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I'm glad I could help out. If you can put together some awesome backgrounds with what I've taught here, I'll be happy. When you've worked out some useful shortcuts, by all means take them - however, it's just like I said before (again, in that last thread), you've got to know the rules before you can break them.

And I guess my motivation is a mix of a few of the above. Though I'm by no means a pro at animation (though I'm trying to get there), I do like helping people - not just you, but anyone that I can help learn more about art, or whatever other trivial lore I can impart. And though I do have projects I'm working on, I find taking breaks and muddling about in the Critics' Lounge is therapeutic. Gives me things to focus on aside from what I'm obsessing about at any given point in time.

I'm glad you like the animations - they're meant as teaching tools, and I really hope that someone else can learn something useful as well. I'm flattered that SSH has already found the 'Simple One-Point Perspective' animation and posted it on the AGS Blog. They take maybe an hour, maybe less. I don't really pay attention to how long it takes when I'm animating. I lose track of time when I'm in the zone.

I think they BONEd.

Definitely pay close attention in art class, if you want to hone your skills. You'll learn a lot of really useful theory there. Linear perspective is a great place to start if you want to work on architectural drawing. Anything that's man-made or geometric can generally be represented pretty well with linear perspective, though things get more and more complicated as you start to do things with tilts and so on.

Honestly, I'm much more a pen/paper kind of person myself, when doing background art - back when I started with AGS, I put together a good number of pieces, and all of them used linear perspective (useful inside buildings, not so much so in 'natural' settings. But with a ruler, a light and easily erasable pencil and a little patience, you should be able to get something really nice done, especially if you practice for a while.

Now, in regards to the edit you made, just as KhrisMuc said, there are some issues here. I have a feeling you may have learned a bit about two-point linear perspective, but just to reiterate:

All lines, when everything is square or rectangular should either A) Lead to the Vanishing Point or B) Be horizontal or Vertical.

The main issue there is that shelves of your bookshelf are tilting down. They should not be on an angle. Let's take a look at how linear perspective in relation to the horizon should show us the top and bottom flat surfaces of objects.



On your bookshelf, you're trying to take shortcuts and missing a few crucial steps in the process. Always start with your simple steps, and don't get rid of your lines until you're absolutely sure you're done with them. Take another look at the 'table' in the image during my tutorial above. I didn't delete any of my lines until I was completely done with the object. I actually jumped the gun a bit and didn't put in the footer in the wall. I would've had to redo my floor lines otherwise.

I'm fairly certain that I already gave you a brief tutorial on linear perspective in the last Critic's Lounge thread that you started, but I'll gladly reiterate, since some people may not have read that one (Even with the link above).

Linear perspective is a simple technique which follows the principle that all parallel objects (objects whose edges run exactly the same direction) point to an imaginary point in our vision which is called the 'vanishing point', which falls on our 'horizon' (where the ground and the sky touch, in our vision, assuming the ground is a flat plane.

Drawing art using a single perspective point is simple. I've put together a really short animation to demonstrate the most basic principles.



The steps demonstrated in this animation:

• Establish a Horizon (Above your horizon, lines will go up. Below, lines will go down).
  
• Establish a Vanishing Point (All Parallel lines on your z axis will converge at this point)
  
• Any surface 100% perpendicular to the 'camera' can be created with straight horizontal/vertical lines
  
• All parallel lines follow the corners of your room and other square objects to the VP
  
• You can create simple 3D objects by creating 'boxes' around them and filling in the necessary details.
  
• Remember, every object with parallel lines should converge at the same VP.

And you're done!

There are also techniques to make sure that your objects are proportioned correctly, but I'll save that for another time. I didn't want to spend too much time on this, and only really wanted to demonstrate the principles of One-point linear perspective.

Hopefully this is useful to you. Feel free to take the animation and open it in an art program to get a better idea of what's going on, as (for example with the table) I kept things moving along at a pretty steady clip.

He looks great, and I definitely think it's a good idea to see what others do and then attempt it yourself. Glad to see you managed to fix it up. Lenny's lookin' sharp.

Reusing colors in your palette really helps, honestly. Even though we are working in an age where palette size honestly doesn't matter, as a sprite artist, it's always a good idea to 'use your palette smartly'. As a rule of thumb, if you have two colors that look really similar in different places, you should be able to reuse them (This includes things like if you have a Caucasian character sprite with blonde hair, you can use the lightest skin tone for shading in the hair, things like that.

But I'm getting a bit off topic. If you hadn't said you were doing spriting for the first time, I wouldnt've guessed. The composition is strong, and despite a few minor issues, Lenny there reads really well.

Where animation (and incidentally all sprite work for me) is concerned, I personally use GraphicsGale - It's a program designed exclusively for low-res pixel art, so it's got a lot of the features you need, without getting too, too fancy. Some of the other folks on the forum use Pro Motion, though I can't vouch for it's usefulness since I've never used it myself. But any program with a pencil tool that supports individual frames and can output an animated .gif file will do, honestly.

