Character Portraits Resolution

Started by ricardojuchem, Tue 26/09/2017 23:31:22

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ricardojuchem

Hello, first of all sorry if there are English mistakes on my post. I'm brazilian and I'm not used to write in English.

I will start to work on character portraits for Future Flashback and I'm with a doubt about the best workflow.
The game resolution is 320x180. Should I paint the portraits on high resolution and then resize it to fit the game resolution or should I paint the portraits on low-res from the start?
Can anyone help me with this??

Also, someone knows how is the workflow from the portrait artists at Infamous Quests and Wadjet Eye?

I thank you in advance.

Cheers,

Ricardo


I use squares to make some art.

selmiak

I think it is really easier to actually paint portraits at a higher resolution than 320x200, maybe 2x or 3x size will be better. then resize it, try different resizing algorithms, see what fits best and give it another pass of cleaning artifacts from the resize and working out details at the lower res.

Snarky

Quote from: ricardojuchem on Tue 26/09/2017 23:31:22
Also, someone knows how is the workflow from the portrait artists at Infamous Quests and Wadjet Eye?

Grundislav and Ben 304 (formerly and currently with Wadjet Eye) have discussed this on their podcast. They've both at various points used downscaling (mostly x2, I think). Ben gave it up quite a while back, I'm not sure whether Grundislav is still doing it. The takeaway seemed to be that it's a useful trick depending on your skill level, but once you reach a certain level of mastery the drawbacks (you can waste time on details that will disappear in the downscaling, and you don't have exact control of how the end result will look) start to outweigh the benefits.

There's really no right or wrong answer. You'll have to experiment and find out what works best for you.

ricardojuchem

Quote from: selmiak on Wed 27/09/2017 08:03:27
I think it is really easier to actually paint portraits at a higher resolution than 320x200, maybe 2x or 3x size will be better. then resize it, try different resizing algorithms, see what fits best and give it another pass of cleaning artifacts from the resize and working out details at the lower res.

Thank you selmiak. Resize and clean it up looks like a good idea.


I use squares to make some art.

ricardojuchem

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 27/09/2017 08:10:55
Quote from: ricardojuchem on Tue 26/09/2017 23:31:22
Also, someone knows how is the workflow from the portrait artists at Infamous Quests and Wadjet Eye?

Grundislav and Ben 304 (formerly and currently with Wadjet Eye) have discussed this on their podcast. They've both at various points used downscaling (mostly x2, I think). Ben gave it up quite a while back, I'm not sure whether Grundislav is still doing it. The takeaway seemed to be that it's a useful trick depending on your skill level, but once you reach a certain level of mastery the drawbacks (you can waste time on details that will disappear in the downscaling, and you don't have exact control of how the end result will look) start to outweigh the benefits.

There's really no right or wrong answer. You'll have to experiment and find out what works best for you.

Thank you Snarky, I'll check their podcast and try it in both ways. Cheers!


I use squares to make some art.

Grundislav

It really depends on what style you're going for. If it's pixel art (like the recent ones posted in the Kate and Shelly thread) then it's best to do them at the game's resolution. If you're going for a more "painterly" look, like Ilyich's work, then you might want to paint them between 2x-4x the game size and then downscale them.

Ilyich

Hello there!

As someone who's painted portraits for a couple of Wadjet Eye titles, I can safely say that they are usually painted at a higher resolution, then scaled down and cleaned up a bit. In my case they tend to be around x8 of their final size, here's an example from Shardlight:



[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/r8XxO7u.png[/imgzoom]

And I believe Jen Pattison from Infamous Quests paints at even higher resolutions, so there are no limits to how high you can go, just remember that some of those details will definitely be lost or distorted, so it's better to transition into the 'cleanup' stage earlier rather than later.

That said, Future Flashback seems to have a much cleaner pixel art style than WEG and IQ games(both tend to have painterly backgrounds with lots of anti-aliasing), so drawing the portraits cleanly at the correct size might also be a good option for you.

Hope this helps a bit, best of luck with your lovely-looking game!

ricardojuchem

Thank you for your kind reply Ilyich.
I'll do some tests on both ways.

Cheers!


I use squares to make some art.

selmiak

Quote from: Grundislav on Wed 27/09/2017 14:46:26
It really depends on what style you're going for. If it's pixel art (like the recent ones posted in the Kate and Shelly thread) then it's best to do them at the game's resolution. If you're going for a more "painterly" look, like Ilyich's work, then you might want to paint them between 2x-4x the game size and then downscale them.

this sums it up, and FF is more pixelart, and downsizing pixelart is most likely giving crappy result, so for Pixelart character portraits either paint at the game's resolution or another possibility would be to just roughly sketch the face at higher res, resize and go straight into the coloring/lighting/cleanup process for pixelart.

ricardojuchem

Thanks for the feedback. After some tests I decide to work directly on low resolution.
You can check some WIP at the Future Flashback topic.

Cheers!


I use squares to make some art.

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