[WIP] Ünembra

[ReBirth]

Hmm the trees look like mushrooms

[Pickleninja]

Hmm the trees look like mushrooms

Lol, I think you're right


-Pickle

[Pickleninja]

Ok... third shot at trees  




Link to image that's bigger http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/treeMockUp3.jpg

I think I like this one the best... what do you guys think?


-Pickle

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[Jimmt]

no need to use big || scrolling || gradient text for everything 

[Riven]

I just removed the [move] tag

[StumpyStrust]

Very Nice 

Depending on what direction the light is come from, (looks like the front) add some shadows to give some depth. The different sets of leaves kinda just tangle into each other.

Another thing to keep in mind is the color palette. Create a palette that is the most common colors you use and keep to it as it will keep everything in the same style/tone. Right now you grass clashes slightly with the trees color.

PS:
Love de clouds.

[Pickleninja]

[size=60pt]WOW[/size]   You are REALLY good at art. If I had a company, I would hire you straight away. Well done!!  

heh, thank you

I just hope everything else in the game goes as smoothly as this is.


more trees

http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/treeMockUp4.jpg

-Pickle

[matheus23]

They look very good, they somehow have this comic effect, that looks very nice!

I dunno what to improve there :O

[Pickleninja]

Added more trees, and placed some in the background.


http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/treeMockUp5.jpg

Time to work on bushes and rocks

*Edit: First time doing rocks

http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/treeMockUp6.jpg
-Pickle

[Joshua Waring]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NELXnZlaVw&feature=related

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Pickleninja]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NELXnZlaVw&feature=related

LOL!


-Pickle

[lavago]

This Artwork Is Really Something! I wish I could do that, it would make my games look so much better! All I can do is basic pixel art.

[Pickleninja]

This Artwork Is Really Something! I wish I could do that, it would make my games look so much better! All I can do is basic pixel art.

Thanks Lavago

I'd like to post tutorials on how to do things like dirt and grass, because it's really not as hard as people think it is... most of my work has been a combination of the following in photoshop:

1.) Pick a few colors.
2.) Draw what you want.
3.) Select a pattern overlay with a blending type of color burn (usually),

and that's about it....

if I have some time tonight, maybe I'll do a quick tutorial on how to acheive the ground.



-Pickle

[lavago]

Ok, That Sounds Awesome!

[Pickleninja]

Ok, That Sounds Awesome!

I left my tablet pen at work... and my wife forced me to watch Grey's Anatomy  

I did however do some checking to see if everything matched up ok from the sprite sheet. Guess I need to clean up the grass tiles so they mesh better


The sparkly stuff is Gold/Silver/Copper that players can mine...


-Pickle

[sproingie]

This is looking wonderfully polished.  When do we get to see Mister Paper Doll get the same art treatment?

[Pickleninja]

This is looking wonderfully polished.  When do we get to see Mister Paper Doll get the same art treatment?

Once I finish the level art, I'll probably go onto user interface stuff. The paper doll guy has a run, jump, and karate chop animations, so he'll probably get updated after

I am looking forward to drawing them up though

-Pickle

[RobinB]

Thats so awsome.
Your game keeps getting more beautiful, It already looks very playable.
Do these ores spark like they suggest, or are the sparks part of the image?

A few suggestions:
The tree leaves still look a little cloned, maybe you should distort them randomly or create some more diffrent samples (use more colors of green).
The world looks very cool and 3-Dimensional, however the grass breaks the illusion, its to much evenly distributed and its all at the same size and on the foreground.
When your sick of drawing you could try to randomize this a little.

[Pickleninja]

Thats so awsome.
Your game keeps getting more beautiful, It already looks very playable.
Do these ores spark like they suggest, or are the sparks part of the image?

A few suggestions:
The tree leaves still look a little cloned, maybe you should distort them randomly or create some more diffrent samples (use more colors of green).
The world looks very cool and 3-Dimensional, however the grass breaks the illusion, its to much evenly distributed and its all at the same size and on the foreground.
When your sick of drawing you could try to randomize this a little.

- I was messing around with animating the sparklies on the minerals. I'm not that good at animation so that's taking me a while lol. If it becomes to much of a burdon to animate it by hand, I'll probably implement the sparkles into the game and animate them programatically.
- The leaves will eventually be animated, so I'm holding off on changing anything on them until then.
- I agree on the grass... I'll probably go back and work on that later.

