Hi guys, I'm a programmer by training but I'm a big fan of pixel art too. After spending close to 10 hours of staring at photoshop and painting one pixel at a time, I've successfully completed a complete wall tileset, with all joints (cross, T-junctions, L-shoulders, variants, etc).

Here's how it looks like:



In-game mockup:



Comments and criticisms are welcomed! Don't hold back just because this is my maiden attempt at tile art!

EDIT:

Added revisions after comments:

New background tiles:



Changed shadow to 60% opacity and blend mode to "Overlay"



Added 1px grey line to the bottom of the wall



EDIT:

In-game wall randomizer:







[Edited by - ruben tan on August 16, 2010 7:00:34 AM]

Walls, blood splats and ground texture look very good, but the metal bolts are far too "catchy". Make them smaller and less bright so they "melt" a little more into the ground tile.

Thanks for the comment. Edited:



[Edited by - ruben tan on August 16, 2010 7:58:30 AM]

Pixel by pixel is like pulling teeth in Photoshop, IMO

Also, the wall looks like it's floating above the floor,but otherwise pretty good.

I like the art style. Though I am not an artist I do have an appreciation for it, and I like the fairly consistent style in the tileset and character sprite. The ground tiles seem somewhat different in style to me, but I wouldn't be able to begin to tell you how to change it so take that criticism for the little value it's worth.

Overall, it's pretty good for someone just getting into pixel art.

Keep up the good work and don't let anyone discourage you,
-Wynter Woods

EDIT: looking back at the edited picture, it looks much better. Must've been the large bolts.

Looks good, my only suggestion would be to get rid of the the drop shadow under your wall tiles. It makes them look like they're floating above your floor as Prinz Eugn said.

@Prinz Eugn

I agree that the wall looks floated. I'm not sure what to do to make it "stick" to the ground though. I thought shadowing it was the way to make it stick, but on second glance apparently that wasn't so.

@zerotri

Thanks zerotri. The large bolts did look awkward after Fetze pointed it out.

@prh99

I didn't remove the shadows, but rather changed it to 60% opacity with overlay blending. Does it look better? This adds an additional problem though... of how do I perform overlay blending in code.



Don't think it looks better though. I suspect it might be the hard 1px solid black line on the bottom of the wall, so I went ahead and softened it. Below is a comparison:



What do you think?

[Edited by - ruben tan on August 16, 2010 7:24:26 AM]

I think that maybe it's a problem that the floor tiles under the wall pieces are clearly the same floor tiles as everywhere else. So the pattern repeats under the walls which makes the walls looks like they are loose elements placed on top the floor, rather than growing up from the ground.

Try giving the walls more definition by breaking up the floor tiles to get an edge up to the wall.

Quote: Original post by ruben tan
Thanks for the comment. Edited:

Much better. You should try to keep all your background tiles below a certain brightness threshold so that only the foreground elements (players, NPCS, interative props, etc) pop out to the player.

@Promethium

I'm not entirely sure how to do that, to be honest. Right now here's how my engine draws the map:

Pass 1 - draw all ground tiles
Pass 2 - draw a cloud layer on top of the tiles to break the repeating patterns
Pass 3 - draw blood splatters layer
Pass 4 - draw all entities (shadows, characters, walls, etc)
Pass 5 - UI elements

Here're the five mockups:











Do you mean more variations on the base tiles? Like some with cracks and so on?

@Daaark

Noted, thanks for the tip!

[Edited by - ruben tan on August 16, 2010 7:19:23 AM]