These past few weeks I've been preoccupied with school stuff and music (The one area where I do consider myself a good artist). Anyway, time for a bait-and-switch.
He's gotten a bit bigger since the last time. I've got a myriad of justifications for deciding to go with a higher size: I find it easier to do the hands at this size; The breathing looks more natural when there's less movement; the character was already starting to take up more than a 64x64 space when adding different hairs; I wanted the characters to look more personal at the resolution I picked out. Whatever.
I'd like to get some feedback on the design before I launch into animation. Are there any oversights I made with proportions? I'm still a little troubled bythe side-view design. The arms look a little on the long side to me, but should I even be lining them up with the arms from the other directions?
One person informed me that the legs looked a little stumpy (But only in the front view). The imrpoved version has the legs no longer sticking out from the side of the waist..however, they still do that in the back view. I'm willing to chalk this up to perspective and say "well maybe this works because the butt sticks out."
Only a short update right now as I work feverishly on a 15-page paper (Then I can jump back into this in full-force).
Hm...having the arms come down one pixel further than north-facing make them look a litle long. Tweaking the shading on the biceps (maybe have it come down to inner-elbow joint) might fix that.
Any thoughts on the sideview idles? I'm eager to get those started.
I went with your perspective changes, ID. However I wanted his arms and shoulders to appear a little humbbler. I made a few changes and ended up debating between the style on the left (his right) vs. left. I included both because what looks fine to me might very well be too anatomically incorrect, in which case I'm sure I'll get called out on...in a good way.
He had Shrike's stance for awhile, and I'm not giving up completely on it yet. I'm just wondering if I can find a good compromise between the two positions--I tried bending his legs out from under the knees and down, but that ended up giving the legs an upside-down V look, kind of like in the original post. Of course, I do plan for main characters to have different stances to avoid the bow-legged look (And breathing animations have also helped with that in the past). What I'm going for now is just a basic design that I could modify into a character without too much trouble. I'm getting closer, but I still feel like the legs are a little on the short side (Pre-post edit: I wonder if raising the two pixels in the middle where the legs connect would help with my leg problem)
Sadly, I'm going to have to restrain myself from working on this over the next few weeks. The voice of reason in my head has reminded me that I'm not a pixel artist or game designer, but a grad student with a ton of projects and deadlines fast approaching. I'll poke my head in for the next few days to see what you guys suggest, but for the time being I have to focus on life stuff.
Nice shading guys. I really wish I'd just shown the clotheless version since that's the one I've been working on more seriously (as in trying to avoid the pillow shading and banding). This does give me some ideas for how to do real clothes in the future. I'll probably end up combining elements from both of these (ID's emphasis on perspective, Shrike's posture and shading style for the upper body). I get a little spotty when it comes to transitioning between the legs and torso. Will probably have an example soon.
I'm a little conflicted regarding the legs. I used to draw them apart like that (albeit with only two colors), until somebody told me that my characters looked bow-legged. Now I can't stop seeing that whenever the space between the legs exceeds three pixels that high up. Perhaps this is just a case of confirmation bias running rampant. I see it almost like a horse stance--not as wide, but squatted down a little bit like readying to practice some martial arts. Though, other feedback I received when I changed the stance find the new one preferable. Is this just me?
Was sick for about a week, and had no motivation to do anything other than sleep. Now that I'm better, I started working on the sprite again. Went through and implemented some of the suggested changes, and gave him some test clothes They're incredibly basic because I'm only using them to see if the shape looks appropriate in clothing. However, I like the idea of Mr. Clean being a featured NPC sometime down the line.
I'm fairly content with the north and south-facing dirs, although he still looks a tiny bit husky. I'm more concerned with his head when he's facing east. It started out a lot worse than this, and after making a bunch of changes, I've run out of ideas. Does it look serviceable, or are there any minor changes I could do to make it look better?
On lighting: I'm mostly going with this overly lit look because these guys look more "in-place" when I drop them onto some hacked-together concept backgrounds. If I do go for a lower-lighting look, it'll probably just be for clothing/hair.
Great feedback, guys! I tried somewhere else, and all I got was "That walk cycle is wrong." I definitely feel the lethargy in the walk cycle I was working on for the south-facing character.
Pixel art isn't something I'm necessarily new to, but I don't have the experience a lot of seasoned veterans have. Like I said, I'm no artist--at least, not a graphics artist. For the project I'm working on now, I don't intend to spearhead the graphical initiative. I'm mostly trying to develop a good working prototype so I can recruit some experienced artists down the line, and I have it drilled into my head that a good-looking animated protagonist and some test-dummy enemies will help me sell the project.
I have a tough time working on smaller sprites. There's something about them that doesn't make sense to me, and it's likely my approach is too logical. When looking at the pixel art of SNES characters from games like Chrono Trigger, I find myself wondering how they could've possibly arrived at the decision to use certain pixels of seemingly unrelated colors in places, despite seeing how it works well when viewed from afar. It's a kind of visual understanding I simply may not possess, which is why I tend to stick with music.
