the texturing looks very out of place, and there is too much contrast between the colours. Dithering is all good, but if you have a few more colours to play with, then why not make it look good.

There is a white line below the door. Ditch that. Unless there was a nuclear bomb going off in the next room, that much light would not seep through the bottom of the door. Make it either very dark, or a smidgen lighter than the floor depending on if the room next door is darkish or lit. If it has the same lighting as this room, then make it dark (but not black!!)

Lighting is one of the hardest things to get your head around when developing backgrounds.

I could go into composition as well if you like. Why not!

Ok. I think the room is very functional, but rather boring to look at. 1 point perspective is fine to use in adventure game backgrounds. But i hate 1 point perspective which has the point in the centre of the image.

For some reason, when I look at this image, my eyes are drawn to the lightbulb. then to the hole, then the locker, then the door. The blood didnt even register.

I'd draw attention to the locker. Make it stand out. Make it green or blue or pink or something. You need to make it shine! It is the centrepiece of this image, and it needs to stand out, to draw your attention to it immediately! Has the blood come from someone who has been dragged into the locker, or was he killed in this room?!? Draw blood splatters on the point of killing, and around. the pipe or whatever. Draw drag marks of blood. That would make it so much more interesting. And for a spooky effect, flickering light.

Thats all I can think of right now.

Put it in a savings account!! The one thing I am rubbish at is saving. The concept of too much money is impossible for me to imagine!

You know what, I find this fascinating. I have done some outlines/sketches for sprites with my wacom, but since I had always used mouse to sprite before I got my wacom, I still do. I am so gunna have a go at drawing sprites with my tablet.

Another reason I did suggest using a tablet, is due to his statement he is good at drawing on paper, and generally that translates well into pen tablet use.

There are so many fields of thought as to how you should really go about doing backgrounds. The traditionalists, purist backwards folk insist on pixel by pixel, which to be perfectly honest, is rather inefficient. You can draw in double size, which if you use the pencil/line tool, when you scale it back you get decent anti-alias.

And don't forget Layers. They are your best friend in photoshop for doing backgrounds.

And (even more!!) you need to decide what graphics style you want to go for. For simple backgrounds, I make a rough thumbnail sketch, scan it in, then create a new layer, do line work (black, 1px, pencil tool) over all the edges. You can even make curved edges with the line if you are clever like me. Then create your colour layer and block out all the colours you want. Move the linework to the top of the layer stack, reduce the opacity to about 30-40%. Then I'd probably make a shadow layer using 3 shades of grey, and maybe a lighten layer with one shade of white. Reduce the opacity of these layers to about say 20% or so. This is a technique you can use to make really simple, nice backgrounds. If you are stuck on anything, look up layers in the help. They are there for your benefit.

I wouldn't really recommend trying anything more than that without a pen tablet or some decent experience in photoshop.

Another thing I would recommend is to use more interesting perspective and scene setup. It's a rather boring composition to be honest.

And another thing, sorry, my post is getting a bit erratic now. Use a proper screen resolution. For backgrounds, 320x200, 320x240, 640x400, 640x480 or 800x600. And post in png or gif. Jpg images produce artifacts which f**k up your pixels. Most of us post in png, because its a rather efficient format and doesnt lose any detail.

There, done...

Feel free to ask any questions or to clarify anthing I said.

Thats a very lovely and sweet story.

You'd probably want to invest in a wacom as well. You can pick up the bottom of the line for about £40.

I'd say also, don't use photoshop filters unless you know how to use them. Don't use lens flaer!!!!11!

And i'd start at 320x20 resolution if I were you. Draw with lines. (click a point in photoshop, then press shift click on the next point with the pencil tool.)

Thank you Emerald. I know you do.

You don't see yufster or meowster or whatever she is called these days being very patriotic. Why does the Irish girl living in Brighton complain about her adopted country? Yes there are chavs here. Yes the uk needs to sort itself out, but it ain't that bad.

Oh well, looks like we will have to camp at woodhenge.

Well, first thing, scrumpy jack is a brand of cider. Not particuarly strong, I'm suprised your bums drink it! Most bums prefer white lightning or special brew! Funny joke I heard the other day cocerning the current state of affairs in England. 'an earthquake in Poland kills 10000. The USA sends money, Australia sends clothes, Northampton sends replacements!'

Glad we only have poles in this area and not many chavs. I think the poles may have killed the chavs.

Ah, I didn't imply such a thing! I was just pointing out the areas that could improve, giving suggestions on the way I work when pixelling.

Oh and don't be afraid of overlapping. That is where the shadow shades come in handy.

Now that is much more wizardly in a slightly stereotypical wizard-hatty n robe combo way. Which gets the point across.

Sometimes stereotypical features are useful and not degrading to your artistic integrity.

Hooray for stereotypes.

I agree totally with what tube said.
Beard is probably over the top.

[Therefore, my critique is, make a sprite, dont reduce a photo to spritely sizes and block out the edges.]

Reducing the image size of a photo does not make it a sprite. Trace over if you must. Use a simplistic style. This 'style' didn't work in Police Quest open season, and it doesn't work here.

I know its an means to an end, but i don't believe you put any effort into this 'sprite'.

Therefore, my critique is, make a sprite, dont reduce a photo to spritely sizes and block out the edges.

Eric, to me the whole lot looks like a photo. Well 2 badly edited and joined together photos.

Mazes are an irritating, lazy excuse of a puzzle. I hate them, and i'm sure many others do as well. In context I suppose they work... Nah.

The first puzzle would work in a kind of 'kings quest' where many of the characters are based on fairytales.

If your graphics card allows it, you can get around this problem as I discovered after I asked for support for 16:10 screens running 320x240 and 640x480 games. It puts black bars down either side of the screen.

In my very biased opinion of a person who has a 16:10 screen, you should eliminate 4:3 resolutions since in the days of lcd and widescreen, these formats are becoming antiquated. 16:10 is the future. You can still choose alternate letterbox mode in the setup.

Hooray for silly paintovers