Xer0bot's Pixel Art Thread [WIP]

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Hi guys,

Decided to create a thread for pixel art that I make.
I really suck at pixel art, which is why I need to try since the price of pixel art these days is quite high, especially since I haven't released a game yet nor made an income from one!

Currently taking an art first approach to my next game, I've tried the code first art later approach, code and hire artist approach and hopefully this works!
My aim is to create pixel art that's pleasant and relevant to the story and scene set within the story.

But yeah, still starting out and I've seen people take breaks and work on other art but I'll try to stay relevant. (perhaps also rewrite this post)

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So I started off with a floor plan.. trying to figure out the necessary rooms required for the story, where each room would need sufficient space for the interactive content.
At this point I was stressing my balls off.
Cause it didn't feel necessary, with my inexperience I just went with it and decided to move over to GMS's pixel editor, create a sprite and start with some room..

Not sure why I added a first floor, perhaps to avoid a really long building, But the attic is required for the story.

Had some trouble with the division between rooms, I still do as you'll see with the staircase later, but so far I'm content with the divisors and yeah, made some tiles for the kitchen since this building is reaaaally old and the story is based in South Africa, so I went with a feel at home design there. The floor tiles are hexagons, I like how plane it is because I can remove some tiles and darken others, crack them too and so on to show wear and age. Perhaps color them some. I really haven't got any color in the kitchen though, perhaps that will come with the furniture.

area_kitchen.JPG

Next up is where I'm currently at, although this dining room is way too long ..I'll crop it for the additional rooms later but wanted to populate the space for now.
Would be great if yall can guess the materials I was going for ? And any opinions on the mix of colors ? Just added the floor tiles with a bit of distortion, they feel out of place though.. I'm thinking of going with a marble approach instead.. any ideas ?
The sheets on the walls seem repetitive to me. I plan on doing the same thing to these sheets as I did with the kitchens tiles, make the sheet image part of a set of four, then iterate them.. hopefully sticking to the same sort of design. I was also thinking of adding some story easter eggs into the design.. but for now I'm happy.
If you look at the boards against the walls, I'm not sure what their application was, but I like the design.. The top and bottom rows(not middle) is usually carved out, or of a different material, don't want the owners to appear too rich so either it'll go towards silver or copper and then more sheeting in the middle column, or just varnish the wood so it's a little reflection with flaking here and there. It's up for debate though.
Walls are kind of a navy blue paint.
If you follow the staircase up there's a weird thing happening tbh. But it might work depending on how I use views in the room.

area_diningroom.JPG

Made some changes to the DiningRoom, although it's probably a living room.. aww jees how can I add a TV when it looks archaic.
dinningroomupdate.JPG
Well.. I prefer a warm carpet. These tiles seemed too bathroomy lol. And too similar to the kitchen tbh.
dinningroomupdate2.JPG

That's it for now. I needa go make coffee, not a night owl. xD
 

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pixeltroid

Member
Nice patterns and colors, but I'm having a hard time making out the perspective of the setting. I'm not getting any sense of depth from the picture. :|

Can you add more objects to the scene?
 

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Decided to scrap the house, start over..
With the feedback I've received the rooms are way too different. I knew it by the second room that it was way out of what I was aiming for, like the cornices and such, but I needed to hear it from fellow pixel artists.

spr_HouseBackground.png
It was a really fun experience, frustrating at times, suppose educational as well and I'm hoping in the next attempt I'd have learnt a bit from the feedback received over the various threads on GMC and Pixelation.

@pixeltroid The plan was and still is - layers:
  1. Back layer is what the player walks on which would have a collision mask afterwards to restrict movement to logical paths only.
  2. Front layer which a player can walk behind.. like a horizontal rail on the staircase for example..
  3. Objects layer
  4. Lighting layer

I do want to start over today, but I feel really keen on copy pasting the rooms from the above image that I still like and can just modify.. will see.
You'll notice the third room with the filled in wall(blue) and confusing floor, that was the last piece I worked on.. started getting frustrated..

It really feels like cheating, using the same floors or walls and art for various rooms.. I really didn't like that.

Oh right, one last thing! I think this took me around 20 hours to do without distractions, and I remember while working on I recalled seeing a friends artwork on instagram, and she does really amazing artwork nearly everyday which at the time made me feel like I'm going at a snail pace, discouraged, cause this is just one house.. and the story I'm working with will have the father of the house visit a few other buildings to loot right.. and that's like 3 pages into the story out of 178 pages.

But just now it actually feels like, if I give the house another go, do it in another 20 hours or so.. then I could have what.. 20-30 houses per a month(lockdown lol) ?
which is kind of energizing to think about.
 
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Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Yes it was 4 way movement to utilize the space of the house properly.. Then I planned on going out doors with the same style..

