A Poison Green - Character Art

[Honza]

Hey guys,

so after lurking here for ages, starting three games and never finishing any of them, it seems I'm finally working on a serious project - check it out here:

A Poison Green

I'll be posting new character art in this thread to get some feedback. Here's the first one I'd like to improve before I start animating it (because after that, there's no going back ):

[imgzoom]http://hvavra.sweb.cz/PoisonGreen/mia5.png[/imgzoom]

It's one of the main characters, Mia: "an unemployed woman aimlessly wandering through life, stuck behind ideals that never translate into acts."

Plus one character that's already animated to an extent, but there's still an option to redo him:

[imgzoom]http://hvavra.sweb.cz/PoisonGreen/Elijah_side_walk.gif[/imgzoom]

Also we've been getting multiple criticisms about the character style not matching the backgrounds (see this for example). I believe it's pretty much the standard for character art to be simpler (less details and especially less shading) than backgrounds, but in our case, it seems to be more obvious than usually. Any ideas on how to correct that without having to do hand-painted shadows on a zillion frames of animation?

Thanks very much for any input you care to give!

[Anian]

Characters always look simpler, because they require animation, but it's important they work with backgrounds and I think, so far, in this game project, they do.

She might be a bit too elongated (torso is too long and head too narrow). Have you agreed on proportions for characters (like height in heads)?

[Honza]

She is supposed to be the "elongated" type of girl - this is the image I used as a reference for the face (although I strayed from it later):



Question is, is the torso too long compared to the rest of the body? I used some reference images and the proportions seem to fit more or less... there are girls who have shorter torsos, but I also found ones that are like my Mia. But if it looks disproportional, I'll correct it - been staring at it for so long that I can't really tell.

[Anian]

Well if the proportions are the ones you want, then I just suggest to make her skull (not the whole head with hair and all, but the solid skull part) wider in the front view.
Personally I think guy's head is a bit too small as well.

But in general I like the style.

[Eric]

I agree with Anian that her head might be a bit too narrow in the front. I also might in the side view, if this is a resting pose, move her head back a little so the weight of it is over her shoulders more.

The issue of her torso looking long might be complicated by the fact that her actual waist is obscured by the jacket and the long shirt.

[Honza]

Eric: It's actually a walking pose (the other leg is going to be rised mid-step), so I made her lean forward a bit.

Just a quick question for everybody: how about the length of the arms? Currently they're longer in the side view than in the front view, so I'm going to fix one of those according to the other. Which length looks better to you? Thanks!

[SookieSock]

I would say ( with my limited experience as an animator) that the front view arm length looks better.

[Honza]

A bit of an update:




I'm not really sure I have the time to correct anything at this point, but I'll be happy for feedback anyway

[Anian]

My initial impression is it looks very nice and fluid. Her right hand may have the extreme points a bit too far (it swings a bit too far back and forth), but that's a minor issue.

[dactylopus]

In the front and back views, her arms don't seem to swing nearly as much as in the side view, which looks nice.

Overall it looks good.  Applied to the room, it looks very nice and definitely works.

[xil]

Very impressive!

I'm not too bothered by the difference in the arms for the side vs front/back, but maybe as Anian says, just tone down the side view slightly if you want a perfect match.

Only other small critique - I personally think the feet in the side view are a little flat as they go forward (backward seems perfectly fine). Even though it's only a slowish walk, you still do tend to lift your toes up a little further and really hit your heel on the ground when you move forward, it feels like she misses the heel hitting the ground part and then it jumps a frame so her whole foot just places itself flat on the ground.

Hope that helps, overall it looks absolutely awesome when she walks across the room, I would be happy if my game looked half as good as that!

[Honza]

Anian: You're right about the arm - I actually gave it a little more swing because it seemed cool at the moment . In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have done that...

dactylopus: yeah, I have a problem with the swing of the arms in the front and back views - I couldn't handle the 3D aspect of it, all attempts to make them swing "towards the camera" came out weird, so I just gave up.

[dactylopus]

The main problem in those views is that her arms always look like they are in front of her.  They don't pass her shirt, but it is very clear that they do in the side view.

It looks passable enough, though.  So if you're not too worried about it, it shouldn't really be a problem in the game.

[StillInThe90s]

First of all, I must say that your work looks really good. Especially the in-context example.
Secondly: I'm no artist and this may not make much sense but I noticed that the girls head is bobbing quite a lot compared to the rest of her body, her shoulders in particular. This looks to me as if her neck is getting stretched out like an old accordion.
In this walk reference clip the head-neck-shoulder relation looks much more static but I guess this varies between individuals.

[Honza]

StillInThe90s: Thanks! The head bobbing is a cartoony thing. It's not realistic, but I kinda like how it accentuates each step. Does it bother anyone else?

[Snarky]

I would be happier if the shoulders moved a bit more and the head a bit less on the bounce. Also, in the front view, her head looks off-center from her neck (or vice versa), and the neck seems to move side to side independently of her head. Plus there's a bit of a jerk, it looks like maybe one of the frames is a pixel off.

It's overall a very nice walkcycle and sprite, though!

[Honza]

Snarky: You're right about the neck, it's shaky overall... I'll see if I ever get back to correct that or if I scratch it to "hand-drawn charm"

Here's another one:

[imgzoom]http://hvavra.sweb.cz/PoisonGreen/William_walk_side_outlines.gif[/imgzoom]

This one I can actually still correct without wasting too much time, so nitpick away!

[Kastchey]

A quick comment re characters standing out too much. I'd say this is mostly because of the backgrounds having high colour depth and very light outline, and the characters exactly the opposite - minimum colours and heavy outline. The obvious remedy would be what you are trying to avoid (hand made shadows), but perhaps you could try lightening up the outline or blending it with the filler colours?

