Isometric pixel art / Construction Critisim (Updated)

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ID:76160
 
Jul 12 2009, 2:51 am (Edited on Jul 12 2009, 11:11 am)
So I've recently taken a bash at isometric pixel art and quickly found I love it and I've fallen head over heels for it.

Finding good feedback on work has always been hard for me and I'm really looking for someone to have a good go at this and tell me what you think is wrong with it or could br improved. So I updated the base slightly and recoloured most of the lines. Heres acouple of comparison pics.





It's an Anti-Matter Power Plant. Think RTS style Like Command and Conqeur.

This is the first peice of isometric work I've designed to actually fit into byond, at least in some sense.
Jul 12 2009, 6:14 am
Looks great to me. Good job.
Jul 12 2009, 7:36 am
I discovered you can do really easy isometric art like this if you setup a Blender environment for it. Then just model your buildings and click render.
Jul 12 2009, 9:10 am
Well, I had written a long comment about how you should use lighting effects then took a closer look at the icon to find out that there are some. So, make it more obvious that the right(I guess you could call it) is darker then the left. Also, those towering things have green things on them. I'm assuming their glowing? If so you could make it look more so like they are by having it affect the red around it(changing it's color a tad obviously). I'm no pixel artist however that's my opinion :p.. I tried to give ya good feedback >.<..
Jul 12 2009, 9:28 am
Thanks for the compliments guys.

@Foomer, I have no idea with a blender environment is, I assume it's something to do with photoshop or something? I use MS Paint for everything.

@SS4Toby: I was actually considering the glowy effect and refineing the black lines of it but they are starting to grow on me. I tend to use a mid-colour and fill that in to all the black parts. I'm thinking of making afew animations and adding a glow effect to it then.


Thanks guys
Jul 12 2009, 9:39 am
Xuiryus wrote:
@Foomer, I have no idea with a blender environment is, I assume it's something to do with photoshop or something? I use MS Paint for everything.

Using MS Paint? Well that's your biggest problem right there - ditch that ASAP!

I'm saying you can use a Blender environment to 3D-render these buildings instead of pixeling them. Its way easier and it looks much better in the end. (You can always touch up the renderings by hand if needed.)

Pixel art, in my opinion, is for people who are more interested in showing off than being practical, and for people who can't be bothered to learn better tools. Blender is free, by the way, although learning to use it is a pain.
Jul 12 2009, 9:42 am
Well I personally enjoy pixel art and more recently isometrics. I've never really taken an interest in real 3D art rendering I might look into it in the future, but for now I'm all about the pixels :)
Jul 12 2009, 9:43 am
I'm just saying, if you want to create an actual project out of it, 3D-rendering buildings is much easier, much faster, and in many cases looks better.
Jul 12 2009, 9:45 am
At the moment it's purely just for recreation reasons and just plain fun, if I plan to take it any further though I'll look into blender :)

Thanks for the tip.
Jul 12 2009, 9:46 am
This is an experiment with 3D rendering buildings that I did several years ago. Most of the buildings were done in like 5-20 minutes, and I had very little Blender knowledge when I did them.

http://www.byond.com/developer/Foomer/IsometricDemo

In the demo, you can click on the terrain to place a building, and use the 'build' verb to change which building to create.
Jul 12 2009, 9:50 am
Woah gotta say that almost swayed me. Reminds me of the old PC fallout games.

Quite impressive.
Jul 12 2009, 10:19 am
They look nice, though I can't say that I'm a big fan of the light source you're using.
Jul 12 2009, 10:25 am
Foomer wrote:
Xuiryus wrote:
@Foomer, I have no idea with a blender environment is, I assume it's something to do with photoshop or something? I use MS Paint for everything.

Using MS Paint? Well that's your biggest problem right there - ditch that ASAP!

I'm saying you can use a Blender environment to 3D-render these buildings instead of pixeling them. Its way easier and it looks much better in the end. (You can always touch up the renderings by hand if needed.)

Pixel art, in my opinion, is for people who are more interested in showing off than being practical, and for people who can't be bothered to learn better tools. Blender is free, by the way, although learning to use it is a pain.

I do pixel art in games to keep a consistent style and it is quick, easy and practical to do, Using programs like Photoshop and Gimp(can't really elaborate on blender) involves a lot of messing around, Its not that i don't know how to use these programs.

MS paint also has everything you could want for doing pixel art.
Jul 12 2009, 10:58 am
Foomer wrote:
This is an experiment with 3D rendering buildings that I did several years ago. Most of the buildings were done in like 5-20 minutes, and I had very little Blender knowledge when I did them.

http://www.byond.com/developer/Foomer/IsometricDemo

In the demo, you can click on the terrain to place a building, and use the 'build' verb to change which building to create.

