"For however long it takes, the site funnels all available talent to produce the art necessary for that type of game." For the record, this is simply not how things work. The site's contributors are not a cohesive group under the site's control--they are generally a disparate group of free givers with different styles, abilities and interests. OGA can only direct things either by paying artists (as they have occasionally done, already generally in the service of cohesive art packs) and by running events (like the LPC, also in the service of a cohesive art pack). What you're asking for just isn't really realistic.
The first issue you have here is mixed resolutions. The base you're working with is at 2x (3x?) while the things you're drawing on are at 1x. This leads to a mix of single and doubled pixels which you really want to avoid. Always work with unresized sprites. This is a pretty common issue with beginners (I had trouble with it myself when I first started).
Re: time, shading, overally look, etc: don't worry, these things come with experience. You're already off to a decent start--if you keep practising they should come naturally. Having light from the upper left is generally a good strategy as it keeps the shading from being too visually boring and lets it show off the sprites forms better than straight-on light would.
It's a constant struggle, but if you don't have cash you're generally going to have to compromise some on graphics. OGA's purpose is in part to make this compromise much less painful by providing quality graphics that you can use free of charge, but it's rarely going to be exactly what you're after, and you'll likely have to loosen your requirements to some extent. If you do decide to make your own base to work from, I'd encourage you to post your works in progress here. It may also be possible for you to modify the LPC base to match your specs.
@AlexCons: Thanks, I'm glad you like them! Unfortunately, as I've said above I really don't have time to expand these at the moment. At least when it comes to unpaid work, my plate is pretty full.
Most of us are able to use GIMP (for example) to replace magenta with alpha. However, it's not only tedious, an alpha channel can do much more. E.g. parts of the spaceship could be made partially transparent."
1) A non-transparent background on pixel art is sometimes easier to deal with for later manipulation by another artist.
2) It can indeed be tedius, and I don't want to spend a lot of time providing different formats of the same sprites to make things extra-easy for every possible project. If you want to use the assets, do it yourself.
"
Don't provide different rotations of the same image
It's much more difficult for us to pick the correct sub-image at runtime than rotating the image on-the-fly. Programmers who don't know how to rotate an image are very beginners and still have much to learn. They should not learn how to pick the most fitting image. Loading a big texture consumes more memory and it still doesn't rotate that smoothly. We only need the image with the ship pointing to the right."
Dynamic rotation of pixel art assets is a very bad idea. Rotations have to be manually cleaned up to avoid looking awful (just see Pokemon Black/White's animated pokemon; it's really jagged and bad). In other cases it might be less of a big deal, but it's never going to look as good as it would be if it were pre-rendered.
The example isn't actually so bad, but you get the idea. You can't rotate an image that has light coming in from the side. Imagine how it would look like if two such ships were adjacent to each other, but point in opposite directions. You should light your 2D objects from above, for example."
Sorry, but this is just silly. While having light directly from above is convenient for some top-down shooters, in general it is poor practise. Non-directional lighting doesn't do much to reveal forms and tends to be visually boring.
Personally, I would be all about the feelies. I would very much like a shirt, maybe a mug. I already have a nice themed mousepad, but I could always use another (since I carry my mouse everywhere with my laptop; touchpads are for chumps.) (That said, the custom mousepad cost me a buck on a special deal).
@cdoty: yeah, they could use some more animations to be a bit more widely useful--I've just got too many other things to deal with at the moment to add more unpaid work on top of it.
@Zabin: awesome! Animated sprites would definitely be an interesting addition.
@TheValar: As Surt said it's in the included files, just not part of the previews. It is unfortunately not seamless (since that wasn't a concern for its intended use). I don't think it would be too hard to make it work, but it would take time.
@surt: Thanks
@Vestrel00: Thanks!
@Sir: Yup, so it goes. I'm glad that OGA provides a venue to make it possible to do that.
"For however long it takes, the site funnels all available talent to produce the art necessary for that type of game."
For the record, this is simply not how things work. The site's contributors are not a cohesive group under the site's control--they are generally a disparate group of free givers with different styles, abilities and interests. OGA can only direct things either by paying artists (as they have occasionally done, already generally in the service of cohesive art packs) and by running events (like the LPC, also in the service of a cohesive art pack). What you're asking for just isn't really realistic.
