Recent Posts

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Competitions & Activities / Re: Fortnightly Writing Competition: iRobot! RESULTS ANNOUNCED

« Last Post by Stupot+ on Yesterday at 23:40 »

Thanks Ponch. Maybe I'll do my next entry in haiku form... actually, no.

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Advanced Technical Forum / Re: Custom speech GUI like in LSL6 possible?

« Last Post by Phemar on Yesterday at 23:03 »

I just a looked up a video on youtube and I see what you're saying.

One of way doing it would be to just change the text on a label. From what I saw in the video the speech is never removed, so you could just set it and leave it.

Then when you call the function, check if it's the player and if it is then animate a button.

Of course, there's a bit more to it then that, but that's the basic idea.

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Competitions & Activities / Re: Monster Workshop - Week 2

« Last Post by Cerno on Yesterday at 23:03 »

Week 2 Step 3

So I tried to get a feel about lighting and colors with a very rough sketch. It might have been a good idea to do lighting and color separately though.



After Kasander's hint about adding some meaning through colors I drew the whole scene in reds, lighted from below and colored the wizard's spell in blues to underline his foreignness in this envionment. Just realized that the mountains would need different shades of grey to give them a better impression of depth.

After loominous's hints about contrast, I scaled down the image to thumbnail size:



I can see that the dragon takes the focus as it should but the smoke has too much contrast and competes too much. My decreasing the contrast here, I hope to get the background volcanoes to actually feel like a background, the same goes for the mountain range. Also the central volcano at the bottom as well as the wizard's cliff is almost invisible. This has to change.

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The Rumpus Room / Re: Name the Game

« Last Post by Gribbler on Yesterday at 22:45 »

That's it! It's Snatcher! Than Japanese adventure game you were always bragging about

Thanks Iceboty

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Competitions & Activities / Re: Monster Workshop - Week 2

« Last Post by Cerno on Yesterday at 22:42 »

Week 2 Step 3

Okay, finally I would like to take a round trip commenting on all the awesome and helpful comments, before moving on to lighting and color.
Phew, it's become quite a lot. Thanks again to everyone.

waheela

the wings look a little off to me. One is outstretched and one appears to be bent. I know the eagles below have nothing to do with your dragon per se, but I think they're good references in the way that you get an idea of what a winged animal looks like before landing or "pouncing" on something.

I redid the wings completely. Also thanks to your very helpful references, I was able to improve the claws. Actually gave him four while I was at it.

Shrink the wizard and plateau to a smaller size and move them down a bit. I think this will make the dragon look more gigantic and threatening. By moving the plateau down a little too, you will have more space to stretch out the legs and open the talons a bit more.

I did what you suggested, if only a little. By moving the dragon into the corner a bit and increasing its size, the size difference between the protagonists feels better now.

loominous

Atm I think the biggest thing to experiment with is the angle of the whole scene, making it less side view and flat and more 3/4 and with depth.

I see how that is a problem, but at my current level I just can't pull it off. Played around with some 3/4 sketches last night, but failed when I tried to make the arms reach towards the screen as would be required by such a pose. I think I need some more training with geometric shapes before I feel confident enough to attempt such a pose in 3/4. Thanks a lot, I can picture in my mind how your suggestion would greatly improve the scene.

While doing so, you could try pushing the values more, making things close the darkest, and the things furthest away brighter with very little contrast. Lastly, I'd try to achieve a nice focal point in the image, using values/lighting, where you choose a spot which you think is the most important/interesting, and making sure if pops out.

That was immensely helpful advice and I tried that in my next step, possibly not strong enough tough. The focal point would naturally be the dragon, as the wizard is much too small. Could you please give me a follow-up comment on your lighting suggestion to see whether this goes in the right direction?

dactylopus

I see is that the bottom claws are somewhat unreadable.  I would definitely take a look at those eagle pictures

I agree. I changed them, thanks for the advice.

SookieSock

What is the wizard doing? Is he is welcoming the dragon as a servant or is he fighting it? At this stage It could go either way. Also the background itself ends in a line with a very flat ‘horizon’. That’s ok if we are in a cavern bit if this is outside it needs to extend off in to the distance.

By now I want the wizard to be on a quest to actually tame a dragon, which is obviously something very brave/stupid and could be the last thing he does. I wonder whether I will be able to project that into the image. I also tried to improve the background. Better?

cat

I'm not too fond of the feet, though. They look like they belong to someone else. One suggestion for the next stage: Define your light source and see, where there will be shadows.

I agree that the feet sucked. Better now?
For the light source, I want the scene to be lighted from the bottom volcano with a diffuse lighting from the other volcanoes. I also want the wizard's spell to be a light source. I tried to capture that in my next step.

Mordalles

All I can think is the wings itself. I'm no expert in wings, but I would think that when something flies his two wings will stay in line together to keep balance.

I agree, that was taken from mixing the bat reference with a dragon reference and did not really work. Now I completely changed the wings.

