Game Projects and Art for it

[JosephCow]

I find it interesting. This is nice work, even though as you say it's a little simplistic. Even so it does give visuals to the ideas you are working with which is what concept art is all about. But concept art is also about really going into those ideas and changing them or coming up with something else entirely. Figuring out what works.

I did watch the video about the isometric renaissance game, because that's something I find interesting. And just as concepts, not critiquing the artwork, I guess I have a few comments.

I think your concept for the time period and architectural style is a little fuzzy at the moment. You have examples of buildings characteristic of the Italian Renaissance, but you also refer to the game as medieval. Many fantasy worlds kind of roll elements from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and even Baroque periods together and that's absolutely fine. But you may need to do more research to nail down exactly how you want to do that so that there aren't things put together that don't belong together. I think that a Renaissance inspired city for a merchant city makes a lot of sense since we associate the Renaissance with rich architecture and commerce.

However, the house you've designed to be a 'peasant house', doesn't really match that. The lower class wouldn't live in marble palaces. Instead maybe consider designing something like this:

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 for a standalone house

or this:

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for an apartment building. These are both English, but the point is they read as lower class housing because they are timber frame and kind of lopsided. The second example is pretty characteristic of lower class housing in the 15th/16th centuries in cities, because space was very limited. They made the most of their architectural footprint by making the top floors bigger than the base, instead of the cube that the marble palaces had. And then tons of people probably would have been squished in there.

This one also gives a good idea of what could be used in the design. Whitewashed brick with some showing through, and a rickety wooden upper level.

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So this kind of visual research is something that can be applied to all your ideas, and it just makes it all more interesting, elevating it from just a basic idea of a house or a tree or a whatever, like you kind of have in your 2d rpg game,  and making it tell a story. That being said, I like what you are coming up with for the Merchant city, especially top picture with the bridge.