But Now I'm thinking.. instead of adding depth to the houses with 4 way movement, if I go full out Platformer, I can have zones.. and then I could move to new zones by checking out the map to see what's available.. That would also remove some other issues like how I'd go to the back garden of the house.. I had an idea but maybe just full out this war is mine style but in 2D.

Just hadn't thought of maps yet!
 

NightFrost

Member
Platforming is a rather different style of game compared to 4-way roaming, so make sure your game idea can survive the transition. But if you want to see how play spaces are created in 4-way movement games, look at games like Stardew Valley. Or Hyper Light Drifter or Rimworld or even the beat-em-up River City Girls. Or really, at any oldschool JRPG, or the asset flip grey goo that comes off the conveyor belt called RPG Maker. (On platformer side, you could look at the likes of Dead Cells, Momodora and Oxygen Not Included.)
 
Little tip for your staircase, after the landing, have the upper stairs trail off to the right but don't show them going all the way up.
Then in the room above, have the stairs appear at the back of the room inline with the stairs from the room below.
This will give both rooms a sense of depth.

I understand how challenging this can be. I'm working on my own 2d platformer art trying to get a sense of depth like they achieved in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. Obviously this is a sole worker trying to mimic the work of a multimillion company so y'know it's never gonna be the same but I think it's best to aim towards a style you like.

So stick with your This War is Mine if that's what you're after.

When you go upstairs, a bit of camera trickery, you zoom to a different view but this time it shows the room above with more floor and a ceiling and a bit more back wall. The room below would lose a bit of its back wall to make is look like you're looking at the house from this new upper perspective.

Best real way to test this is imagine you're the camera, go into your kitchen and open your fridge door. Bring your head down to the lower shelf and study what surfaces you see in this position of each shelf space. Ignore the fact you can probably see through the shelves.

Now raise your head up to the next level of the fridge and study again what you can see now that you couldn't before and what you could see but no longer can.

Use that knowledge to make copies of your house so that each floor gets this unique view that you can transition together with different cameras or viewports.

It's a 2D piece of trickery I've observed in games to make something appear 3D-ish or at least somewhat 2.5D.

Obviously it is tricky to pull off, especially in pixel art but you're doing every right, start with the surfaces first before filling in with 'furnishings'. It's the equivalent of an empty fridge than a full one. But don't be too hard on yourself, because even a full fridge can limit what surfaces you see and therefore a fully furnished house might restrict what you could see when it was empty.

Keep at it. You'll get there!
 

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Right, I'm gonna redo the house today, try different designs and ideas.. do more research and try to maintain a theme to the house. I also want to work on the map which will show locations a player can go to.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Here's my feedback. Why you're calling this "pixel art" when you used white noise to generate like 90% of the texture, pick colors by throwing a dart at a palette with your eyes closed, and trying to draw a house when you don't appear to ever have seen a house in your entire life is beyond me. You should go play Final Fantasy 6 right now (it even has a steam port, but since all graphics have an ugly filter over them, I'd recommend the SNES original potentially with a Caribbean ostrich) so you can see how pixel-art houses are supposed to look.
1590740288746.png
 
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Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Here's my feedback. Why you're calling this "pixel art" when you used white noise to generate like 90% of the texture, pick colors by throwing a dart at a palette with your eyes closed, and trying to draw a house when you don't appear to ever have seen a house in your entire life is beyond me. You should go play Final Fantasy 6 right now (it even has a steam port, but I'd recommend the SNES original with a Caribbean ostrich) so you can see how pixel-art houses are supposed to look.
Yes I used white noise because it's a carpet. I say pixel art because I did it all pixel by pixel, but tell me why pixel art software comes with line tools, color fill and so on and how that is different from saving time with white noise, I ran sections through photoshop afterwards for a better finish.
Those aren't bloodstains but wood underneath the flaking gold plating.
The donut you call isn't fancy lighting, it's wear on the wood. And yes I realize it doesn't look that great, my understanding of wood isn't that great either.
I planned on removing the black lines afterwards by using color instead, it was only to get the shape as it was a WIP.
In regards to what perspective that is, It's only suppose to show the front and surface.
Not sure what you mean by JPEGiness. I am currently exporting as PNG, it just seems like from GMS to posting it somewhere there's a loss of quality.

Thanks for the critic though.
--

So in starting over, I decided to start with a character first, the reason being I then have a reference to use when creating doors and with that I can imagine the scale of objects and the house..
Width: 80px
Height: 120px(*1,5 = 1.8M)

spr_characterDimensions_strip2.png

Door frame is usually 2M in height, then another meter towards the ceiling.

I feel like I've got the right dimensions for the characters head, body and limbs, this will be the average adult male height.

I'll edit this post with the house's perspective next.

Right so I found two great tutorials regarding Isometric grids or planes, it feels like a good way to go about things. No horizon line or vanishing points.
Kind of difficult to incorporate that into the image editor in GMS 1.4 tho.


Perhaps this will fix my dimension problems!
 
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