So I gave in and downloaded blender. Any suggestions as to start off? I'm really only intested in isometric stuff, so any help would be great. Thanks :)
Jul 12 2009, 2:17 pm (Edited on Jul 12 2009, 2:24 pm)
Foomer wrote:
I'm just saying, if you want to create an actual project out of it, 3D-rendering buildings is much easier, much faster, and in many cases looks better.

A lot of the time, though, "looks better" is a matter of style... I, for one, appreciate good pixel art over 3D rendered stuff in many cases... For some reason, rendered graphics wind up looking cheap to me... At least when used in a 2D environment...

[Edit:] In fact, in this particular case, if he'd have just shown us some little quick-n-dirty 3D building, even one that looked almost exactly like that one in terms of composition, I'd have been much less impressed by it...

[Edit 2:] As for some CC on the art, my only issues with it are the saturation of the lightest red shade (looks more like it's lit up/glowing red), and that the tops of the stacks look slightly rounded... And both of those might actually be conscious design choices, so they might not even be problems at all (if they're intended to be that way)
Jul 12 2009, 3:24 pm
SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
Foomer wrote:
I'm just saying, if you want to create an actual project out of it, 3D-rendering buildings is much easier, much faster, and in many cases looks better.

A lot of the time, though, "looks better" is a matter of style... I, for one, appreciate good pixel art over 3D rendered stuff in many cases... For some reason, rendered graphics wind up looking cheap to me... At least when used in a 2D environment...

[Edit:] In fact, in this particular case, if he'd have just shown us some little quick-n-dirty 3D building, even one that looked almost exactly like that one in terms of composition, I'd have been much less impressed by it...

[Edit 2:] As for some CC on the art, my only issues with it are the saturation of the lightest red shade (looks more like it's lit up/glowing red), and that the tops of the stacks look slightly rounded... And both of those might actually be conscious design choices, so they might not even be problems at all (if they're intended to be that way)

I see what you mean, the colours originally went much better the problem is that the sides of the "towers" were more heavily shaded than the top area so I might go over that alittle. And yes the tops are designed to be slightly rounded.

I agree with you that I appreciate the skill and time needed to design good pixel art however due to my love of Fallout 1 and 2 I also really like the pre-rendered 3D isometric stuff. In my opinion it has a very retro 90's feel to it (Especially Foomer's byond demo)

I'm gonna see if I can get my head around this blender program and see what I can come up with.
Jul 12 2009, 5:14 pm
I understand that some people appreciate fine pixel art, but it also depends on what your goal is. If you're making pixel art just to impress the pixel art fanatics, well, more power to you. But if you want to make use of it, such as for a game, then you have to consider:

1) Its faster.
2) Its less labor intensive.
3) I guarantee most people who play the game won't care whether the graphics were rendered or pixeled, in which case you just saved yourself a lot of trouble.

Anyway, I was looking around to see what isometric environments there are for Blender, but it kind of depends on how you want to use it.

Here's one environment that someone made, you can download it from my space:
http://www.byond.com/members/Foomer/files/randomstuff/ Iso.blend

Here's a tutorial on mesh modeling if you want to learn the basics:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/NaN_docs/ Manual2.0/MeshModeling.html
Jul 12 2009, 7:50 pm
My vector art pipeline might still be slower than 3D rendering in some instances, but I'm with Foomer on this. If you're a skilled pixel artist who can rapidly churn out graphics with a distinctive style, then it makes sense to show off your talent. Otherwise, the medium is slowing the project down just to make a failed attempt at retro-coolness.

I salute artists who want to learn how to create decent pixel art. However, I curse the medium itself for being so prevalent on BYOND. Churning decent graphics out at a reasonable pace is important for milestones and motivation... Granted, I sometimes worry about non-retro visitors viewing the place an an outdated handheld console as well, but that's more about marketing than a production concern. ;)



PS: Speaking of pixel art, yum! =)
Jul 12 2009, 11:47 pm
Foomer wrote:
I understand that some people appreciate fine pixel art, but it also depends on what your goal is. If you're making pixel art just to impress the pixel art fanatics, well, more power to you. But if you want to make use of it, such as for a game, then you have to consider:

1) Its faster.
2) Its less labor intensive.
3) I guarantee most people who play the game won't care whether the graphics were rendered or pixeled, in which case you just saved yourself a lot of trouble.

Anyway, I was looking around to see what isometric environments there are for Blender, but it kind of depends on how you want to use it.

Here's one environment that someone made, you can download it from my space:
http://www.byond.com/members/Foomer/files/randomstuff/ Iso.blend

Here's a tutorial on mesh modeling if you want to learn the basics:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/NaN_docs/ Manual2.0/MeshModeling.html


I downloaded that blender thing.. It is pretty fancy but will take just as long to learn how to use the thing as it took me to program >=/!!
Jul 13 2009, 8:35 am
Blender has about a million features that you don't need to use. You can learn the basics of mesh modeling in a week or two and after that you just need to learn how to slap some textures on and press the render button.
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