Misj'

I think the monster itself is interesting...weird, but interesting; but I would look into his anatomy a bit. This could also help make his pose a little more threatening and dynamic. I like the wizard, and - to me at least - he steals the scene. I think his pose and the directional line towards the monster are strong, and I would build the image around that (rather than around the monster).

Thanks a lot for that idea, I think it might look awesome. Unfortunately I don't see me doing that without completely redrawing everything and I can't find the time to do that. Sorry, but I'll have to give that one a pass although I really like the idea.

Kasander

When you'll have your dragon's pose set, you could try to visually empower/amplify his 'attacking stance' by trying to give the background behind it a shape that somehow resembles a triangle pointed at the wizard (you can do that by shaping the rocks or volcanos or... I'll just leave it to you). Pointed shapes in composition, when facing each other, create a feeling of tension. Well, that's something to consider for later.

That's immensely helpful advice, thank you. I tried to give the dragon a somewhat triangular shape, but somehow I feel that it's not strong enough.

Apart from boosting the dynamic/expression of the painting, the 'triangle versus triangle' or the 'triangle versus circle' could become a sort of archetypical clash, for example like between the fire-breathing-dragon and water-elemental-mage. It's just one of the possibilities. From my experience I know that adding some meaning (even if it's a kind of coloristic meaning) makes one's work more powerful. So that's another thing for you to consider.

See my next step, the whole scene is very fire-oriented, which is natural since the wizard is entering the dragon's domain. While I don't envision the wizard to conjure up a water spell, the spell's color reflects the contrast between the two. Does that make sense?

One more thing to consider: As it is with miguel's monster, your dragon's upper limbs seems to me to be 'too human'. I think you could try to make them more reptile-like. Try looking for photographic references of dinosaurs, crocodiles, or perhaps some other animal that somehow resembles a dragon in this aspect and could lend your monster a pair of hands

I agree, the hands were a weak point. Now I went the easy route and just copied the feet. That works for me, but might be a bit too boring.

ThreeOhFour

I like how much action your scene has, but I think your mountains are all very low and flat. Some further height variation in that background would be lovely!

I agree. Better? I'll try to use values to make them appear at different distances from the viewer.

Selmiak

The left side of the dragon wing looks a bit short and unthreatening compared to the other side. The legs seem to have one limb too much, except this is the unnatural monstery look you are going for, then flesh it out and make it look really disturbing  I don't quite know what the circle in the topleft will become but I like beeing surprised... sometimes.

I agree on the wings and changed them, thanks. The legs are supposed to look like that, I wanted to do double joints on purpose, maybe I can improve on them though. What about the last sketch, better? The thing in the top left was supposed to be a sun, which my wife commented looked like in a child's drawing. Since I moved the dragon there, the sun had to go. Good riddance, stupid sun.

Andail

Hm, this monster hasn't found a natural pose yet. There's something with his wings and posture not really adding up. I would experiment more with his pose before moving on to shading and texturing.

Are you referring to my end of week 1 sketch or the more recent one? I hope the current one is better in that regard since I decided to keep the pose as it is (except minor tweaks)

Snarky

Having all the limbs in front of the body like that looks a bit ungainly, and it doesn't create any clear lines to provide a sense of movement. To underscore the mammalian nature of the monster, maybe make the face even more bull-like?

Same question as to Andail
I hope I can get a sense of movement through details, although that might be too late
I was thinking about changing some details on the head, let's see whether I can manage to do that when I start on the details.

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The Rumpus Room / Re: *Guess the Movie Title*

« Last Post by Eric on Yesterday at 22:22 »

I like all of Jeunet's films. It's Caro with whom I have issues. I'm pretty excited about The Young and Prodigious Spivet.

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Critics' Lounge / Re: Anasazi head for eval...

« Last Post by jwalt on Yesterday at 22:03 »

Mr. Baron, that tutorial proved very useful, or so it seems to me. I now have three faces for my character.

x1 x2 x3 x4

I need to work some more on middle guy's nose, and I'm still open to suggestions about improving him/them.

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Critics' Lounge / Police Underground

« Last Post by HitZ on Yesterday at 22:02 »

Hi,
I´d like to know anyone´s opinions on my pictures which are situated as rooms in my new game. Just about the game.. it´s about policeman in one coutry in the middle of Europe. It should display police work in underground way so there will be a lot of violence blood and so.. It could be seen as disgusting. Looking forward to your opinions. I know that my pictures has mistakes but i will be glad to know how to improve theese pics.


There is hero of this game. Now i am animating his moves.
And next image is the criminal scene (little bit brutal i know)

I hope i will complete this game. I started one game 3 years before and unfourmently i lost all data with my computer and now i have to work once more to create anything again but now it´s easier with AGS.

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The Rumpus Room / Re: *Guess the Movie Title*

« Last Post by Tramponline on Yesterday at 21:36 »

As far as I know, the next one is probably not that well known, so I went with a
fairly revealing shot...

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The Rumpus Room / Re: *Guess the Movie Title*

« Last Post by Snarky on Yesterday at 21:23 »

Indeed it is. Yeah, I don't like all of Jeunet's films, but his design sense is great.