Thanks for the feed back Robin

-Pickle

[Pickleninja]

So I asked the guy working on this with me "Should I start trying to implement characters so we can ditch the paper doll guy, or should I work on the user interface?" ... needless to say he wants to ditch the paperdoll guy lol.

So this is my first time trying to do animation... probably going to take me a while since I'm not very fast at my art work, but I thought I'd share the beginnings of an idle animation for a female character

Don't worry... it's about as safe for work as you can get lol!





-Pickle:)

[ra4king]

Please be my artist. Like NAO. You are amazing

[Pickleninja]

Please be my artist. Like NAO. You are amazing

Thanks ra4king  

The animation seems to be coming along better than I thought it would



Let me a take a little break and I'll post up a tutorial on how I do some of these things.



-Pickle

[masteryoom]

Please be my artist. Like NAO. You are amazing

Are you the new govener of kalifoornia again?

[Pickleninja]

I made up a quick tutorial for how I make dirt in my game

http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/how-to-make-ground-tiles-in-5-steps-using-photoshop/27826/view.html



-Pickle

[StumpyStrust]

Really coming along I must keep on eye on this. Got to say though that I really respect the animation as I am working on that right now and I basically hit wall after wall. Biggest problem being I only have 15 pixels by 20 pixels to work with.

[Pickleninja]

Really coming along I must keep on eye on this. Got to say though that I really respect the animation as I am working on that right now and I basically hit wall after wall. Biggest problem being I only have 15 pixels by 20 pixels to work with.

15 by 20!? ... that's insane, I don't think I could work with something that small


-Pickle

[Pickleninja]

So I did a sketch of the animation... still needs some cleaning up.

man i really suck at this lol.

I think this qualifies even less than the female sketch when it comes to nsfw, but just to be safe, I'll just post the link


[NSFWCaution, if you're boss is the pope, he might get offended by this...]http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/femaleAnimationAttempt2.gif[/NSFWCaution]


-Pickle

[StumpyStrust]

Move the hips a bit more like in your mock up. Her legs are a little too long. Hands look great tho.

I thought for animating trees/grass. Instead of drawing the tree as one sprite, draw everything in layers each set of leaves as a separate sprite from the trunk and other leaves. Then rotate them back and forth with the anchor point towards the bottom of the set of leaves so it looks like the sway and not just turn.  The same with bunches of grass. Have the anchor point at the bottom and then just rotate slightly back and forth to give them movement.

If you want to get all physicsy, you could try and make it so that rotate slightly away from where the character stands so he can "move" through the grass.


Edit: I think the best way to make things sparkle is with particles. You can also do some cool background effects like leaves falling, rain, wind blowing debris, all sorts of stuff. You can also save memory as you will not have as many sprite sheets but it can get costly in java2D once you get over 1-2k particles if you are rendering properly. Now that 1-2k mean 1-2k with all other rendering and this is based off of integrated FX chips.

[Pickleninja]

Move the hips a bit more like in your mock up. Her legs are a little too long. Hands look great tho.

I thought for animating trees/grass. Instead of drawing the tree as one sprite, draw everything in layers each set of leaves as a separate sprite from the trunk and other leaves. Then rotate them back and forth with the anchor point towards the bottom of the set of leaves so it looks like the sway and not just turn.  The same with bunches of grass. Have the anchor point at the bottom and then just rotate slightly back and forth to give them movement.

If you want to get all physicsy, you could try and make it so that rotate slightly away from where the character stands so he can "move" through the grass.


Edit: I think the best way to make things sparkle is with particles. You can also do some cool background effects like leaves falling, rain, wind blowing debris, all sorts of stuff. You can also save memory as you will not have as many sprite sheets but it can get costly in java2D once you get over 1-2k particles if you are rendering properly. Now that 1-2k mean 1-2k with all other rendering and this is based off of integrated FX chips.

Hey Stumpy, thanks for the great critique! I agree I need to move her hips more... but her legs are meant to be that long ... I also have the least experience drawing legs lol. I think I also need to animate the hands a bit as her arm is too stiff. I plan on animating the trees and grass and stuff, but I think I'm going to save that for much later.

-Pickle

[Rorkien]

Looks great!

My opinions: Hips and thighs are too large, breasts too high and unproportional (I remember seeing something about drawing them somewhere. EDIT: Found it. NSFW)

And i think the idle frames are too motionful (you know, some might consider it SWAG, but i dont swing my arms back and forth when im just standing). Sometimes simpler animations can suit it better, like just having a breathing motion on the character