I am working on a strategy game and I have planned my graphics in Warcraft 2 style.

I have drawn a footman and a tree:

[attachment=35261:mydemo1.jpg]

(The grass sucks)

I am going to programming now, meanwhile I must determine, what direction my art should go. (Mainly, to focus on improvement or keep drawing as I do, then small changes are left)

Are these drawings good enough? Especially, the tree I just made. The tree must be as small as it is, but I can't leave it without feeling, it could be done much better.

(The problem is, there is no size to draw the whole tree mighty, but the bottom still must be impressive.)

I have to make different trees, so any recommendations are welcome.

Edit:

Well, I figured out, this tree is inappropriate. If I made it more beatiful it would become even worse. : O

Tree is a resource that dies "billion" times through game. It cannot have that size and shape, because it looks too much distinctive for just a resource and I would feel sorry for killing it. (Still, this is a living tree on real...)

I have to draw a classical compact pine tree first..

Alright, let'see, checking in with some art direction advice here.

Here's the thing: So far you've got a sketch for a couple assets. You don't have a complete plan here. If you're preparing the art direction, you have to figure out what all the assets are going to look like. This doesn't mean literally drawing everything, just have a plan for how to extrapolate the style of a few examples across your range of assets. And you're still grappling with the tree, so you've got a ways to go.

So, first, you gotta know what your full scope is: Make a full list of every unity and all terrain types. This plan can change of course, but make a good guess and call it your first-draft plan so you can figure out how the details pan out to fit the whole.

What you seem to be doing here is making some art examples to base the rest of the game on. This is good, but you're not done - you gotta animate at least one walkcycle for that footman and, I think, do a full turnaround with whatever number of directions you want the sprite to face. This'll let you appreciate the amount of work it's going to take to do that art for one unit, and then for all the rest of the units. Then you can decide if this is what you really want to do -- and I bring this up because it looks to me like you may be walking into a lot more work than you expect; it may be valuable to go much simpler in style so you can finish the thing.

As for the tree/terrain, you're going to need to do a mockup of what you want it to look like. To give an example of this, I planned a terrain set out a while ago by first doing a small example set of assets and fitting them together in Photoshop. It looked like this:

[attachment=35267:tileset_test.jpg]

You can see that I'm pretty happy with the beaches, but I'm doing a lot of experimenting with rendering trees and so on. Using this art as a base, I extrapolated out various terrain types, two different kinds of forest, mountains, rivers, etc. (It was, as ever, more work than expected.)

As for the particulars of your tree, I highly recommend reading this pixel art tutorial at Android Arts. It's just really good and addresses issues with colour use, rendering, noise, composition etc. highly applicable to the visual design issues you are facing. Particularly good is the part at the end where he takes a problematic scene and re-renders it according to the rules he's discussed, then shows examples of other pixel artists taking on the same task in different ways; I can't recommend it enough.

Overall, I think it's likely you'll want to pull back the complexity and detail a bit to make the project more manageable, seeing as you're also doing the coding. Best of luck!

PS. Is your username a Total Annihilation reference? Nice.

Thank you. : )

Yep, I am a big fan of that game since like... 6 years old. : )

I have figured out that I need much darker and like... serious style, at least to start with. (Based on my music/sound ideas) Maybe then I will figure out how to make light maps stylish too.

I will start making low-quality sprites in some quantity to bring the style first, then add details.

Hi!

I had problems with health so I had to postpone my project, now I am back.

Screenshot

Only Footman is more-or-less finished, the rest is in process.

Your opinion can be very useful because I post this because I know some things are easier to fix in process.

(Especially those about design. For example, you might find some stuff too much alike to Warcraft 2. Tell me what do you think about that.)

Hello again!

It took some time to write the desired code.

I decided to make animations later: as I am doing it solo, it seems better to make all drawings static first because it could take much time for me to redraw animations if something is unfitting.

I am still settling my style but you can see few important similarities with Warcraft II, probably even more than Wyrmsun has.

My sprites are bigger than those of Warcraft II because I want it played at original scale,

but I've found that units are a bit hard to click. : (

If there are any impressions or advices on such early progress I would love to read them. Thank you for your time. : )

I'm impressed. The music is catchy and fitting, the sprites are very well-drawn, the voice-acting is enjoyable, and the gameplay looks like the kind of point and click fun you rarely see nowadays. 

My complaints would have to be the changing music. Maybe you could create battle-specific music to help fit the mood? That would definitely add a lot more variety.

Overall, it looks like something I would play. Keep up the good work!

Thank you a lot! I am very glad. ^__^

The gameplay will be similar to Warcraft II on the one hand but it shall be hardly called clone in a result as the game development got past some point (there is a lot of work towards it). I have recently watched many replays of Warcraft II to refresh my memory and its gameplay is so cool and unique nowadays and there is a lot of things to bring in on my mind.

(There shall be a thread once I bring some significant gameplay in)

(Free) music is somewhat I am intensively looking for. I am using Kevin McLeod's music, he is an awesome artist and offers over 2000 free soundtracks, yet there are only very few fitting in game. As for the most other artists they have good music but nothing fitting at all. It's about some time I get minimum music base, not like I cannot pay for some if it's very needed but I believe, there is enough free resource to make minimum game that is enjoying to play.

Thank you!

Hi guys!

I made unit production and building structures. There is a lot of stuff not done but there is some kind of gameplay.

The video might be a bit too long though for an actual showcase.

What do you think?

Thank you for your time!

Hi, guys!

I've made new front Footman sprite, also I've made mining gold, building structures. I am close to basic things.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8N-OI2l_ooDZkV6NWZJR3R4V1U

Do you like?

(I am sorry for no image right here, this forums seems to put images in very low quality, even such small. Or maybe there are some settings?)

It is very asymmetrical, there shall be the opposite way (with proper lighting). (Foots are unfinished though)

On ‎3‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 10:35 PM, dbaumgart said:

This'll let you appreciate the amount of work it's going to take to do that art for one unit, and then for all the rest of the units.

I do already.  :  O

Seriously.  :  O

New Worker and Footman:

(Still working on details!)

I had to take 2 month break.

Drawing sprites is time-expensive (unless you are in a very good mood! things become easier, but that's not what you say about the whole work. even simple things have tendence to stuck and demand efforts), but very enjoying.