The Resource WIP thread 2

[Sharm]

I hate to say this when you're so close to being done, but she's got some pretty major anatomy problems. It's the type I normally see when someone draws things like clothing and hair at the same time as the general body. It's important, especially when doing action poses, to get the basic structure right before adding anything on top, including skin. If you removed the hair and clothing it'd be a lot easier to see what I mean. The biggest thing I'm seeing is no back to the skull and the legs not quite attaching to the torso.

On a pixel level you've got an ambiguous light source and a fair amount of pillow shading on the legs. I think this is because all the shadow edges are being blended. Sometimes shadows will have a hard edge, even on a rounded object. Your white ramp is also a bit boring, try adding a little color in and getting rid of those nearly black shades.

The design is good. Interesting without being overly detailed and a good color scheme. Personally I think the shoes should be mary janes, it'd make more sense on a nurse than flats. (Not that the rest of the outfit is all that practical. . . .)

 

[Haydeos]

As always, thanks for the critiques, Sharm! It's why I post here! XD

I always struggle with human anatomy so much...Hips, Limbs, Pretty much everything.

 

[Sharm]

Everyone struggles with it, trust me. It's one of those things that you'll study forever. But don't give up! Every small success you have in learning it will make a huge difference in your art.

 

[Rukiri]

main frames done, may dab into 8 frames "maybe" but will probably try animating the hair before going to the next direction.

 

[Lestroth]

Hello everyone,

I made my first sprite base (after many, many attempts), and again I could use some help. While the front and the sides look okay to me, I have a very hard time shading the back of the sprite. Animated, it looks almost like the front. Especially the flapping arms and the torso look off to me, but I just can't figure out how to do it right... So any advice is appreciated.

Now here the sprite:



[Edit] Okay, after taking a break it occurred to me that it might be wise adding another color to give it more depth. Here it goes:

 

[Thetra]

Hey Game-Makers!

Today I started my first bust grafic for one of my Actors in my Game. His name is Neril and he will be the Main Character who is fightin with a Sword and a Shield.
Since this is my first Character drawing I wanted your Opinion towards my work and gladly hear your helping critics.

Spoiler: Neril, Swordfighter

Sorry for not Cleaning up after drawing, its Hand-Made and then i used my scanner to load it up.

 

[mlogan]

@Thetra Welcome! We have an existing thread exactly for this sort of thing so I've merged your topic with it.

 

[Thetra]

Oh well Thank you very much !
I didn t know where to put it *silly me*

 

[Sharm]

Nice! His hands are too small and his right thigh is too thin. An easy fix in the computer, but not so much traditionally, how you do it will depend a lot on when you plan to make the traditional to digital transition. I'd like to see it colored. The abdominal line and bellybutton indicate that his middle is bare, but the sides have fabric wrinkles so I'm not getting how that should work. You've got a bunch of wrinkles that don't make any sense, I think they could just be removed and wouldn't need to be replaced. The most glaring are the ones curving around the bottom part of the tunic. Overall very good, nice design. Reminds me a bit of .hack.

 

[Thetra]

Oh wow, thanks for the Detail-Look at it I Try to fix it on the computer.

 

[Bastrophian]

Huloo everbowdy X3 !! Did some more practice with my pixel are, recreating a character from the VX rtp, with an MV sprite base. Wanted to see what yall thought, and if you could point out any flaws in it. I think Im getting better at checking myself, but its always good to hear all of your feed back . Thanks in advance.

 

[Thetra]

Wow nicely done! Her eyes are pointing in different directions thought. I think it looks well made! If you make her Front Hair a bit bigger and change the With a little her Headband would be more present. I like the Armor, its well made realy !

 

[mogwai]

I abandoned my vector guys, and I abandoned my raster guys, but this time I'm doing raster on a template that I made in vector.

At first glance this might seem passable for an amateur game, but I'm probably going to touch this guy up for another hour until I no longer want to look at it anymore.

Spoiler: take #1

Sad I've posted about about 20-30 different characters in these threads and they are always only like 1 or 2 guys on a new template. Maybe I'll combine all my abandoned sprites/templates and do like an Amazing World of Gum-ball, mismatched-style characters, thing, in the future, just take what I can get.

EDIT: I made a second guy.

I really should reference hair when I attempt it.

 

[Sharm]

@KaBlooZio You've got a lot of black or dark lines in the interior, it's bisecting the figure. The ramps are also pretty heavily weighted into the lighter shades, making those outlines even more jarring. I don't see any reason to be creating your own colors, why not just use the ones from the Ace sprite? If you'd prefer to use colors specifically for MV, eyedropping ones from other existing sprites would also work. I think the boots should be a bit bulkier, they look a little too much like stockings and not big clunky metal boots. Good job on the basic setup, sometimes things can be hard to translate larger. Go ahead and take a heavier reference from the original, it's a good sprite and there are a lot of style similarities between MV and Ace once you ignore the size differences.

 

[Bastrophian]

@Thetra - Thank you very much ^__^ , I messed around with the eyes a little, does it look any better? As for the front hair, X___X Im a little afraid of making it bigger.

@Sharm - I swear, Im pretty sure I color pickered all the colors from the original, but maybe a did make a few new colors and just dont remember :/ .... Anyhow, Ive made some edits to it based of the feed back you gave. Ive worked on the dark lines in the center you mentioned a bit, and I made the feet look a bit more heavy and armory... Im liking it alot better. Do you think its improved? In anycase, Im thinking I'll redo the hair again at some point, I dont think its bad, but I want to get it a little bit more close to the VX sprites. And thanks again Sharm, your the best!!

EDIT: Forgot sprite X___X

 

[Sharm]

Ah, so it uses the same colors but leans towards using the lighter shades more than the darker. I see. Then my advice is stop being so stingy with the shadow.

What I meant was to remove the outline in some parts. I'm afraid that having a slightly lighter color for those lines isn't doing much to help the bisecting problem. Maybe think of it as coloring the outline with the light source in mind?

Go ahead and try dramatic changes from the things you've done before. If it doesn't work you can always go back, so there's no harm in trying things out and no need to be so careful. I do think the changes are positive but they are so minor that they may not even be visible at actual size.

 

[Celianna]

@KaBlooZio Sharm means something more along the lines of this:

Basically, try not to draw things with an outline in mind. Try to give shape to it with only using shadows/highlights and do not use any lines as much as you can, before you add any outlines. This will help so much with shading!

 

[Sharm]

Yes, thank you, that's exactly it.

 

[Bastrophian]

@Celianna , @Sharm - T___T Wow...that is so much better! Ok, I think I see what you two were saying now. ...I think maybe I could have done that too, but maybe I was trying to stay too close to the MV sprites, cuz most of the MV sprites I feel like do use alot of lines ....your edit looks better than any MV sprite Ive seen so far, by the way. I guess I need more light source practice. Thank you both again.

 

[Sharm]

Your sprite was very good, don't be ashamed of it. There's just always something to learn. I'm really good at pixels and yet Celianna helped me improve some things when I was finishing up the Pixel Myth pack. Celianna is much better at rasterized tiles than I am but I'd like to think I've helped her from time to time when she makes her tiles. Getting advice for improvement only means a better result than going alone, don't think of it as a failure.