Original subtitles

Hey, what's up, guys

Nelson here! And today

we're going to be doing an extended break down

of a top down

pixel background

with a limited color palette.

Today I'm going to be making our work

inspired by one of my favorite games.

Animal Crossing New Horizons,

I'm sure you all have heard of it in one way or another

it's a game on the Nintendo switch

and it's all about building up your own town

on a deserted island.

So this video we'll be breaking down

the steps of what we'll be drawing.

You can use this exercise

as a dive into making top-down video games

since we're going to be using plenty of layers

and organizing it properly.

Since this is a more complex scene

it requires a bit more coordination and planning.

Subtitled by -♪ online-courses.club ♪- We compress knowledge for you! https://t.me/joinchat/ailxpXoW3JVjYzQ1

I'm planning to do

Animal Crossing in Four Seasons. Kinda like a seasonal post card with a different color

palette for each

since Autumn is rolling around.

I wanted to make an Autumn themed artwork

to start off the series.

Let's get started with some thumbnails like in chapter 3

I'm going to make a 1920 x 1080 pixel canvas at 72 DPI

and I'm just going to use this file

as a sketch to generate some ideas.

Not too worried about getting the size right

yet since this isn't the final size.

I just like to pull up a file and doodle first

before transferring it to the actual canvas

and you can do this in your sketchbook too

if you're more comfortable with that.

So we're going to aim to do is three quick thumbnails

and get a good composition going.

It's kind of like

planning out the layout of your town. If you've ever played.

So this is another animal crossing inspired

artwork that I made last month of my market area

and the scene is based off of a 7 color palette.

for this new series I'm making.

I want to make a new color palette

and stick with the top down view.

I want you guys to follow along too by

making a 7 color palette with me.

If you want more of a challenge,

you can limit yourself to five colors

and I'll look something like this.

I'm not too worried about getting all the items

and buildings accurate to how it looks like

an animal crossing yet

because it's my own take on what I want

my town to look like.

I want some more modern looking buildings this time,

but also a bit off to the countryside

to have some contrast.

I came into this drawing knowing

I wanted the train crossing

to be the focal point of the drawing

since previous games have that feature

where you can visit your friends

using the train instead of an airport.

We're also going to be including a lot of autumn

themed items and furniture items

that are distinct to Animal Crossing

and I think the most distinct looking things in the

game are it's round blobby looking trees,

so I'm definitely going to add a bunch into the scene.

I was showing my friends these thumbnails as I drew them

and they instantly recognize it as Animal Crossing

because of those trees

so I'm on the right track here.

So I take no longer than 5 minutes

to draw each thumbnail,

and I want to keep it really quick.

I'm most likely going to go with the first one

just because it has the strongest composition

in my opinion

compared to the other two.

The other two can be worked on a bit more

and I can use them in future drawings, maybe

So after we've chosen

a sketch to go with let's figure out

the color palette now. I'm aiming for some warm colors

to represent autumn

colors you get when the leaves start to turn

orange and red,

but I also want some cooler colors

to balance of the scene as well.

I pull up some pictures of Autumn

and also my previous artwork

to get some references.

I'm making my own color palette today,

but I also want to keep consistent

with my previous artwork

by picking some colors from that one too

for that drawing I wanted to make a pallet that was warm and retro

feeling and have colors that really stick out.

I really like it.

So I took the red and yellow for my new palette.

So right now

I have overwhelmingly warm mid-tones in my palette

like yellow brown

orange and red

and to offset that

I also want a highlight color and some shadows

and that gives us a bit more opportunity to choose

cooler colors.

So I chose like a cool grey

and a dark blue for the shadows.

Right now

I'm pretty satisfied with how the color palette looks

and I think one thing

in limited color palettes is that

the challenge is to figure out a palette

that can accommodate everything in the scene

and finding creative solutions

to fill in the missing colors.

On one hand,

you only have to worry about seven colors,

but on the other hand,

you'll have to modify the object

and make it work for the scene.

Since this is a top down

view. There's going to be a lot of assets and item

layering on top of each other

breaking it down.

There's basically going to be 5 planes

listed from back to front

the ground

the background

the train

the mid-ground and the foreground

So this is something I often do

before I start rendering out.

a drawing

especially for drawings with a bunch of items.

I make a list

I want to put in

and in this case we can list it out

based on each plane

we defined earlier.

so for the ground we want grass like weeds and mushrooms

stuff like that.

We want to have pavement like a road in the side

we're going to have a pond

and we're going to have trees. For the background,

which is the top area.

We're going to have a house

we're going to have like a little small farmers market.

We're going to have a dock on top of the pond. Next up

we're going to have a train

running through the entire scene

and in the mid ground,

we're going to have vending machines

traffic cones, benches, train tracks for the train

to run on

and a train crossing. For the foreground

we're going to have apartment buildings

a satellite dish

a radio

a tea set. The clothesline

and some

air conditioning units. For the characters in the scene.

I'm not sure who to put in yet,

but we'll figure out along the way.

But basically I want to find characters

that already fit in with the autumn

color palette.

If you want to go an extra step

make something similar to like a Town Guide

with labels pointing to each part

just like writing notes in your drawing.

So, you know where everything is.

I just made a rough one like this.

Most of the items are based on items in my own town

and I find images

of all the items that one on this site

called Villagerdb.

So it's a really great resource

if you want to see what each item looks like

and I'll also leave a link in the description

if you want to check it out too

alright so we have our colored sketch.

A color palette

and a pretty

good idea of what items we'll be putting into our drawing.

And of course

as we start to render out the drawing

some things will change

and new ideas will come to play later.

Thank you so much for watching.

I wanted to show you

a bit of what goes on inside my head

when I'm planning and what my thought process is,

like we're pretty much covered

all the theory and tools used in pixel art already.

So we're starting to get into a bit

more specific and complex projects to work on.

So, I hope you look forward to them. In the next video

we'll be rendering out the rest of the scene

see you in the next one and take care!