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So currently I'm working on my top-down action game, and while the gameplay aspects are going well the environmental and level art is absolutely terrible. I like the style for the character sprites, and want to emulate that in the rest of the game's art, but so far I've been failing at that. I'm using tilesets for the level art. Does anyone have any tips or ideas on any shaders, styles, or techniques I could use to improve my game's level art?
The look of the first level (takes place in a garden of some kind)
maybe look into grass textures on the internet with similiar light source as your art? I think you could easily add a texture to the grass tiles using gimp 2 or photoshop. like a fill using clipboard sort of thing. <- this is not the same camera angle as yours, but that's my basic grass texture I use for my game. bear in mind desert grasses are less frequent than say a garden's ground. but maybe it will give you an idea?
Best of luck. It looks nice imo, just needs some textures for the grass.
Since your characters are circle shaped, maybe consider using circles in the landscape. You could give everything a bubbly shape with smooth gradient colors.
The tiles / background does look nice as it is though.
And good job making the characters and checkered-gray-tiles look like they're popping out (well done with the shadows!)
...but that leads me to my point
What is that white stripe down the middle?
If it's supposed to be the pit of Khazad-dûm I suggest giving the cobblestone texture some perspective (further bricks appear smaller) and / or some shading.
As far as styling goes, I would think about your color palette and ask yourself questions.
It looks nice, but are there other levels that will look different? Will there be similar elements to each level?
Are the green characters a species that learned to adapt to it's environment like a chameleon?
Consider adding bold outlines (they don't have to be black, each object could have a specific outline color)
Don't be afraid to throw colors in there that would go against the advice of an old art teacher. It's a game, not a portrait.
Everything in here you should take lightly:
When I've gone for smooth, simple shapes and blended colors in the past.. I usually try to make sure all graphics are displayed actual size.
I go for as high-resolution graphics as I think the game can handle.
I do like the way your characters look.. but they carry the sprite-editor look and could have been made very quickly.
Consider making them a little bigger (or a lot bigger)
Obviously I haven't played the game so I don't know how everything looks during game-play.
All I know is that the enlarged character looks better to me than the characters do in the screen-shot.
In the shot I don't notice the little shading around the edges, and my eye gets caught by the crispy not-so-circular pixel edge.
It could just be a color clash thing.
Creating game art is a very time consuming thing if you want more than just the simplest stuff. So you'll mainly need to find a style you are able to do and that won't take too much time off your clock.
Now I've seen your game on @MEITdev first impressions channel and agree you need more diversity by creating different tile sets. Although I do like the floor borads you created. But I guess that's exactly what you're trying to do with that garden level now
So if you think you can do pixelart at least to a degree where you'd be happy with then google the stuff you need. You'll find tutorials and examples and sometimes even open art. Googling "pixelart topdown grass" gives you quite some examples already. In a garden scenery I'd expect walls to by more like rocky walls or maybe just hedges. The floor should look grassy and maybe have some flowers and stuff in it. Then maybe some gravel walk ways and asuming the garden is part of a mansion then one wall could be the mansions side. Edit: googling for "rpg tileset" should give you lots of inspiration as well.
If pixel art like that would be too challenging then why not just stick with some checker board style you got in the picture you posted and improve grafics by other ways like using a lighting engine. I played around with tizios glare engine and really liked it (though he stated he might not update it for GMS2) and some other grafical effects. Now if you even add more sound effects the grafics don't need to be great either (http://www.affordableaudio4everyone.com/Home.html is a really nice site for sound effects)
I've actually spent my day working on the art. I still have to make the shadows work with the tilesets, add a few more kinds of shrubbery, and make a few particles for leaves falling. But I am more happy with how it looks now.
That's cool already. It matches the style of the other level and the level of detail is manageable for multiple different tile-sets.
One thing I'm concerned about is how well the player can read the game:
The player characters color is quite close to the grass color. And saturation and value are pretty much the same. Might be better once you added shadows. Else play with shifting hsv of the grass.
I'm not sure wether the small walls with flowers in it are an obstacle or not. But I should be rather sure just by looking at it. May be alse fixed once shadows are in.
How readable will the gui be?
It's good already but at the moment I think the hedge looks too blunt in color. If you desat the grass anyways then the hedges might match better. Else try to change hsv and contrast until you think they match perfectly.
