Thanks, well, the wooden base was just an example, like I said before, just testing stuff. About realism, its used, believe me, but you have to remember its not the same realism in real life, realism inside a toon enviroment is much diferent, I mean, its a tree right? and a tree is never exactly simetrical, toon or not. If you want it to be a little diferent, why not make 2 trees? one normal and other one rotated or who knows, with less folliage. That wait it will not look that much overused when placed next to. And I don't mind the height, but the green parts. Look my tree for examples. Like I told ya, forgot the original lighting a bit, add shadows, highlights and things, and it will look less "origami-ed"
Just saw this tree and thought I'd give it a little more life in a "jiff". What you guys think of this direction? The sun spot on the tree sorta matches the direction as the sun on the mountains. Right tree is changed...
The thing is with trying to copy the direction of the sun from the background, is that *everything* would have to match it with the same direction, wouldn't it? - and that would mean making one half/side of the tree [ie. the left] brighter than the other half, following that train of thought - since you can tell the sun is shining from the left of the screen. Anyway; IMO, I think the 'sun spot' is a little too bright really; I think it makes the tree look more like an oil painting rather than a shaded tree; I actually prefer how the tree to the left looks. Secondly, I've just had an interesting idea: Why not project a shadow on the tree behind when there's one in front of it - to make it appear more 3D?
About the oil paiting thing...Its a nice touch, at least it looks like the background...I'd be nice if the tree was in the same style of paiting.
The texture gives a "low quality JPEG artifacts" feel (even though I know that's not the case) which looks very weird.
So I'm back from Swiss and with Hill Top in the back of my mind, I took a couple of pictures to use as inspiration: These can replace the geometrical bricks that's used as ground in the level. You know what? Instead of grass, how about fences? It looked nice in rl, why not in the game? These sorts of pillars can be added (to add a bit of graphical flair) to support the walls in the caves. (Sorry for the horrible quality, these were taken from inside a moving car) EDIT: Also, how about some cut down trees added next to the existing trees... like, trunks. EDIT 2: sorry, saxman. My bad.
I like the idea of the fences, and to a lesser extent, the pillars. But instead of replacing the grass, why not put some fences just on top of it? I might make some mockups of this if I have time.
test-object: Can you reduce the size of those pictures? That took a whole crap load of bandwidth and time to load. I'm also running my browser on a USB flash drive, so I am somewhat limited to how much can be cached.
To me that looks like Death Egg Zone in real life. The yellow black stripe is iconic of Chemical Plant/Death Egg. Looks like the brackets if you were looking from the inside.
lolmockup, don't mention the realistic nature of the rocks, I know it's ridiculous. They need simplification.
Taking photos of real things are a really good idea since it helps you to understand material in different environments. I have been using that technique for many years, but it fits a Sonic 3 game better than a Sonic 2 game, which is more realistic. It still can help though. The coolest thing would be to actually go to Vegas and take photos of things that reminds you of Casino Night. Since we are supposed to translate small palette animated pixels into more realistic lights, it is always good to look at the original source for insperation.
I think the top-right texture on this site, or the 'Lichen-covered stone blocks' one might've been a good example - in here: http://40watt.biz/graphics/
I like the idea of using realistic textures for this game. Have you ever considered using the rocks' texture in Hill Top's rectangular tiles? That would even help to further separate Hill Top from Emerald Hill. It'd be interesting to see how that could be used in Hill Top's interior areas, as well.
You have no limits to interpretation of concepts, however I must say to be not particularly fond of textures (except extremely subtle) as they tend to clash with the cartoony feeling too much. Oh, and speaking of level concepts, Guys we really have little of Acquatic Ruin zone!
When it comes to zones that we've said repeatedly that we want concepts for, I don't think you need to ask. Let's see what you have in mind MDM.