Hi Jakerpot,

Just wanted to point out that you're running into perspective issues again with this room, similar to what I showed you in the other room you posted in the Critic's lounge a month or so back. You've got it relatively closely with the bookshelf on the left wall, but the boxes and shelves aren't following your perspective that you set up.

You can accomplish a much 'cleaner' looking background by keeping linear perspective in mind. As you probably remember, your 'room with cage' was a great improvement when you took that into consideration.

Without getting too crazy with advanced linear perspective, I'd suggest that for the elements in your room, you just have all the boxes, shelves, bookshelf, walls and so on and so forth use one vanishing point. I can almost guarantee that it'll feel better when looking at it.

Now, in regards to stuff that you'd find in a basement, it's really all dependent on whose basement it is. In my basement where I grew up, there was a lot of hobby related stuff - an air compressor and airbrush, easel, toolbox, corkboard, workbench, various types of cable and hoses, some electric tools hanging on the walls, gardening tools (Rake, shovel, spade, etc.), my Dad's bicycle... Now, the basement we had was actually used as a work space, so we didn't get the rest of the house dirty when working on projects.

Some people use their basements for storage instead. If your character is a collector of wines, you could have wine casks or wine bottles on a rack, if they're a scientist, you could have empty beakers, maybe an old lab coat, whatever they would likely to have extras of or not really be using anymore.

He looks great - there aren't a lot of things I can think of to really improve the actual outline or anything of the sort on the sprite itself. If anything, I'd give the usual rule-of-thumb to never use 'pure' black on a sprite. It's not the be-all-and-end-all rule of art, but black just is a little over-stark. You could also push one or two pixels on his dome head to make it a little bit rounder.

If you want to smooth out the outlines a tiny bit and give it a less 'flat' look, you could use one of your other tones to outline the lighter areas. Also, if anything, you could round out the bottom of the head so that it looks like the base is round, at the moment it's a bit sharp.

Finally, you could optimize your palette a little bit by using the same dark tones for the arms and legs as you do for the front of the body.

I've done a very minor alteration to illustrate the points I just mentioned:



I didn't change a whole lot, but I'm using the same dark tone for everything that you previously had as black. Added only one tone (a near-white pink) to avoid using pure white in the image, and pushed one or two pixels around to make the head look a little rounder at the base.

Also, added a little more 'wear' to the 'bot around his joints and edges, as you said you wanted him to be 'aged'. If you have any questions about what I did, or if anything doesn't seem to make sense, let me know and I'll be happy to elaborate.

I dunno, I was burned pretty badly by HOTU's draconian 'no simultaneous downloads' policy, which got me sitebanned on more than one occasion for no apparent reason (Which I think had something to do with having broadband before broadband was widely used). I kinda stopped visiting the site a good 8 or so years ago when it just got too frustrating and I felt there were better alternatives for the services that HOTU rendered in the first place.

Honestly, I think the only reason I even ate up any of their bandwidth in the last however many years was related to RoN. This isn't to say that I think the site deserved to go down, but I definitely approve of some of the ideas that they (I think is the proper asexual term) came up with for a refurbishing of the project regarding wiki-style content, open uploading and what-have-you.

Hopefully the site as a resource will be brought back in some form. A lot of useful information was hosted there, I'm sure, and you can never have too many reviews of games that you're not sure if you want to bother playing or not.

[Kinky Island]

Hi Folks,

Since Mods is stuck without internet access, it's my responsibility to be the one to 'release' these preliminary bits of our current, up until this point semi-secret project, the revival of Kinky Island. The project is currently in the hands of Miez, Mods and myself. My job, aside from coercing Mods and Miez to pick the project back up, is to do all of the sprites and animations. Here is a small but delectable taste of what is to come:

NSFW Pixelated Boobies below!




They're all waiting for you!

Here we have a recreation of the clothing-optional beach as seen in the demo with the new character sprites/GUI/some inventory implemented (and animated!) The background art hasn't changed yet, but the final product will have all of the backgrounds redone by the incredibly talented Miez.

Personally, I really dig what you're doing with these scanlines, but I'm wondering how you achieve the effect? I may want to implement something not entirely different in a computer screen interface at some point in an upcoming work that I'm doing. I know how to accomplish it easily enough in an art program, but are you using some sort of full-screen overlay with an alpha channel? It's a smart effect that I'd never really thought of.

Aside from it looking mucho-cool, any specific reason for using it?

Ahoy again, folks. Thanks for the comment, Alpha - unfortunately, I think I'm right where I want to be with my new palette. I have, however, taken steps to rectify some most unrighteous banding issues that were going on in the dunes, pointed out to me by some lovely peeps at Pixelation (Thanks, Buloght and EyeCraft!)

