Fixing Vilya's Artwork.

[Nix]

While the pixel art is mostly pleasing, certain environmental pieces and other "non-moving" graphics have unpleasant, dissonant qualities that could easily be fixed if you guys devoted some time to renovating then. I'm fairly certain Vilya was the artist behind these, so I'd just like to say:

-Go over scenery pieces and reduce the banding in them(banding is everywhere in this game's art. It's a shame, because if it were fixed the game would look fantastic. Even the decoration part of the UI next to the HP bar contains banding.)

-Go over scenery pieces and reduce the pillow shading(the glaringly bad ones are the rabbiy statue and the breakable brown pots)

Something tells me you guys might know what I'm talking about based on Fred's obvious experience with pixel art. If you could just make sure Vilya is up to date on these techniques, it'll bring you guys down less.

 

[MrChocodemon]

1) The way you propose this seems like there would be a wrong way to do art and is less criticizing and more attacking. It's unfair to say someone has to be better, when the whole game looks amazing apart from small 2-3 pieces.
2) What is banding? can you show an example? <-- i am very curious as i have no idea, serious interest in learning
3) The rabby statues could lose 1 or two 2 shades of grey

 

[Nix]

1) The way you propose this seems like there would be a wrong way to do art and is less criticizing and more attacking. It's unfair to say someone has to be better, when the whole game looks amazing apart from small 2-3 pieces.
2) What is banding? can you show an example? <-- i am very curious as i have no idea, serious interest in learning
3) The rabby statues could lose 1 or two 2 shades of grey

I apologize if I seem aggressive; I've been following this game for over two years and this has bothered me the entire time. Also, there -are- generally accepted techniques for this style of digital art and not using them doesn't make the game look pleasant. It's an issue because these thinga make Vilya and Fred's artwork clash stylistically.

Banding is when two colors follow each other directly ina line, like this:
bbbbbb
xxxxxx
where b and x are different colors. It's avoided by anti-aliasing and is visually unpleasant. Look at Marino's old hairstyle versus his new one. The old hairstyle was filled with banding. Generally in pixel art, it is one of the artist's goals to prevent jagged textures that make the pixels excessively visual. You want the subject's shape and form to be the main focus, while the pixels convey it. Yes, Marino's hair was supposed to look spikey, but there are better ways to convey that than banding.

 

[MrChocodemon]

So banding is what is in the the yellow box, if understood correctly
and the shadow is a good contrast where the borders are in differnt shades/aliased so it looks smoother
But what about the outlines? I mean sometimes banding should be used to lift the desigin from the background, why the not the hair?

btw on Marinos new design, his open hands feel less agressive and his eyes look a little soulless compare to the old one

 

[Vilya]

Thanks for the feedback!

Before I started on this game I hadn't made any pixel art before (aside from some random crap done purely for fun). I'm sorry that my work isn't up to your standards, I'm simply learning as I go and obviously I'm not that good. I'm not ignoring these 'rules' because I want to, but because I'm not a master of pixel art as a craft. Maybe I will be before the game is done, maybe I won't. I can already tell I've become a lot better at it than I was when I first started, so at least there's that.

Either case, even if I should have an eureka moment today which makes me 100 times as good at pixel art than I am right now, it's unlikely that we'll go back and redo these graphics anytime soon. There are a lot of things I want to remake, but starting down that path now is not gonna end well - I'll be stuck trying to improve each asset forever, and never be able to move on with new areas. What I will do is to continue to do my best and strive to improve, and once everything is done I will return and touch up things to the best of my ability.

 

[Nix]

View attachment 185
So banding is what is in the the yellow box, if understood correctly
and the shadow is a good contrast where the borders are in differnt shades/aliased so it looks smoother
But what about the outlines? I mean sometimes banding should be used to lift the desigin from the background, why the not the hair?

btw on Marinos new design, his open hands feel less agressive and his eyes look a little soulless compare to the old one

outlines are a necessary part of game art, and as long as the color the outline uses is avoided in the sprite's interior it can be visually pleasant. even still, some pixel artists use sel-out to avoid banding in the outline.

 

[Renegade]

If you could just make sure Vilya is up to date on these techniques, it'll bring you guys down less.

Since u were so rude I'm going to be patronizing and show you how you could have brought this up without needing to try to make Vilya look bad:

Some pixel art has banding.
Some of the pixel art in the game has banding. (Banding is where pixel clusters run along the same line and lower the sprite's resolution.)

Here's a list of the items that could be improved if you guys have the time:
- Justin Bieber's hair .
- the giant shark that destroys the town after the second boss.
- the single sunflower on the top of the cliff in East Northland.

I know this is a minor issue, and I think everything else looks great! Keep up the good work!

But I haven't seen anyone else complain about any of the art so I don't think it's as terrible an issue as you're trying to say. I think the game looks great, and that seems to be the feedback from almost everyone else so far. Also, I'd prefer it if the team worked on new assets and more stuff for the game instead of redoing art over and over again.

 

[GarlicJelly]

Please don't hate me for saying this but I'm fine with games looking like crap as long as they are fun and have nice mechanics. (Not saying the game looks bad, just saying that I'm not that picky with graphics.)

 

[Momizi]

i always thought vilya olny did portrait and card art
and fred did everything else

tho some portraits do need to be remade *cough* Receptionist *cough*

and i love the card art so i got no complains there (cute as hell)


the olny proplem i had with portrait art, is that its a mix of anime and real life
and it kinda turns out as what an anime char would look like in real life
witch is kinda creepy
they should just go just Anime and make it less realistic

 

[MrChocodemon]

I think the portraits are fine except the noses. With the exception of the Cafe owner Belmont who has a fake nose.

 

[Vilya]

i always thought vilya olny did portrait and card art
and fred did everything else

Fred animates everything (characters, enemies, effects, skills), I do everything else (backgrounds, portraits, UI, cards, you name it )