Constructive Criticism for Squareo Bros?

#1 Pic links appear to be dead.

#2 *Fixed

#3 Reminds me of sherbert...mmmmmmm.

It would be a little more psychadellic with a trippy looking skybox to match the rest of it. The one you have looks to realistic.

#4 Hmm..so dont go with a sort of realistic look?

#5 I definetely prefer the third pic. alot less trippy. As mentioned the sky needs to change to match. the first 2 shots for example have a realistic sky but trippy landscape. might as well go all out :)

The bright pink look would probably give me headaches :)

#6 Ian, Yeah. Thats another reason we felt we needed a change. The bright pink seemed to give a lot of players headaches.

#7 Squareo just isn't... well, how do i put this? He needs to be a bit more, square. Come on, a round hat? I know that you could have done much better.

Hehe. Just my opinion really. :-D

#8 ---

#9 Jim, true but this is a parody. Its completely legal to use the basic name as long as I change it. Plus its supposed to be an obvious knock off :)

#10 Matt,

I think you should study the source. look at the IP you are making the parody of and then translate it to the context of your game. By that I do not mean copy it obviously, but interpret it.

To echo what has been said above, what you need to do with whatever look you go with is make all of the elements complement each other.

The sky should complement the look, style and color of the ground. The water should do the same for the land, etc.

A good example of a unique style that is beautify done is canon's work on the TLK demo.
see www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1033

#11 I like the new direction your art has taken. its a great improvement. as others have mentioned and as you probably already know, you should also make the skybox consistent with the overall theme of the environment and game. i suggest using the same basic clear sky but with large puffy, cartoony clouds. you should also add in some fireplants, bright shrubbery, and other vegetation which closely resembles candy.

#12 Trippy look ? All it did was make my eyes bleed :P

j/k

#13 Well since you wanted constructive critism...

The colours annoy me a lot. I think you guys might want to take some time and do some research into colour theory and colour harmony as right now it feels to me that your choices are just random and have no rhym or reason.

Also I understand that you guys are trying in some ways to be a parody and in other ways be cute by literally having a box character, but when you have a simple and very typical and boring box with a highly detail cap (paying the Mario homage) I think that you are either not done with your character art since there is zero constency or design. I can't tell if you guys are just trying to be funny and have proxy art combined with some high detail art or if you are actually serious and are thinking of using this as you final character model (which I sincerely hope you don't).

In all honesty I think you guys really need to take a few steps back, stop any work that you are doing for art and really put some thought towards what art you will need to make your game and how to design it out first. Moving forward without this stuff is a recipe for failure.

Logan

#14 The third picture is a lot better of an idea for a terrain, but the spots layer on it looks a little too stretched. If you're going for cartoony, the edges should be crisp. I'd personally make different terrain layers with various cartoon-like elements, eg. toon grass, leaves, psychadellic spots, etc. You have the bold, bright colours thing down, you just need to match them up a little better.

I have made a couple of Mario Bros. knock off levels for UT2004, one with textures from the game, and a couple with all static shapes and textures from scratch. Here's a few screenshots:

evil.theaodclan.com/pics/rgv21_01_big.jpg
evil.theaodclan.com/pics/rgv21_02_big.jpg
evil.theaodclan.com/pics/mm01_big.jpg
evil.theaodclan.com/pics/mm02_big.jpg

If you own a copy of UT2004, you may download the levels here, and play them to get a closer look at my design.

I know you're not going for the exact Mario look, but you may learn a lot by studying the colour harmony in these pieces, as Logan mentioned. The toon look is very simple, and you can accomplish a psychadellic feel without going overboard with the main/general colour scheme. Sometimes subtle is better.

#15 Great feedback everyone. Currently my friend didn't have time to finish the textures, so the multicolored ones in pic3 are mine. Any ideas on how to change the square? Anyways, we have got the camera working the way we want so it's very easy to use. Its based off the Marble Blast camera mainly. We also have the game very controlled for the most part.

#16 I would say give the character a body: a head/face, torso, and leg/arms. The legs and arm could maybe be stick-figure like and the two body part(head and torso) could be your squares. It should all be texture. Maybe somekind of Mario-like textures would work nicely(a italian w/ a mustache waring suspenders).

#17 I kind of expected to see large solid color cubes to make up a humaniod character ( to poke fun at the small number of pixels used to make up the early Marios )... you know... just a bunch of blocks

I'd draw up a quick picture... but im at work... maybe later

#18 How about a block with a full-body mario texture on it? when the block is moving the texture could switch to mario running and when it jumps the texture would switch to a picture of mario jumping.

#19 Oh.... thats what the block with blob on top is supposed to be.

#20 If you were going to do that you might as well make a 2D game. I highly suggest you grab the blocky tutorial and follow it to make a humanoid that is made up of blocks.