Thanks Boom Shaka, that's great feedback. The springbot sounds fun, I'll see if I can find an enemy jump arc that is fun to drive under.
I had the same thoughts about animating the bots' eyes. I also thought about animating the "eyes" on those green plants, I think it would make it feel creepy and alien. I might leave that to the polishing phase if the game comes together well.
This one pays more attention to the main light direction, and makes sure each panel's brightness and edge visibility is relative to that.
I lightened the internal sepration lines on the panels. Those fine lines wouldn't be so dark from this far away. Dark lines should be saved for clear separations of depth. Notice I kept the dark line separating the head and the body, and between the shoulders and arms. Those are important to reading the main shapes, in the same way that the black cartoon outline separates shapes from the background.
I would say on the body frames the edge shading is causing issues. You have a single pixel stripe on top/left that is brighter, and on the right/bottom it's darker. Because every panel has this one pixel border, it makes each panel look flat and facing the viewer. Kind of like old style GUI buttons, it just has the appearance of sticking out slightly instead of giving the robot form.
maruki's right about that panel, it sticks out now that the perspective is corrected in other places.
Also, I think the bottom of the cylinder may need cleanup. The curve should follow the bottom half of an ellipse. Here I used the Ellipse Select tool and selected an area that fit the left, right, and bottom of the cylinder. I colored in Blue where I think there are missing head cylindier pixels.
@UnityProgramm these are licensed Creative Commons Attribtion Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA_. You can use them with correct Attribution (give me credit). And if you make any interesting changes/upgrades/remixes of these weapons, also Share-Alike those changes. Thanks!
Debian is the gold standard for strict licensing (thus the phrase "is it Debian free?"). If they have a hard time taking GPL art without sources, then OGA should ask for sources too. That is, if we decide to keep supporting GPL licenses (if not OGA, then who?).
So, flat areas of metal technicall would work sort of like mirrors. But there's nothing around the robot to "reflect" here. So I'd say to continue using the bands of light and shadow, even if it wouldn't exactly work like that on a flat surface.
I tried a few things here:
- Use stripes to shadw out the body
- tweak the top of the head. Have each band of color curve around and meet on the other side
- Added a slight implied lip to the bottom of the head
- Thickened drop shadows in a couple places to help imply depth
Feel free to ignore these if it's not the style you're thinking. But it's kind of how I would go about it.
One place to start improving on is your metal rendering. Try doing a Google image search for "metal cylinder". Notice that cylinder colors are rarely a smooth left-right gradient of shades of gray.
Metal cylinders usually have bright and dark stripes mixed in, which are reflections of lights and objects around that cylinder. The stripes facing the main light source tend to be brighter and yellower. The stripes facing shadows are darker and more blue/purple.
With pixel art you don't have to get nearly that detailed. Just a few colors and stripes will make it appear metallic. Take a peek at the tin can from my Recycle Items Set:
Notice even those the can is a gray metal, it has some green and blue and purple. The stripes are not arranged in a smooth gradient, instead it's mixed up some.
I also notice you used some dithering to shade the metal. That can work with the right style. But usually, dithering adds some implied roughness/texture. It will make your metal feel less smooth and shiny compared to having hard edge stripes.
---
Another thing you may notice about that tin can is there are horizontal ridges. The detail is not drawn on the metal with a black line. Instead it's implied with the colors. If you understand the way your main light is pointing, you can easily add in convincing ridges, bevels, seams, rivets, shadows, etc. by moving up or down one color on your palette.
On your robot you have black lines to show a panel and a vent. That's fine for a simple art style, but it won't help your material look metal. Try using your color ramp instead to imply where the lights and shadows are catching these raised/lowered features. Example:
Thanks Boom Shaka, that's great feedback. The springbot sounds fun, I'll see if I can find an enemy jump arc that is fun to drive under.
I had the same thoughts about animating the bots' eyes. I also thought about animating the "eyes" on those green plants, I think it would make it feel creepy and alien. I might leave that to the polishing phase if the game comes together well.