The first issue you have here is mixed resolutions. The base you're working with is at 2x (3x?) while the things you're drawing on are at 1x. This leads to a mix of single and doubled pixels which you really want to avoid. Always work with unresized sprites. This is a pretty common issue with beginners (I had trouble with it myself when I first started).
Re: time, shading, overally look, etc: don't worry, these things come with experience. You're already off to a decent start--if you keep practising they should come naturally. Having light from the upper left is generally a good strategy as it keeps the shading from being too visually boring and lets it show off the sprites forms better than straight-on light would.
It's a constant struggle, but if you don't have cash you're generally going to have to compromise some on graphics. OGA's purpose is in part to make this compromise much less painful by providing quality graphics that you can use free of charge, but it's rarely going to be exactly what you're after, and you'll likely have to loosen your requirements to some extent. If you do decide to make your own base to work from, I'd encourage you to post your works in progress here. It may also be possible for you to modify the LPC base to match your specs.
I might be, as it would be fun practise. But I am currently away and will be for a further 2 weeks. When I get back I may be able to do one or two.
Congratulations! I'm so happy for you, and I'm sure she will make you very proud.
Fantastic work! You've done a great job at pulling a lot of character out of a small space.
@AlexCons: Thanks, I'm glad you like them! Unfortunately, as I've said above I really don't have time to expand these at the moment. At least when it comes to unpaid work, my plate is pretty full.
@zironid_n: thanks :)
"Use alpha channel instead of color-to-be-replaced
Example: http://opengameart.org/content/merchant-ship
Most of us are able to use GIMP (for example) to replace magenta with alpha. However, it's not only tedious, an alpha channel can do much more. E.g. parts of the spaceship could be made partially transparent."
1) A non-transparent background on pixel art is sometimes easier to deal with for later manipulation by another artist.
2) It can indeed be tedius, and I don't want to spend a lot of time providing different formats of the same sprites to make things extra-easy for every possible project. If you want to use the assets, do it yourself.
"
Don't provide different rotations of the same image
Example: http://opengameart.org/content/spaceship-360
It's much more difficult for us to pick the correct sub-image at runtime than rotating the image on-the-fly. Programmers who don't know how to rotate an image are very beginners and still have much to learn. They should not learn how to pick the most fitting image. Loading a big texture consumes more memory and it still doesn't rotate that smoothly. We only need the image with the ship pointing to the right."
Dynamic rotation of pixel art assets is a very bad idea. Rotations have to be manually cleaned up to avoid looking awful (just see Pokemon Black/White's animated pokemon; it's really jagged and bad). In other cases it might be less of a big deal, but it's never going to look as good as it would be if it were pre-rendered.
"Light objects neutrally
Example: http://opengameart.org/content/night-raider
The example isn't actually so bad, but you get the idea. You can't rotate an image that has light coming in from the side. Imagine how it would look like if two such ships were adjacent to each other, but point in opposite directions. You should light your 2D objects from above, for example."
Sorry, but this is just silly. While having light directly from above is convenient for some top-down shooters, in general it is poor practise. Non-directional lighting doesn't do much to reveal forms and tends to be visually boring.
Personally, I would be all about the feelies. I would very much like a shirt, maybe a mug. I already have a nice themed mousepad, but I could always use another (since I carry my mouse everywhere with my laptop; touchpads are for chumps.) (That said, the custom mousepad cost me a buck on a special deal).
Thanks guys!
@cdoty: yeah, they could use some more animations to be a bit more widely useful--I've just got too many other things to deal with at the moment to add more unpaid work on top of it.
@Zabin: awesome! Animated sprites would definitely be an interesting addition.
@TheValar: As Surt said it's in the included files, just not part of the previews. It is unfortunately not seamless (since that wasn't a concern for its intended use). I don't think it would be too hard to make it work, but it would take time.
@surt: Thanks
@Vestrel00: Thanks!
@Sir: Yup, so it goes. I'm glad that OGA provides a venue to make it possible to do that.
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