Here they are, for comparison:


Bandy

Not-so (non?) Bandy

Hi, Evil - Actually, I edited the obelisk heights in my most recent submission to PJ, though I did neglect to post it on this forum. Allow me to rectify this issue:



I actually left the central obelisk in place - I like it as tall as it is, actually, although it does effectively bisect the background, I think it's interesting, and also offers a sense of scale that I like. The one to the far right is shorter again.

I really like that I can just fiddle with my palette. Maybe a little better? It's a fair sight less saturated than Progz's, but I like what it's doing.

Yeah, don't you just hate it when someone proves that your color selections still suck? I'm still not personally sure if the more 'alive', vibrant tones of Progz's edit are quite what I was looking for - Conceptually, it's supposed to be a 'dead' planet with only a few mining and scavenging operations on the surface. Also the atmosphere isn't really meant to be the same as Earth's, and an (un)healthy smattering of ultra-fine dust and sand all over the place...

This of course could very well be me trying to justify my own color choices. I absolutely love the way Progz took my drab world and made it look a lot more pretty, but again, I'm still on the fence about how much it fits with my own concept of the world.

You're absolutely right about the obelisks, Snarky - The one on the right moreso than the middle one (The middle one at the very least is just much closer than any of the others. The markings you mentioned in the close obelisk were meant to be there not as an outline, but actual markings - whether alien writing or some form of protrusions/windows or something, I haven't actually decided yet, but I thought it'd be more interesting than a solid slab of phallic alien stone penetrating the sky.

Unless you're talking about the selout on the right side of the obelisk in the newer edit on PJ, in which case that's exactly what it is.

Looks Great Pixel, Er... SpacePaw. If I were to really critique anything, I'd say you could up the contrast a bit to have things (especially the hand) read a little better. Oh, and just to help out, if you want to supply an image magnified, you can actually do that in the img code. Just type in brackets img width=x height=y.

Personally, I like the oozing GUI. It's original and fun. I'm not sure about how easy it is to animate a GUI, but it may even be an option...

I did a few simple edits:



Actually forgot to change the background to transparency - sorry 'bout that.

The first is a simple palette edit. giving you a little higher contrast to make the individual shades stand out a little better. Helps give some definition to the piece. I managed to cut an extra color out of your palette this way as well.

The second is the same new palette with a few edits done - I spent the most time editing the mouth, though I don't know if really fits your idea so much anymore. And the last one is just the eye with a vertical slit pupil, just for fun - if the game's meant to be horror, for that more otherworldly feel.

Hi Alpha - you're referencing Geraduatuza's last image - I've actually made a few alterations in that area, but I don't want to go too crazy over there, since it should be somewhat more shaded than a lot of the other stuff.

I've already gotten some critique on PJ, so I'm likely to have something new to see, soon.

Damn, and here I thought I'd gotten it right. I had to rewrite it a few times before as well. I guess I've got pixels on the brain recently. Uploading the picture to PixelJoint, posting for C&C on Pixelation, doing this entire BG pixel-for-pixel... That, and since your name is so close to mine, I guess it just kinda slips past me. I like the alliteration, as well. PixelPaw.

You'd think with names as similar as SpacePirate... and SpacePaw, it'd be easier to remember. Don't mind me, I'm one of those people who misreads something a few times and it gets stuck in their head like that.

Thanks for the kind words, Ghost. I'm glad that you like it, and I'm hoping to put together another new background soon (probably with a different theme).

For the time being, I've uploaded it to PixelJoint Here. Inevitably, I'll get a handful of new critiques from them, in which case I may make a few changes - of course those will be updated here as well.

Special thanks again to Evil & SpacePaw (Welcome to the boards again, SpacePaw).

Yes, that's what was missing, and it's nice to see someone was thinking the same thing I was when I dropped my last post. I had been playing with some AA between the mountains and desert, but I think I finally have it. Final draft(?):



You'll notice I desaturated some of the colors even more, and actually altered the tone I was using to AA the second layer of mountains (The purplish ones). It's really, really hazy now, but I think I like it that way. Also decided ultimately to go with the same tone as the lightest sand for the sun.

So here it is. Hope y'all like it, and if anyone has some other ideas, please feel free to share.

I'm also updating the first post with this image and a new WIP animation to show my steps, in case it helps anyone else.

You and me both - this is my first real attempt at a background that hasn't failed completely. Between you and Evil, I think I'm just about done with this one. Hopefully potential employers feel the same way. I'm going to leave it up for a bit longer before I submit it to PixelJoint and but in my burn folder - maybe take a closer look at it tomorrow and see if I still like it, or if I see anything else with fresh eyes that needs fixing and may yet try something to smooth out the AA on the foreground to midground transition. But for now, I'm semi-satisfied...

Unless someone else comes along and points out some glaring error that I'm going to need to fix - which is a pretty likely scenario.