Here, some suggestions.
This one pays more attention to the main light direction, and makes sure each panel's brightness and edge visibility is relative to that.
I lightened the internal sepration lines on the panels. Those fine lines wouldn't be so dark from this far away. Dark lines should be saved for clear separations of depth. Notice I kept the dark line separating the head and the body, and between the shoulders and arms. Those are important to reading the main shapes, in the same way that the black cartoon outline separates shapes from the background.
I would say on the body frames the edge shading is causing issues. You have a single pixel stripe on top/left that is brighter, and on the right/bottom it's darker. Because every panel has this one pixel border, it makes each panel look flat and facing the viewer. Kind of like old style GUI buttons, it just has the appearance of sticking out slightly instead of giving the robot form.
I've moved a few of them to here: http://clintbellanger.net/articles/
This is an out-dated tutorial, but the basics still apply:
http://flarerpg.org/tutorials/cave_tiles/
In essence:
- Start with a square grid, fully UV unwrap it to have a seamless texture
- Move the tile edges into a fixed cross-sectional shape, that each tile will snap to
- Subdivide and then displace the inner vertices randomly (using Noise, Fractal, etc)
- Apply seamless texture
maruki's right about that panel, it sticks out now that the perspective is corrected in other places.
Also, I think the bottom of the cylinder may need cleanup. The curve should follow the bottom half of an ellipse. Here I used the Ellipse Select tool and selected an area that fit the left, right, and bottom of the cylinder. I colored in Blue where I think there are missing head cylindier pixels.
@UnityProgramm these are licensed Creative Commons Attribtion Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA_. You can use them with correct Attribution (give me credit). And if you make any interesting changes/upgrades/remixes of these weapons, also Share-Alike those changes. Thanks!
Debian is the gold standard for strict licensing (thus the phrase "is it Debian free?"). If they have a hard time taking GPL art without sources, then OGA should ask for sources too. That is, if we decide to keep supporting GPL licenses (if not OGA, then who?).
So, flat areas of metal technicall would work sort of like mirrors. But there's nothing around the robot to "reflect" here. So I'd say to continue using the bands of light and shadow, even if it wouldn't exactly work like that on a flat surface.
I tried a few things here:
- Use stripes to shadw out the body
- tweak the top of the head. Have each band of color curve around and meet on the other side
- Added a slight implied lip to the bottom of the head
- Thickened drop shadows in a couple places to help imply depth
Feel free to ignore these if it's not the style you're thinking. But it's kind of how I would go about it.
One place to start improving on is your metal rendering. Try doing a Google image search for "metal cylinder". Notice that cylinder colors are rarely a smooth left-right gradient of shades of gray.
Metal cylinders usually have bright and dark stripes mixed in, which are reflections of lights and objects around that cylinder. The stripes facing the main light source tend to be brighter and yellower. The stripes facing shadows are darker and more blue/purple.
With pixel art you don't have to get nearly that detailed. Just a few colors and stripes will make it appear metallic. Take a peek at the tin can from my Recycle Items Set:
Notice even those the can is a gray metal, it has some green and blue and purple. The stripes are not arranged in a smooth gradient, instead it's mixed up some.
I also notice you used some dithering to shade the metal. That can work with the right style. But usually, dithering adds some implied roughness/texture. It will make your metal feel less smooth and shiny compared to having hard edge stripes.
---
Another thing you may notice about that tin can is there are horizontal ridges. The detail is not drawn on the metal with a black line. Instead it's implied with the colors. If you understand the way your main light is pointing, you can easily add in convincing ridges, bevels, seams, rivets, shadows, etc. by moving up or down one color on your palette.
On your robot you have black lines to show a panel and a vent. That's fine for a simple art style, but it won't help your material look metal. Try using your color ramp instead to imply where the lights and shadows are catching these raised/lowered features. Example:
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