Can I get feedback on my pixelart tiles?
Monday, April 16, 2012 - 19:04
I've been practicing my pixelart and here are 2 tiles that I made today (My first ever tiles, i've only practiced buildings). If anyone wants to give me tips, techniques, or better programs to use that would be awesome!
I made this in photoshop and any feedback is appreciated!
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That looks really good. :)
The one minor criticism I have is that the grass has a darker outline on the side but not the top, so it looks a bit odd. You might consider moving it down one pixel and adding a slightly darker outline along the top.
I actually left a line of pixels on the top just in case i wanted to add anything :D is there anything else that you think could be changed to make it look better?
BTW heres the updated version
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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I'd actually make the line slightly lighter and a little tiny bit more blue.
You might also want to make the shadow directly underneath the grass a bit larger and darker.
Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot of criticism. Your color choices work well, although you might be able to add a bit more hue variation to the grass.
All in all, though, very nice work. It'll be interesting to see how it fits in with a larger set, if you plan to add to it. I'd be happy to provide more comments as you go. :)
These are fun! Not bad at all for your first work, definately more usable than my first stuff. I'm a harsh critiquer so please don't feel like your art isn't any good. I wouldn't say anything if I didn't like it.
First, take out that green line on the dirt section. It looks a bit like an outline you forgot to color brown. Second, reduce your colors. You've got a number of colors that aren't really making a difference unless you zoom in and one color that is only there for one pixel. You have a lot of colors to work from, but keeping the color counts low can make your art stronger. It can help make the artwork look cleaner and more unified, and keeping color counts in mind can prevent you from getting into lazy and bad habits down the line. If you can't see the difference between two colors while zoomed out, they should probably be the same color. On the other hand, the darker shadow color is very abrubt looking next to the base green. You may want to add your lighter shadow color in a few places as a buffer.
Since you're doing platformer tiles I would suggest a highlight right under the dark top line. This is a visual cue that tells the player they can stand there and helps to keep it visually separated from the background.
The grass could benefit a lot from hue shifting. Instead of turning saturation down or darking the color for shadows, use the hsb slider to make the color more shadowy. So, in the case of grass on a sunny day, make the highlights more yellow, the shadows more blue.
I've made an edit of all the things I've pointed out. I hope it's useful. I'd like to see more of this, you've got something fun and it could be a really cute tile set.
All this feedback really helped me! I will work on the improved tile later with the tips from Sharm and Bart. I will be quite active in the future because I am trying to make a nice, origional tile set, so would all of you be willing to give me feedback on this topic, or a new one (As I post new pictures and tiles)? I'm not sure what the rules are on this forum, but if anyone knows if there is a time limit to each topic that would be great to know!
Thanks again for all the feedback!
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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There's no time limit on a topic. You're free to continue to use this one or start a new one as you prefer. :)
That said, the 2D art forum would be a better place for this. I know it's not super active, but I'm hopine we can change that. Do you mind if I move this topic there? I promise I'll continue providing critique. :)
Bart
That sounds great! Can you post a link to it once you move it so that everyone can see the new location?
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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Moved.
> That sounds great! Can you post a link to it once you move it so that everyone can see the new location?
It's actually still the very same thread ;-).
Aaahhhh I get it now!
I'll get working on some new tiles to post, and thanks for moving the thread!
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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I made a new version, and here is a comparison of what Sharm made (on top) and what I made (on bottom). I zoomed in and noticed that you changed the shaow of the green leaves (the top part) to be more varied and less of just a single shape (which makes it look more like a natural shadow). Is there a teqnique to doing this?
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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I just added the middle color where I thought it would look good. Unfortunately it's not really a technique, just practice. When anti-aliasing you can have the darker and lighter shades touch, but it won't be as smooth looking as having the inbetween color as a buffer. You can use that to your advantage to make something look sharper or harder. It's the most useful when doing something metalic. With the grass I used the abrupt change to imply sharp tips of the grass blades. In this case the contrast wouldn't work without using the inbetween color to blend the other edges.
So I wanted to try (as a challenge) making a lower res (8x8) tile of the same kind of grassy theme. I want to keep making more so I can practice getting them to look and feel more naturaly, like yours. You might have to zoom in a bit to actually see these, but they turned out ok and I'm still working on the edge peice. I just wanted to see what you thought about them so far.
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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Looks good, it's obvious what it is and still manages to have style. If you wanted to, you could tile those together into a 16x16 tile, add a little variation, and with a little work it could be used to expand your first tile set.
What do you mean tile them together into a 16x16? Do you mean scale it up so that it fits 16x16?
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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Nope, I mean put them side by side until the pixel width reaches 16, then add dirt until the height is right. Then add variation because while the scale works, the repetition is a little too much for a bigger tile.
Sorry for not responding the last 2 weeks, I have had tons of stuff to do. I worked on a couple more tiles for the 8x8 set. I get what you mean now about tileing it and I can kind of do it now that I have the dirt tiles.
So I made a dirt tile and an edge for the grass, but I haven't made an edge for the dirt yet, so there is a gap on the far left of the picture with all of the tiles. I noticed that the dirt tile looks kinda repetitive, how could I fix that?
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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Usually the way I like to deal with repetitive tiles is just create a second tile that tiles along with the first one, and then occasionally use that tile instead. 8x8 is pretty small, so unless you do something like that it's going to be fairly hard to avoid looking repetitive.
Bart
Depending on your lightsource, you may also find flipping/rotating/some combination thereof tiles to be a viable way to relieve repetition. Just make sure you know where your lightsource is located, otherwise transformations like these won't work very well (e.g., if you flip a tile upside-down and your lightsource is from above, that flipped tile will be illuminated from the bottom instead of the top, and will clash with the rest of the tileset).
I think I might be able to flip my dirt tiles, but it might look weird so I'll just create another one. Will it look really weird if its a totally different tile, or should I have it look the same just with minor differences like shadeing (maybe move one of the bumbs up or down a bit)?
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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I'm not sure why you felt the need to start working so small. 16x16 is a good size, I only suggested doing things to make this small tile that size so that it could be used with your first tiles that you were working on. Why not continue with those tiles?
I just wanted to try making 8x8 pixel art, and I now know that it's really not that great. There's a lot less room to work with and the outcome is less attractive. I'll stick to making 16x16 stuff, any ideas for another tile? I might do some type of stone but I'm not sure what yet.
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AppdojoStudios - A Corona SDK, Android development company
http://appdojo.com
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Platformers need stuff to stand on, stuff to jump onto, stuff to avoid, stuff to attack, suff to collect and backgrounds. You should pick a theme and use that to make up what those things will be made of.