Feedback for Indie Game Art

[DapperDave]

Better yet, I'll show you with an image! An image is worth a thousand words, after all.



The image on the top is a straight color ramp, and the one on the bottom is a shifted color ramp! Both of these ramps serve their purpose, but many would agree that the bottom sphere looks much better. The sphere on the top only has colors of solid red but the sphere on the bottom shifts its hue as it becomes brighter. It starts with a purple-ish hue of red then becomes more orange as it becomes brighter. But why purple, red and orange? Well...if you look at the color wheel, purple-red-orange are all next to each other, and purple looks darker than orange so it would work better for the shading.

You don't have to hue-shift as much as I've shown here, though. I've exaggerated the technique a bit for my explanation.

Thanks! I think I get it. Is there any specific part of my image that you would definitely apply this technique to?  Like the tree tops for example? Or just everything?

Is there an exact formula for determining the colors in a hue shift? Like if I just start with one green color, can I mathematically determine the next several brighter hue shifted colors and the previous several darker hue shifted colors?

The tree top is actually just 11 colors (maybe more were added when I resized it). I'm posting it here in its original size with the color palette. 

Is there a simple way I can take a middle green color and create a new color palette using hue shift?

[DragonDePlatino]

Well...one of the reasons hue shifting looks so good is that it's something that actually needs to be done manually. You could use a tool like this to make your color ramps, but most would consider that a form of training wheels.

To be honest, your best bet would be to take your tree into a pixel art program like ASEprite (older versions are free) and then convert it to indexed color with Sprite -> Color Mode. Then, go into your palette window on the left and tweak your colors until you get a result you'd like. The only problem is, there are a ton of colors in this tree so it'll be hard keeping track of all of your hues. Most pixel artists stick to a small number of colors for something like this (say, 6 or 8) so that colors are easy to keep track of.

[DapperDave]

Well...one of the reasons hue shifting looks so good is that it's something that actually needs to be done manually. You could use a tool like this to make your color ramps, but most would consider that a form of training wheels.

To be honest, your best bet would be to take your tree into a pixel art program like ASEprite (older versions are free) and then convert it to indexed color with Sprite -> Color Mode. Then, go into your palette window on the left and tweak your colors until you get a result you'd like. The only problem is, there are a ton of colors in this tree so it'll be hard keeping track of all of your hues. Most pixel artists stick to a small number of colors for something like this (say, 6 or 8) so that colors are easy to keep track of.

The tree top really is just 11 colors, so I'm halfway there. 



Can you see it or are my images not working again?

I actually already used Indexed Color to get it down to 11 colors. That's already part of the process.

I'll play around with the palette and see if I come up with anything interesting.

[DapperDave]

Well...one of the reasons hue shifting looks so good is that it's something that actually needs to be done manually. You could use a tool like this to make your color ramps, but most would consider that a form of training wheels.

To be honest, your best bet would be to take your tree into a pixel art program like ASEprite (older versions are free) and then convert it to indexed color with Sprite -> Color Mode. Then, go into your palette window on the left and tweak your colors until you get a result you'd like. The only problem is, there are a ton of colors in this tree so it'll be hard keeping track of all of your hues. Most pixel artists stick to a small number of colors for something like this (say, 6 or 8) so that colors are easy to keep track of.

You may be on to something! Check out this experiment I did with hue shifting. The one on the left is the original. 


What do you think?

[DragonDePlatino]

Ah yes, much better! The contrast of your foliage is a little better now, and the highlights made it look a lot more crisp. Keep it up!

[DapperDave]

Ah yes, much better! The contrast of your foliage is a little better now, and the highlights made it look a lot more crisp. Keep it up!

Thanks. Do you like the middle or the far right one? I think the far right one takes the hue shifting too far.

I tried this with a few other objects and the results were not as promising.  I have an expo coming up so I need to focus on other parts of the game for a while. I'll be back in a few weeks to show you some more experiments with hue shifting.

[DragonDePlatino]

I liked the far right one the most, though some might say the middle tree is better.

[DapperDave]

I'm back! With more feedback needed. 


Maybe before we continue I should specify that I may not be looking for specifically pixel art feedback, I just want any feedback that will make my art look better, even if they aren't "real" pixel art.



First, zoom in on the image about 400% because that’s how these images will look in the game (of course they look much better when they’re smaller here).

 
You can see four versions of the character in the top left quadrant. The first is how he looks in the game currently without hat, then with hat. Then two new versions of him with and without hat (the character wears a hat for almost all of the game). I was hoping to remake this character to look a bit older and more mature. Without knowing anything about the game, I think the original is objectively better – much happier and nicer to look at. But for story reasons I was hoping to make an older looking character. I’m not too happy with the current results.
 
Now starting with the battle sprites on the bottom. First we have a duck critter. I put this one in here because he turned out so well. I’ve been making these battle sprites lately by first making them very large and then shrinking them down and touching them up. This duck turned out pretty good.
 
Then there are three bunnies. The one most left looks good. The farthest right looks kind of bad.
 
Then a crawdad enemy. He looks okay.
 
The fox looks okay but I feel like he is missing something on his face.
 
Then we have three Indian warriors on horses. These guys don’t look so good. Humans are hard to do, especially when you’re working with such a low resolution. The horses look okay (except the gray one is a bit weird).  I don’t know how to make them any better.  Again my process was to paint them large first, then shrink them down and index the colors to limit the amount of colors used and make them seem more retro and pixelated.