These past few weeks I've been preoccupied with school stuff and music (The one area where I do consider myself a good artist). Anyway, time for a bait-and-switch.
He's gotten a bit bigger since the last time. I've got a myriad of justifications for deciding to go with a higher size: I find it easier to do the hands at this size; The breathing looks more natural when there's less movement; the character was already starting to take up more than a 64x64 space when adding different hairs; I wanted the characters to look more personal at the resolution I picked out. Whatever.
I'd like to get some feedback on the design before I launch into animation. Are there any oversights I made with proportions? I'm still a little troubled bythe side-view design. The arms look a little on the long side to me, but should I even be lining them up with the arms from the other directions?
One person informed me that the legs looked a little stumpy (But only in the front view). The imrpoved version has the legs no longer sticking out from the side of the waist..however, they still do that in the back view. I'm willing to chalk this up to perspective and say "well maybe this works because the butt sticks out."
Only a short update right now as I work feverishly on a 15-page paper (Then I can jump back into this in full-force).
Hm...having the arms come down one pixel further than north-facing make them look a litle long. Tweaking the shading on the biceps (maybe have it come down to inner-elbow joint) might fix that.
Any thoughts on the sideview idles? I'm eager to get those started.
Going back to the nude version for a bit.
I went with your perspective changes, ID. However I wanted his arms and shoulders to appear a little humbbler. I made a few changes and ended up debating between the style on the left (his right) vs. left. I included both because what looks fine to me might very well be too anatomically incorrect, in which case I'm sure I'll get called out on...in a good way.
He had Shrike's stance for awhile, and I'm not giving up completely on it yet. I'm just wondering if I can find a good compromise between the two positions--I tried bending his legs out from under the knees and down, but that ended up giving the legs an upside-down V look, kind of like in the original post. Of course, I do plan for main characters to have different stances to avoid the bow-legged look (And breathing animations have also helped with that in the past). What I'm going for now is just a basic design that I could modify into a character without too much trouble. I'm getting closer, but I still feel like the legs are a little on the short side (Pre-post edit: I wonder if raising the two pixels in the middle where the legs connect would help with my leg problem)
Sadly, I'm going to have to restrain myself from working on this over the next few weeks. The voice of reason in my head has reminded me that I'm not a pixel artist or game designer, but a grad student with a ton of projects and deadlines fast approaching. I'll poke my head in for the next few days to see what you guys suggest, but for the time being I have to focus on life stuff.
Nice shading guys. I really wish I'd just shown the clotheless version since that's the one I've been working on more seriously (as in trying to avoid the pillow shading and banding). This does give me some ideas for how to do real clothes in the future. I'll probably end up combining elements from both of these (ID's emphasis on perspective, Shrike's posture and shading style for the upper body). I get a little spotty when it comes to transitioning between the legs and torso. Will probably have an example soon.
I'm a little conflicted regarding the legs. I used to draw them apart like that (albeit with only two colors), until somebody told me that my characters looked bow-legged. Now I can't stop seeing that whenever the space between the legs exceeds three pixels that high up. Perhaps this is just a case of confirmation bias running rampant. I see it almost like a horse stance--not as wide, but squatted down a little bit like readying to practice some martial arts. Though, other feedback I received when I changed the stance find the new one preferable. Is this just me?
Was sick for about a week, and had no motivation to do anything other than sleep. Now that I'm better, I started working on the sprite again. Went through and implemented some of the suggested changes, and gave him some test clothes They're incredibly basic because I'm only using them to see if the shape looks appropriate in clothing. However, I like the idea of Mr. Clean being a featured NPC sometime down the line.
I'm fairly content with the north and south-facing dirs, although he still looks a tiny bit husky. I'm more concerned with his head when he's facing east. It started out a lot worse than this, and after making a bunch of changes, I've run out of ideas. Does it look serviceable, or are there any minor changes I could do to make it look better?
On lighting: I'm mostly going with this overly lit look because these guys look more "in-place" when I drop them onto some hacked-together concept backgrounds. If I do go for a lower-lighting look, it'll probably just be for clothing/hair.
Great feedback, guys! I tried somewhere else, and all I got was "That walk cycle is wrong." I definitely feel the lethargy in the walk cycle I was working on for the south-facing character.
Pixel art isn't something I'm necessarily new to, but I don't have the experience a lot of seasoned veterans have. Like I said, I'm no artist--at least, not a graphics artist. For the project I'm working on now, I don't intend to spearhead the graphical initiative. I'm mostly trying to develop a good working prototype so I can recruit some experienced artists down the line, and I have it drilled into my head that a good-looking animated protagonist and some test-dummy enemies will help me sell the project.
I have a tough time working on smaller sprites. There's something about them that doesn't make sense to me, and it's likely my approach is too logical. When looking at the pixel art of SNES characters from games like Chrono Trigger, I find myself wondering how they could've possibly arrived at the decision to use certain pixels of seemingly unrelated colors in places, despite seeing how it works well when viewed from afar. It's a kind of visual understanding I simply may not possess, which is why I tend to stick with music.