Grass (help needed)

[zuloon]

a) How can I make the colors match my goblin?

b) How can I make a less repetitive tile?

EDIT:


I changed the colors to what I want the game to look like.

[sharprm]

I think the shirt definitely falls into category of "pillow shaded". This means that you have bright colors in the centre and dark colors on the edges. You are not taking into account a light source. You need to add some darker shades and draw shadows cast from head and hands onto clothes and legs. What kind of perspective are you going for?

[zuloon]

I think the shirt definitely falls into category of "pillow shaded". This means that you have bright colors in the centre and dark colors on the edges. You are not taking into account a light source. You need to add some darker shades and draw shadows cast from head and hands onto clothes and legs. What kind of perspective are you going for?

Thanks for the CC.

Top down.

[sharprm]

Are the two pieces related? I can see how the grass is "top down" (ie camera directly above) but the orc clearly isn't. Do you have an example of what you are trying to achieve (eg. a similar game's screenshot?)

[zuloon]

Maybe not top down...

here:



Like Zelda's perspective.

[Joseph]

3/4th's

[zuloon]

Here's the start to my new grass... but I need help choosing colors.

I know that if I only use those colors, it'll look repetitive. However, all the other colors I've tried either look too similar to those in the tile or too out of place.

[Opacus]

I gotta eat now so I can't give you an elaborate explenation, but I hope this speaks for itself

[PypeBros]

Here's the start to my new grass... but I need help choosing colors.

The best trick i found so far is to use HSV gradients rather than RGB. E.g. click the "generic 16-color palette by Arne" image ahead, pick his dark-green, bright-green and yellow in your favourite image editor and build a hue-saturation-value raster out of them. You should then find proper colors for drawing your grass.

If your orc doesn't read well over that new grass, just decrease grass saturation alltogether, and it should be better.

[Dusty]

There are whole posts contributed to how to choose colors, I can't provide the links for them though.
Either way, I tend to notch saturation down when I go to my darker shades, and add a little blue to it, and raise my saturation when I'm adding highlights.

[zuloon]

C+C? (on the pig)

[zeid]

  Before you go any further, fix up the highlights on the very first sprite. It is nasty pillow shaded, something you want to avoid 4 eva!
Pillow Shading is shading with no real light source, instead you just work your highlights upwards towards the middle of a shape.
Your work process should go something like this. Create the outline/silhouette of your piece. Select a light source and blotch in your highlights, shadows and midtones IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LIGHT SOURCE like in the first image. Then you can start adding details, mixing colour ramps, etc. as seen in the second image.

My edit is just a quicky, I added some ears to the goblin as I felt he didn't look gobliny enough. I thought he was an orc until I read what you wrote.

[zuloon]

Before you go any further, fix up the highlights on the very first sprite. It is nasty pillow shaded, something you want to avoid 4 eva!
Pillow Shading is shading with no real light source, instead you just work your highlights upwards towards the middle of a shape.
Your work process should go something like this. Create the outline/silhouette of your piece. Select a light source and blotch in your highlights, shadows and midtones IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LIGHT SOURCE like in the first image. Then you can start adding details, mixing colour ramps, etc. as seen in the second image.

My edit is just a quicky, I added some ears to the goblin as I felt he didn't look gobliny enough. I thought he was an orc until I read what you wrote.

Actually he is an orc... lol

But I can't tell the difference.

Anyway, the image is titled "orc".

[I Am Uh]

Made an edit to show you some things that might help.


- Ears
- Definition
- Battle Scars (He is an Orc you know.)
- Maybe Some Hair

I would help with the body, but I've never been good at those. Hope this helped.

[Opacus]

I think the contruction of the body and the size of the body vs the head is the reason why it looks like a goblin, not an orc.
Orcs are generally powerfull, big, creatures. And Goblins are small, pesky, childlike creatures.
I think you are currently exxagerating the wrong features. Such as the head.
Here, take a look at MR Incredible and his son. Since I'm taking you're going for a rather cartoony look:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~amarisw/images/incredibles.photo.jpg

You can see, that because MR.Incredible is extremely powerfull, his torso is incredibly (Haha, get it? Incredible? hah..ha....nevermind...) exxagerated
to empathise his strength.
And his son is small and nimble, and to make his body look more tender, his head is huge.
You could see MR Incredible as the orc, and his child as the goblin.

Please don't mind that I'm horrible at anatomy

[zuloon]

Wow. Thanks guys. I was actually feeling a little depressed since I know it's not too good, but your guy's edits inspire me.

BTW Opacus the sidescroller looks awesome.

[zuloon]

I updated it

BTW its has to be 32 x 64

[zeid]

It still looks pillow shaded. You haven't gained much from our advice it seems. 
Opacus' advice on emphasizing certain parts of the body to give the sprite more character was not taken up at all. You should be able to change the image to be more like the edit Opacus provided and still keep it within the 32x64 dimensions. My advice on how to shade it so it didn't look pillow shaded was similarly overlooked it seems.

Sorry but the best I can say is look over the edits and advice we gave and try again, look up some tutorials while you are at it. I don’t think you will be able to successfully progress forward until you grasp the concepts we are attempting to provide about light and form.

[AdamAtomic]

It is less pillowshaded, but zuloon it very much appears as if you took your basic existing shading and just moved it up a couple of pixels.  Unfortunately, this is still pillowshading!  The point everybody has been trying to make is that pillowshading is fairly silly and artificial because it is not really based on light or a lightsource or the 3d form that you are rendering.  An exercise that I find really helpful (And that lots of traditional painters do with charcoal) is to try and render your shape using just a few shades of gray, maybe 3 - light, midtone, and shadow.  This is frequently helpful for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are not having to worry overmuch about color, and not having to worry too much about those high-end pixel art techniques like AA and dithering, etc.  This piece also relies much too heavily on outlines and mirroring, and the pose is very dull.

So, to recap, try sketching this character in a more interesting pose, without mirroring, without outlines, with just a few shades of gray.  Even if you don't like how it turns out I think you might find that it is an illuminating experience in and of itself!  You need to get your brain thinking about forms and volumes and light, not pixels just yet.

Good luck!