Oceansheart Graphics

Started by Max, March 06, 2018, 04:04:57 AM

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March 06, 2018, 04:04:57 AM Last Edit: March 06, 2018, 04:06:55 AM by Max
Hey! I wanted to do something to help out the community. I like to think graphic art is one of my talents, and I've put in many many hours of work on tiles for the game I'm working on. I figure some of them might come in handy for others.

They're not necessarily compatible stylistically with Link to the Past graphics, because I taught myself pixel art looking at Minish Cap, haha, but at least the perspective is similar. I like to think these are a little more flexible in terms of topographical layout. Feel free to use these however you like, but please give me credit if you use them. It'd also be super cool if you let me know where my art goes, just because that's fun to track and see other people getting use out of my work : )


If you have any advice or feedback, I'm always looking to improve my talents and will welcome it.



This is absolutely beautiful and lovely ! A Minish Cap vibe for sure. Thank you. We have to add this to a resource pack.

Suggestion :

  • The straw-made roofs are a bit too bright, compared to the other colors.
  • The second tree, on the second line, is too flat at the top
  • The third tree (pine), on the third line, is too flat (I mean color-speaking : we cannot see the shadows like on the tree at its left for instance

This art is awesome! We are very grateful of you sharing this!
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. But if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

April 01, 2018, 08:04:01 AM #3 Last Edit: April 01, 2018, 08:05:53 AM by Max
Thanks Diarandor, I'm grateful for all the help I've received on the forum.

Neovyse, I appreciate the critiques. I also found the thatched roofs (as well as the tall yellow grass) to be very bright and colorful, but when I tried different colors, they all felt too sad and dull. If you want to recolor anything, feel free! I couldn't find other colors that toned it down without feeling too dull, but maybe you can!

I never noticed the flat bit of the tree, but you're right. As for the shading on the spruce tree, that's also valid. I used one less color on it compared to some of the other trees, because I didn't want it to stand out
as much. One thing I've encountered in this project is that with trees especially, it's a difficult balance to make them stand out enough from the ground and other scenery,without standing out too much and looking busy, as they're often really just background elements. Maybe I'll try making another spruce. Trees are maybe my favorite thing to draw, although the perspective is very difficult.

Side note, just because I love plants- these are meant to be fir or spruce trees. Pines rarely grow in such a cone-shaped form, they naturally drop their lower branches and end up more like the trees directly above them. It's not really important, but I do think in the business of creating tiles meant to represent the natural world, our art can be greatly enriched by a deeper understanding of the things we mean to emulate. The usual thing, in tilesets, is to have one tree and maybe one conifer tree. However- people usually create one "generic" tree. But which tree is it? That's so frequently a weakness 2D games have in representing the natural world,and it makes it hard to convey a sense of the world you've created. Where I live, I can go to a forest on one side of town, and it's fairly wet, full of maples, elms, and Ash trees, each of which are different. But on the other side of town, there are forests on hills full of hickoy and oak trees. Both forests feel totally different to me, and if, as artists, we don't bother to learn about what makes various parts of the natural world feel different, or learn the details of various environments, we can only create generic areas. A forest, or a desert. If we study, we could easily have five different forests in a game that all feel totally different.

Sorry, rant over. I plan someday to write like, an article about how to study the natural world in order the create unique areas in games. But that's why it was important to me to make so many trees for my game. In this tileset, there's apple, american basswood, white pine, oak, poplar, and spruce. Granted, it's really hard to convey them well in 2D at this perspective, but it's important to me to try, haha. I hope others will be inspired to more fully utilize the amazing diversity of the natural world to create works of art that make the player feel like they're in a particular part of nature.

Wow, very good job! It needs some changes, according to me, for the roof, the tower top and some trees.
Can I edit the tileset to show you what I would change?

Absolutely! I'm glad you think it's worth investing some time into improving : )

April 05, 2018, 07:23:57 PM #6 Last Edit: April 08, 2018, 07:44:31 PM by froggy77
OK thanks! I will do my best and especially I will avoid making a rough draft so you don't need to redraw if you want to keep my work: this will save you time.
My pixel art style is pretty close to yours*, so it shouldn't be too difficult.
Normally, I will give you the result this Sunday.

*(when I finish my creation, in other words, rarely)  ::)

EDIT: It 's done. I had not seen the demo and its more completed tilesets before finishing to edit.
I redrawn the top of the tower, changed flat roofs, trees, reduced the number of colors (sometimes changed the colors) ...
In the second image, I put in white the modified pixels.
It is an indexed color image, because I was not able to attach it on the forum (limit size of 128KB); so the shadow tile is destroyed.



http://forum.solarus-games.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1115.0;attach=629

Oh hey, I totally missed that you posted your edits, Froggy! Cool. I especially like how you've colored the purple/brown roof into a wooden texture, that looks great. The crenelations you added to the tower are also cool, that might help people who are making a castle (which, since Zelda games usually always have a castle, that's probably a lot of people, haha). Nice work!

What was your process to reduce the number of colors?


Could you also share the .dat when your share the .png of a tileset? Thanks

I'll create one eventually : )
I don't have one for this yet because I work from an in-progress, very messy tileset that nobody else would want to try to use (there is SO much scrolling when I'm mapping). Once I've finished mapping my game, I'll probably have a lot more graphics to share, and I'll probably re-arrange some things. So I'll create a .dat then, to avoid having to create two. But one will arrive eventually!

Happy you like this edit. :)

Quote from: Max on April 16, 2018, 12:55:45 AM
What was your process to reduce the number of colors?
I reduced the number of colors manually by searching for similar colors one by one, then when the number was less than 256, I used this script (GIMP - script-fu for pixel art - get palette and draw it into another image) to detect unnecessary colors sometimes used for a few pixels.

IMO, having many colors on a huge tileset is not bad if the number of colors used for each type of tile is not too high.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. But if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

@Max
I was just wondering about your Tileset License.

1. Which number version of CC-BY-SA?
2. Can anyone pick a version?

Okay, Okay, I will explain deeper. The CC-BY-SA 4.0 can be converted to GPLv3, but not back to CC-BY-SA because it is a one way thing. I have no interest is doing this, but it is something to be aware about.

Source:
https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/cc-by-sa-4-0-now-one-way-compatible-with-gplv3/

Thanks Zefk, I guess v4 because that's the current one? So, I'm having a hard time understanding all this. I've been looking into it for about an hour now, and maybe you can tell me if my understanding is correct.

If something is CC-BY-SA 4.0, you (as a random person on the internet) can take that content and say hey, now this is licensed under GPLv3. Which, I thiiiiiink, doesn't carry the attribution requirement? But if you convert to GPL you'd need to at least link to the source code and provide indication of your changes, which seems basically like requiring attribution, because of that link.

This is also a weird thing becuase in the case of an image, I'm not sure what source code would be. I suppose the original image? This is a little confusing for me, but thank you for bringing it to my attention, Zefk : )

@Max

QuoteIf something is CC-BY-SA 4.0, you (as a random person on the internet) can take that content and say hey, now this is licensed under GPLv3. Which, I thiiiiiink, doesn't carry the attribution requirement? But if you convert to GPL you'd need to at least link to the source code and provide indication of your changes, which seems basically like requiring attribution, because of that link.

In any case, they are required to credit and attribute you in anyway you desire. I think everyone here can say that licenses are a pain. Audio and images are non functional data and it is weird in my opinion that people slap GPL on them. Anyone familiar with licences will say the same. Although, very few people use GPL on audio and images, but there are some nice tileset out there under GPL Licenses. For instance, The Mana World. Although, that does not really apply because it is under GPLv2.