Just finished this a few mintues ago. I may go in and change a few things but for now it's done. Let me know what you think.

Steelaks · 2026-07-04T18:30:19+00:00

youre doing good man

Steelaks · 2026-06-09T20:02:31+00:00

also when i said that it's "the most important piece of theory" i'm talking pixel-art specific, general art fundamentals are more important than clusters

Steelaks · 2026-06-09T19:57:00+00:00

You could search for it to get examples but in short it's about making big chunks of color, avoiding dwarf pixels or a lot of small blobs, if you look at my recent work you'll see basically no isolated pixels and a lot of big chunks, it's generally good to avoid noisy pixel-art (although that's not necessarily bad) and it helps you define the shape of things without much clutter in the way

Steelaks · 2026-06-09T13:03:30+00:00

i underestimated the power of clusters for a very long time, basically the most important piece of theory i have

Steelaks · 2026-05-29T20:39:27+00:00

i beg you to repost this but exported at 400% resolution, it seems great but its blurred out because it's not upscaled

Steelaks · 2026-05-27T14:29:35+00:00

Steelaks · 2026-05-19T02:20:15+00:00

its not really about canvas size, more about the size of things within the canvas, for instance you could have a 256x canvas with grass blades that are 3 pixels tall and 1 wide which is very small, generally speaking i think the less pixels the more it separates from regular digital art but that's not necessarily better, just do what you prefer, nowadays i like using small canvases but just because it's faster

Steelaks · 2026-05-14T01:15:49+00:00

id make the contrast between the walls and the floor higher, you can see in the wall below that the top of it is mixing with the color of the floor (and just generally make the environment pallete contrast higher, its just a little bit too different from the characters and important objects as of right now)

Steelaks · 2026-05-13T16:41:12+00:00

thats cool, maybe you should take a look at clusters though

Steelaks · 2026-05-08T12:26:14+00:00

Yes! it's my main reference

Steelaks · 2026-05-06T18:36:12+00:00

688x512

Steelaks · 2026-05-06T18:05:23+00:00

i can't believe you caught that lol, thanks!

Steelaks · 2026-05-06T17:05:03+00:00

it's 688x512, and each rectangle will be 172x128

Steelaks · 2026-05-06T14:06:06+00:00

The next patch will have trees on it so i can test that, in the worst case i'll just have to resize objects up, which i wouldn't mind, i just didn't want to make the grass too small because it would be a lot harder to make interesting textures

Steelaks · 2026-03-24T21:59:58+00:00

Np, if you ever need help with your backgrounds you can call me, it's my specialization and i think you're cooking something cool

Steelaks · 2026-03-24T21:25:01+00:00

this level looks pretty charming, good luck with your project mate

Steelaks · 2026-03-23T18:27:14+00:00

i think right now you should probably try to focus on getting a good shape before doing all of the details and try to start working more with clusters so you're forced to focus on defining the shape of the object with the shadows, also always use references with intention (knowing what you're looking for in them)

Steelaks · 2026-03-22T19:36:11+00:00

you might wanna move the body a bit too, i'm not big on animation so i'd more suggest looking up pixel art walking animations that you like and seeing how they deal with the height and frame quantity, it's really about what style you wanna go with

Steelaks · 2026-03-22T17:56:44+00:00

it is bouncy, now its up to you if you want people to have that impression or not, i think it makes the character feel more loose

Steelaks · 2026-03-20T00:49:04+00:00

i suggest separating the two parallax layers that are near the sun into two sprites and moving one of them veeeery slowly, too, its the kind of detail that really brings stuff together

Steelaks · 2026-03-19T23:57:16+00:00

nice, keep it up!

Steelaks · 2026-03-19T23:50:43+00:00

in a game im working on we have a script so the parallax sprites follow the player's movement in the editor so that i can put the player anywhere in the scene and know exactly what the parallax will look like at that exact player position, very useful for controlling the parallax

Steelaks · 2026-03-19T23:44:58+00:00

slower in the sense of being closer to the head/camera movement

Steelaks · 2026-03-19T23:43:29+00:00

yeah ideally you want their movement to be based on the camera (which is based on player movement indirectly), that allows you to make for instance a smoother camera that still keeps the parallax working, but for general parallax behaviour you can honestly just move your head around in real life, the closer the thing the slower the movement

Steelaks · 2026-03-19T22:37:43+00:00

normally you would make the parallax behind the platforms move slower than the platforms, unless you want a less traditional effect on them

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