On the art side...

ZeroByte on 2009/04/26 12:21 of Cine-Science Logic 2
— edited on 2009/04/26 12:42

It was nice to get the theme that we wanted, we had our game idea fleshed out enough that we could quickly move into engine creation on gord's side and art direction on mine. The way I figure the game, we'll be needing loads of art so I'm going to be using pixelart this time to be a bit faster. At the same time I wanted to take my pixelart in another direction rather than the normal retro 8bit style so this time I took heavy influence from the work of Superbrothers who has a very interesting look to his pixel art. I'm also trying for a 50's animation feel to it but I'm not quite sure I'll be able to get it.

Here's a mockup that I've gone done whipped up a bit slowly.

Inspiration:

Superbrothers
101 dalmatians colour key - very nice muted colours, started as my base
Rhapsody of Steel - simple yet effective backgrounds!
Morning sky - the natural world rules!

Whelp, back to doing more art and story writing (maybe!)

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Comments

Tee on 2009/04/26 13:54:

I like the look and the colors of the background, though I think this Superbrothers look for the characters feels somewhat odd to me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because their pixels are bigger than the background (or maybe not).

This mockup makes me curious about your idea. Also, your inspirations are interesting.

pymike on 2009/04/26 15:30:

Yeah, the characters look odd. The rest is incredible, good job.

ZeroByte on 2009/04/26 15:35:

The superbrothers look for the characters is a bit strange I agree. I'm still trying to tweak the look, I might have to do an outline for the characters cause they don't stand out enough although that won't be the best solution. It might also be that my characters aren't angular enough, Superbrother's stuff seems to curve less.

The style decision might pay off when I start animating, this style seems easy to animate and even easier to colour so I can do loads of them.

I decided to post the inspiration links cause they were just so damn interesting I couldn't just keep them to myself! Also hopefully this would encourage the other artists to share their design process. The behind the scenes stuff can be just as interesting as the final output.

saluk on 2009/04/26 15:43:

It's weird but I love it. It might work if you make the colors on the characters darker than the bg or the other way around. I think outlines would dilute the style, but it's worth a try also.

electric i on 2009/04/26 16:45:

i really enjoyed the pixel art of superbrothers. i was planning some sort of pixel art though maybe isometric.

gordallott on 2009/04/26 16:47:

The characters will look fine once we have some sort of movement/animation, its one of those things where a static screenshot will look weird but once your eye can pick up on the movement its okay

ArmchairArmada on 2009/04/26 17:55:

I actually like how the characters look, but I think the background could match better -- bigger pixels, no outlining, no smooth gradients or anti-aliasing, etc.