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Wow, what a cheerful response! If I got squished like that I'm not sure I would bounce back in such a springy manner. What you may lack in experience you make up for in temperament.

The shape of the path is really quite nice, though the dirt texture is a bit too regular and intense in color to really say "dirt" to me. Saturated colors are all well and good, but mix in some more faded and natural looking ones as well.

Regarding the outlines- You might like the results if you play with non-black outline colors. For instance the path could be outlined in dark green, to go with the grass. Or the rocks could be outlined in a darker greyish brown color. That's especially true if you're working on characters- for instance skin often looks nice if it's outlined in brown instead of black. People will say this again and again, but it's good advice so I don't mind being unoriginal.

Anyhow, if you're interested in improving your texturing you might want to try this for the grass:

• Choose a few green colors that look nice together. You might want to mix in some bluish greens or some extremely yellowish greens depending on what you're going for.
  
• Start at the back of the picture, and begin filling it in with little tufts of grass. Switch colors as you go. Don't worry about the individual blades of grass, you wouldn't really be able to see those at this resolution. Just sketch in the overall shape of each clump of grass.
  
  
  
  

This looks unusually well put together for a fan game. I look forward to hearing about your progress, and hope that after this we'll see some original titles from you!

I like the new pic, and the small adjustments in the sprites' posture help.

Regarding the third portrait, I think the face is pretty solidly drawn. I have a couple of extremely easy to implement suggestions. Firstly the shading in the hair seems a little two dimensional. Someone once told me, "Draw the shape of the hair, not the individual hairs." My second suggestion is that the face itself might benefit if you nudge one or two of the darker shades down a bit in brightness.

Hmm, actually now that I've posted the edit her eyebrows look a bit asymmetrical to me. Maybe her left could stand to be more angled, like her right one? And perhaps her right eyebrow could stand to be arched a little, the end angled down slightly.

I'm hesitant to post this after the much more detailed entries above-

320x240, sketch and palette intended as a basis for pixel art. There wasn't time to pixel over everything, unfortunately.

Edit: This is from a little-known children's video game adaptation of the 1955 giant monster flick "It Came From Beneath the Sea" featuring the titular monster's daughter, who is actually a space alien.

OK, count me in. I should have something in tomorrow.

I would definitely play a game that looked like this. I like that character as well. I hope to see more from you in the near future!

I've never played Psychönauts, but I might give it a go after what I've heard about it.

Psychonauts is definitely worth playing, but while you do so keep in mind that it's (1) not an adventure game and (2) not very high budget. If you can overlook its lack of polish you may really enjoy it.

Umlauts aside, I feel I'm not left with a enough of an impression to know what to expect. All previous Tim Schafer games have had their share of heavy-handed satire, but they generally feel balanced. The focus is always on a well-told story with engaging characters. This review told me plenty about the setting. But are we looking at a fluffy satire/tribute with shallow characters, or is the story going to be as central as it was in previous releases?

I look forward to learning more about the project. It seems like whether or not I like it is going to hinge on the quality of the execution.

On a side note, it's nice to see Double Fine now has the resources to take on a project of this size. I wish they'd had this much funding when they made Psychonauts...

Hey, nice background Cluey! It has a lot of flavor to it.

I like the reworked elevator light. The original wasn't bad, but it's much more subdued and interesting now. Another change you might want to consider is adding some trim around the two doors on the left. It would both look nice and give you a chance to add a few more shadows. Another teensy detail that might look better is the lighting on the three boxes. The rightmost box looks good, even though it isn't strictly correct, but the two on the left are a little wonky. Also, for extra super bonus points, darken the door outline slightly as it passes under the right doorknob's shadow.  It sounds silly, but think that trick is really nifty.

After looking at the latest bg, for a bit, I think the lighting should tail off softly, instead of the stark break, at the edges.  More in-tune with the shading on the right wall (which is greatly improved btw).

I could see adding one level of illumination between the light ovals and the walls around them, though I don't think it's necessary. I wouldn't recommend anything more elaborate for this type of background. I think it has a nice low color depth vibe to it.

As a random aside I wanted to say I really like the slightly darker strip along the top of the walls. I imagine it began life as an outline, but it's neat in its own right now.

The original picture is pretty good for an early effort. I could definitely see it looking nice with a little refinement. I don't mean to sound harsh, but I have to agree with Andail that obvious Photoshop effects add little to a picture. A lot of people use Photoshop every day, and the novelty of filters wears off pretty quickly. Most people end up just sticking to basic drawing skills, and using filters only on occasion if at all.

But that's really not a bad background at all, why not take the original as a starting point and work on polishing it up a bit? People here would be happy to offer any suggestions you like.

Some of those above are really nice, guys... here's my two bits.

Inducing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in promising young developers since 1997.
Now you can tell your friends you're a game developer.
Your Ad Here (Contact Chris Jones for rates)
Because life is too short to go outside.
"I told you this place was controlled by giant magnets buried beneath the Earth's crust."
Design is law.
"Find the fun."
Inspiring delusions of grandeur since 1997.
Because real games don't need polygons.

P.S.- I think a list composed entirely of random quotes would be fun.

One factor is culturally acceptable alternatives to violence. For instance in many cultures in the USA, it's not considered manly to seek a nonviolent resolution to some situations. It might be interesting to track that over time, and see if attitudes have changed as levels of violence have risen and fallen.

Also I think it's important to differentiate between types of violence. Murder may not have the same causes as organized warfare, for instance. Unfortunately when asking a question this broad, it's hard to draw any type of valid conclusion. Perhaps for the purposes of your assignment you could ask a more specific question, then try to find some solid surveys or field work on the topic.

