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SoaH City Message Board

Beat-Em-Up Mockup/Art Thread the 2nd


Steven M

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MENU DESIGN

I'm working on a website (yay Comicpress) and laying out the design for the frontpage. My idea was to have a Flash 'splash' of sorts, giving the viewer a little menu to navigate through. Pic related, it's a WIP .gif:

The current idea uses a more streamlined colour scheme to go with the website (mimicking the Nintendo Game Boy's 4-colour palette). Obviously the picture will be zoomed in to at least 200, maybe 300% for the final menu. Below is a WIP .gif preview.

menuc2.gif

The guy's arm will change position according to the sign the viewer's highlighting. It stretches from normal (New) to ridiculous (see above).

Any ideas for a background, or other fixes?

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BEAT-EM-MOCK-UP

I'm in the midst of creating a videogame screenshot mockup for general pixelart practice. The general scheme I'm going for is the Game Boy Color's palette, as seen in the "Mock the Ocean's Sphere" thread.

The idea is a RPG battle set in a graveyard - four (!) characters on the hero's team, and a giant mook and braggart/archrival on the 'bad' side. Each is color-coded (red/blue/yellow/black/green) save for the giant mook, whom I'm still working on. Some draft designs:

treetime.png

Generic tree.

deadonegale-1.gif

Initial graveyard locale. Nice top-down view, but considering switiching out for a more side-on approach. Beta designs of characters (brown/yellow-coloured character currently being 'worked on' as we speak - it really looks unreadable there).

a69146b0.png

Progress shot of three characters. I'll post more as they're finished.

The big question I have is: how do you get the absolute most out of the absolute least? That is, how would you be able to create great sprites like the ones from the GBC Blue Ocean or SNES Final Fantasy games with such a small size and smaller palette? It's really quite frustrating, especially if your first thoughts on such a project were as ignorant as mine ("Oh, fewer pixels, quicker job!").

22/09/09 Edit:

conaradtest3c.png

Colette - brown/yellow

Conrad - red

Conata - blue

References drawn by Anonymous. Giant mook and green dude = Original Characters Do Not Steal.

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23/09/09:

conaradtest3d.png

This probably won't be permanent - the background needs a greater sense of spatial depth (the character outlines clash with the background even now) and it's mirrored at the moment. I had also intended a bleaker graveyard theme in this mockup, but as I started studying previous Game Boy and Neo Geo Pocket screenshots, the palette got a tad out of hand. The giant mook isn't finished either - still has an excess palette, and dodgy lower body. We'll see how things go later on.

The characters are just standing around at the moment, yes. I'd anticipated a cutscene before the actual fight starts to get underway. Once I've got the designs sorted out properly, I can get into drawing attack/hurt sprites.

Edit:

deadonegaletwotwo-1.png

Colour adjustment.

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Regarding the comic menu, I suggest adding some clouds in the sky that slowly move in one direction, as well as the character blinking from time to time.

2nd post: your reference pics are removed, just so you know. I'm not really sure how good such tiny sprites will work, especially in a fighting game that can quickly turn into a clusterfuck...

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Fixed the links in the second post. Clouds duly noted. Decided that having the cursor hover over the guy will bring up a floating FAQ/About/Email link.

As for the tiny sprite issue - there's only one way to find out! =D

Edit: I may as well 'fess up. The idea I had in mind was for a game that had loads of mini levels in three different 'styles' - beat-em-up (ala Turtles in Time), linear platforming (using the Sonic Spring engine) and more methodical platform/puzzling (like Disney's Quackshot). So the sprites generally stay the same for each subgenre. Having huge sprites in a platform game is generally a bad idea since you can't see what's around you in all directions, which is usually less of a problem in beat-em-ups.

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This is some really nice work, dude. Although I don't think non-Pixelation regulars will know what "Mock the Blue Sphere" is, haha.

The comic splash page is really nice looking. One thing I think you could play around with is the fence. It's not like there's anything wrong, but the more I look at it, the more busy it seems compared to the rest of the image. But of course you need to actually add background...<_< I'll let you work on that. It's worth a shot, though; maybe you could decrease the intervals. I made a quick edit:

splasher.png

As for the beat-em up, it's coming along nicely. Excellent use of limited palette. I'm digging the character designs too. Only real issue I see is that the trees in your latest image (the green leaved ones) seem to be growing out of the street. You could add roots and such, or a patch of dirt from where they'll be growing. Everything else looks superb, though.

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I think the ground could maybe use something. Maybe grass or something along those lines. The lower part of the menu looks really empty compared to the busy sky.

Looking at it again, I though the ground looked a bit too bright considering the light source, so I've darkened it a bit. If I get any ideas as to how to decorate the thing I'll have at it - if you get any ideas, let me know as well.

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Looking at it again, I though the ground looked a bit too bright considering the light source, so I've darkened it a bit. If I get any ideas as to how to decorate the thing I'll have at it - if you get any ideas, let me know as well.

Strains of grass (is that how you call it?) maybe. In groups of three or four, animated to look like the wind is blowing in the same direction the clouds are moving.

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