Some Greenery

Today we'll keep looking at that room I'm working on. After we left off yesterday, I added the rest of the grass, as well as some more paths and the water from the sketch. Here's what it looks like now:

Time to start working on those bushes and trees!

To start off, I begin sketching a couple of variations of what kind of bushes I would like to see (and make). I tend to look at some random reference images while doing this, both photos and sprites that other pixel artists made, just to get a feel of how you can approach the leafy texture.

Selecting the sketch I'd like to work with, I then start with color blocking, just to get the base colors down. Then I simply go over the sprite over and over, refining and adding details to the different parts of it as I move along.

Since I haven't been doing any detailed spriting in a while now (I've been busy in portrait- and interface land for quite a while), this was a total pain in the ass and, frankly, took forever! There's no feeling that's more frustrating than when you try to create a texture for something, only to have it look horrible over and over, no matter what you do. Thankfully, after struggling on for a while, things eventually tend to sort themselves out (also, short breaks do work wonders when you get stuck).

Here's the silly bush(es) inside the room:

Now, let's hope I'm less rusty starting the next one! :D