Dearest MT,
Over the weekend my best friend came over. We cooked dinner and watched a couple of movies. Yesterday I tried to draw a picture and concluded I've not been getting much practice lately. Additionally I've developed a crush on a woman in one of my classes, but I whenever I get within ten feet I become ridiculously self conscious and either trip on my own shoelaces or involuntarily squeak. Note to self: watch out for magical bubbles of awkwardness-inducing energy!.

Nice work, it's really not possible to offer any suggestions without devolving into nitpicking.

Other people have already commented on lighting, so I'll focus on workflow. If you're just looking for feedback on the lighting and colors, the rest of this post isn't relevant.

It's kind of funny looking at this, because you seem to make some of the same mistakes I do! I'll sketch something out, and it will look slightly stiff and flat. Then without improving it substantially I will dive in and start investing hours of work in it. Sound familiar?  The problem is, of course, that no matter how good the colors, lighting, and rendering are the picture will still have many of the flaws the sketch had.

Now it's obviously not helpful to suggest starting the background over. So my suggestion is to follow up on other people's suggestions for now. It's a nice background, and I'm sure it will come out nicely without an overhaul. But the next time you start a background, try and refine overall shapes and add more dimensionality to things before getting too detailed, otherwise all your backgrounds will end up looking awkward like mine. If I were looking at a sketch of this background, before you had started to paint, here are some suggestions I might have offered:
(1) Loosen up tree shapes a bit, tilt trunks slightly.
(2) Refine geometric shapes (barrel, boat front, door) a bit more before starting to paint.
(3) Have tree shapes flow more into ground, instead of sitting on it.


I hope that was helpful- I have a lot of the same habits as you, and my sketch isn't really much of an improvement. I wasn't able to offer much advice on overall composition either. Maybe someone with a better drawing ability can improve on my suggestions.

I'm not at home with a copy of Photoshop, but I think you can select all (control a), transform(control t), then set the horizontal scale to -100.
I hope there's a faster way, but that's the only way I know of doing it.

If you're importing a symmetrical character into AGS you can reuse the same sprites for both left and right walkcycles, saving memory. There's a 'flipped' checkbox under the preview of each frame in the sprite manager.

I really like the male's eyebrows in the most recent portrait version, Ben. The two shading colors really make them look solid, and the antialiasing / shading around them is nicely done. You've clearly got an eye for detail.

The new sprites are good. All I've got to offer is nitpicks, so in the spirit of constructive criticism here's a set of suggestions. I'm not at home, and can't do a paintover here but I'll try to offer enough details to compensate.

The sprites are nicely drawn, but perhaps a little stiff. I think a more asymmetrical, relaxed pose would work better as a 'standing' view in a game.

I agree with some of zabnat's notes on the side views. They have a bit of a rigid spine issue. I think they'd be more lively with a little more curviness, more forward-backward play in them. For instance, I like the way the woman's head is behind her torso. Some other ideas (for either character) are pulling the shoulder blades back, or playing with the angle of the hips. Here's an image of people with various types of posture for ideas:


It seems like the center of gravity is a little inconsistent. It's subtle, but the woman's head is far enough back that her feet should be further back as well. (Forgive me if you already know this, but the center of gravity falls between the two feet when standing still.) The male's head is pretty far forward, which is nice if he's slouching slightly, but his feet might be moved forward to make him more balanced.

Great work, I'm only nitpicking because I know you have insanely high quality standards. I look forward to more edits!

I tend to favor real world names over internet-ey deliberately mis-spelled camelCaps concoctions followed by a string of numbers. Kudos to those of you with tidy names. The rest of you- join us and swell the ranks of the righteous! It's not too late!

A million years ago Diablo 2 was released, and I, for lack of a better multiplayer RPG, was a huge addict (despite my intense hatred of the game). "Sparky" was a sorceress who specialized in lightning spells, named after a dog. Which I suppose makes me a person (named after an imaginary sorceress (named after a dog)).

Congratulations. Any and all development delays are hereby excused!

Cute photo, by the way.

zabnat- JGame looks pretty neat. And it might be a good way to learn higher level concepts without getting mired in the details of making your own engine.

fred- I actually saw that in the bookstore, but I wasn't sure how helpful it would be for 2d games. That sounds like it would be useful though, especially as a way of improving my meager knowledge of object oriented design. My class diagram looks sort of like a giant bird's nest right now, or perhaps a wrestling match involving several dozen earthworms.  I could definitely use the help- I think I'll go out and buy a copy.

The only thing I still have yet to find is a nice forum for beginner level questions. I've looked around at the sun developer network and JavaWorld forums, but a lot of people there seem to post very carelessly and respond to each other in an apathetic, ego-driven way. I guess the AGS forums have sort of spoiled me, I should probably just bite the bullet and tolerate the eccentricities of the average forum environment. That said, if there are any quality java forums I've missed out there, I'd very much appreciate a heads up.

Cheers everyone, I'm pretty much set. Thanks again!

Wow, what a nice little surprise! I remember playing this game over and over with a childhood friend. She beat me every single time. But your friendly (and impressive) computer player kindly let me win.

Nice game!

P.S.- I'm making a game with the same grid type- what type of storage did you end up using for the grid? Is it a sheared square grid? A square grid with staggered rows? Something else entirely? Just curious.

Wow, this is so tempting... unfortunately I don't have time to enter this. Nice concept, very close to home for me. This would fit right into the AGS game I'm working on.