My planned mAGS game sadly fell victim to a computer crash and a resulting lack of motivation, but I've managed to save some graphics. I think it looks pretty good (thanks to the help of #AGS and most notably Babar :=), but I'd still like to hear if you think there's anything that could be improved. Without further ado:
A sickeningly colorful (and cheaply furnished) office:
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/empptyfice.png)
A grim noir-esque detective:
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/tectives.png)
The matching dame (no, I still can't draw boobs):
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/dame.png)
Aaand the scene in action:
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/szene.png)
So... what do you think?
I like the style, a lot, and think your bgs match the characters perfectly- all I had to crit is the lampshade, because it really looks far too big.
ghost: maybe lamp is the nearest thing.. but you'r right it's *strange*
btw i really like the style and all things matches togheter, i would like to see some item, interface and (uhm?) animations
Quote from: thebaddie on Wed 26/03/2008 13:43:51
maybe lamp is the nearest thing
Exactly. I imagined it to be sort of floating near the camera... that's why it's so big and high up in the air. Suggestions on how to make that clearer would be very appreciated! ;)
Anyway, thanks for the nice comments!
I suggest using Flash for drawing (for all these lovely wacky lines) and a bit looser, cartoonier approach.
Your style is very functional, but... boring. Two-color shade would improve alot, too.
EDIT: This is about what I had in mind... (minus extra bold outlines maybe)
I'm not very good with Flash though to make proper example (...yet!!!)
(http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/aka.png)
Well, it's an idea. I like your current style too.
For some reason I'd like to see little circles as their hands whenever they are grabbing something, or interacting with something.
I think there's perhaps too much empty space. Perhaps you could add a black border in place of some of the unnecessary parts of the walls and floor to focus more on the centre.
InCreator idea is not bad, but I prefer original style. Also it allows details (like door inscription) and 3-day bear of detective that would not match with wacky lines.
Get rid of the oh so lots of space ;)
Anyway maybe just box it in nicely by adding a roof to the room... the characters feel so lost in space. The room is about three times their height.
In creator does have a good idea, he obviously rushed that one allot though... but yeah it looks good.
Also I agree at having bubble hands :)
I would go for the original idea (maybe it's the bold lines on InCreator's) as well.
The concept reminds me of SouthPark and I think it could work really well on a adventure game.
Hi, everyone - this is my first post here and I must say that I am completely in love with AGS and all the great stuff coming out of it.
That said, I'd like to suggest that you blur the edgest of the lamp shade - unless this is at odds with the intended visual style overall - to make it look like it's closer to the camera. An old MI trick.
Hi and welcome to the forums, S. :)
Taking a few things said into consideration, I re-drew the scene in Flash and added some very basic shading to the characters, as well as a roof and a light switch. (To the room, not to characters). I think the result is rather neat (although all I basically did was remove the jagged pixel edges)...
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/flashfice1.png)
... apart from the fact the lamp continues to just look... wrong. Any suggestions?
Also, I'll try and re-redraw the whole thing in Flash later on via the freehand tool to see if it works out well.
Also also, bubble hands seconded. :=
Also also also, thanks for all the suggestions and comments. Keep 'em coming! :D
The lamp doesn't look like it's closer if you look up. A tiny paintover can show you that:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/flashfice1.png)
Where the 90 degree angle clearly shows the lamp is in fact at the same level as the PE-man. choose a place for it to hang, closer to the camera.
Simply make the lamp smaller, and I think you can even lower the roof some more :P But the lamp is definately too big.
Why not draw the characters in flash too? The scene has no jaggy edges the characters now do.
Just a quick suggestion here Akatosh, using your old images.
I'd like to see the broad looking a bit more feminine. I've done a small example to indicate what I mean - I feel she looks very plain as she is now.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Ak.PNG)
Hope this is helpful.
Boobs?
Like others have pointed out - the wire for the lamp should disappear out of view if you want it to be a foreground element. I like your sprite style, though. They will be fairly easy to animate.
As usual, cute style ;D
I did a few edits on the characters:
(http://crabshackgallery.com/edits/akatosh.gif)
For the guy, just an upturned collar.
For the girl, if she's supposed to be a sort of femme fatale, I figure she should look a little more "daring" ;). So now she has boobs, and is wearing a sideslit dress with a lower neckline. I also added some eyelashes and reduced the width of the mouth.
Hope this helps :)
I made some alterations to the shading of them both and the general shape of the lady.
1. Reduced colors on guy by 2 (was using two similar colors for the coat) and upped contrast slightly. Also shaded him slightly different.
2. Added 1 color to the lady so their clothing shades would match (2+black) and altered her shape to make her hips more visible.
(http://members.cox.net/progzmax/akatoshcl.gif)
Hopefully these alterations will give you some ideas, since they don't really affect your drawing style but your color usage.
I like progz's shape on the female.
So do I. I monkeyed (past tense of "to monkey", not monk-eyed) around with her and my original draft for a while, and this is what I came up with:
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/shapelydame.png)
The biggest issue I can see with this is that people won't be able to play guess-the-gender with the characters anymore, but apart from that, I think she's LIGHT YEARS further up on the quality scale than the original sprite (not that hard, but still). I mainly stuck with the original shading (or lack) thereof, though. I didn't like the varying line width around the boobs, but after removing them,
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/hooker.png)
she started to look a bit TOO slutty (or, ahem, "surgically enhanced") to me, even for a femme fatale. Thanks for all the helpful suggestions, everybody... although this is kind of defeating my original intentions of having graphics that are mainly "easy to draw". :P :=
Anyway... any further suggestions? I'd gladly take them.
I know what you mean, you would like a way to keep characters easy and quick to draw,
like a template sprite for each gender, and then you would just have to, say, add a moustache or hat, shoes, hair color or lenght.
I again advise you to look at SouthPark characters, they are poorly though stylish designed.
Your last character looks very good, btw, why don't you try to change dress colors and hair colors to see if you can make other convincing and charismatic characters?
I guess the more depth you put on a sprite the harder it gets to do all the views you want, it's the price one pays to have good characters
nice work
When I was doing the backgrounds for my game I used your games as one of the starting point for developing my own 'quick but still good looking' style. One of the changes I made was sticking shadows on everything - it keeps the cartoony look but adds more depth and interest to the scene. Other than that you could add more stuff in there to try and busy it up.
Anyway, here's the original:
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/empptyfice.png)
And a quick edit: (paying very little attention to the light source etc)
(http://dollarsquest.googlepages.com/empptyficesdw.png)
And here's some shots from my game, if you're interested:
http://onedollarproductions.googlepages.com/Screen1.png (http://onedollarproductions.googlepages.com/Screen1.png)
http://onedollarproductions.googlepages.com/Screen2.png (http://onedollarproductions.googlepages.com/Screen2.png)
I used Flash for these (as InCreator suggested, I find this sort of thing a lot easier in vectors. You could checkout Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -which is free- if you don't want to download Flash.
You've already got a lot of good advice for characters, I'd suggest you consider how many are going to be in the game, and weigh up how much time it will take to draw them at that level and see if its worth it. You will get quicker though.
Hope some of that is worth considering.