[Honza]

Kastchey: Thanks, I tried that, doesn't really work. Light outlines look weird when the character walks in front of a dark background. Blending with filler colors (i. e. having a brown coat bordered with dark brown instead of black) could help, but it's also a lot of extra work.

I'm doing different sprites for each room to match the color scheme - that's all I can do at the moment I'm afraid. More details and shadows are on my list of things I'd like to do if there's any time to go back and do some extra polishing. But right now, I'm far behind schedule as it is.

[Renal Shutdown]

To be honest, I don't think it's too bad of a choice.  It has a cel-shaded animation on a oil painting background that Disney and the like were using in the 30's and 40's.  The down side, however is that a few of the objects in the background look iffy.  The pillow, especially.  The highlights on it make it look like it's been laminated.  The plant (?) on the right could use some tweaking.  I'd also consider making the neon sign animated; a couple of frames with the highlights dialed up or down slightly would work, I think.

[Honza]

Renal: That's what I keep saying! It's not just Disney, about half the cartoons I've seen look like that. But it's the first thing people notice, unfortunately - that the characters aren't as detailed and shaded as the backgrounds.

The neon sign is going to be animated. This is just something I slapped together to show the walkcycle in action.

[frenzykitty]

I think it looks beautiful.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

These look quite good but my advice is to be aware of proportions and how they impact viewer expectations of 'realistic' characters.  A human is typically three heads wide from shoulder to shoulder, for example, and their arms extend down to where the elbow rests midsection of the chest and the fingers extend down roughly to the middle of the thigh.  Judging by your work so far you tend to draw heads a bit too small and arms a bit too short (or torsos/legs a bit too elongated).

The side walkcycles are wonderful in my opinion, though the up/down versions could use some work, particularly the up versions where the arms are sort of swaying left to right like an orangutans would rather than moving back (towards the viewer) and forward again as in normal movement.  Oddly enough your downward walkcycles reflect the front to back movement, so you should just focus on mimicking that to get a more realistic animation.

If I had to make any other criticism it is that some of the animations have a mechanical 'stop' to them at the looping frame where it jerks back into motion rather than a smooth transition.  It's easy to notice in the girl's downward walkcycle when her arms are all the way back and then suddenly snap a bit forward.  In the side walkcycle her movements are much more fluid and natural, so my advice is to focus more on the down/up walkcycles as you clearly have a solid grasp of side to side animation.

Overall, I'm very impressed and hope to see more of your work.

[Honza]

Shane: Thanks for the thorough feedback! It appears I'll have to go back to the up and down walkcycles sooner or later - the more I look at them, the weirder the arm movement looks.

I have a question about the head size. Which of those two looks better to you?

[imgzoom]http://hvavra.sweb.cz/PoisonGreen/William_heads.png[/imgzoom]

The left one's head is probably too small, but I still like it much more for some reason. Don't mind the slight bluriness of the right one - will try to correct that when I settle on a size.

Thanks!

[Honza]

So here's one more animation. I'm posting it mostly to bump my previous question about the head size

[Creamy]

It's beautiful !

All your animations look fine but I hope they will be sped up ingame.
It's a bit slow for my taste.

[Honza]

Creamy: Thanks! I believe speed is easily adjustable in AGS, so we'll see what testers prefer. And, um, what do you think about the head size ?

[dactylopus]

About the head size, I think the head on the right is more proportioned at a first glance, but I haven't measured it out.  It just feels a bit better to me.

As for the other animation, not bad at all!  I really like the look of this game, its beautiful!

Keep up the good work!

[Fitz]

The left one just looks like a very tall person, and the other looks average -- so whichever of the two was your intention is the right one. I'd say the right one looks more natural, though, the clothes fit better.

As for the animation, it looks beautiful. I really like the color theme.

[StillInThe90s]

I would vote for the one on the right.
Great bus stop animation btw.
Not sure if this is still relevant, but I was looking at the girls walkcycle and noticed that her jacket is very fabric -ish in the side view, but looks almost starched in the up/down views. I figured this might add to the arm movement issue. If there still is an issue, that is.

[Honza]

Thanks for the feedback everybody! I used the bigger head and it really does look better.

StillInThe90s: Yeah, I'm aware of that, didn't have time to do a more proper fabricish effect than the slight flap in the front view. I'd like to correct that, since the fabric moving adds a sense of fluidity, but there's no time for details like that at the moment :/

I have another question about an issue I can't decide on. While I can't afford to do lights and shadows on the character's body (it takes forever to animate them), it isn't a big deal to shade at least the head, since it isn't animated - it just moves up and down. Question is, isn't shading just the head worse than having no shadows at all? Not only is it inconsistent, but it might make the unshaded parts look flat and half-assed in comparison. Here's an example:

[imgzoom]http://hvavra.sweb.cz/PoisonGreen/Hafiz_shaded_unshaded.png[/imgzoom]

What do you think? Shaded head or no shadows at all? The more opinions the better, think of it as a poll . Thanks!

[Limony]

Also we've been getting multiple criticisms about the character style not matching the backgrounds (see this for example). I believe it's pretty much the standard for character art to be simpler (less details and especially less shading) than backgrounds, but in our case, it seems to be more obvious than usually. Any ideas on how to correct that without having to do hand-painted shadows on a zillion frames of animation?

Just adding a small darker area near the feet should help. It doesn't have to match the animation or shape of the character. I've seen this work well before.

[Renal Shutdown]

What do you think? Shaded head or no shadows at all? The more opinions the better, think of it as a poll . Thanks!

Personally I'd opt for shading the lot, but given the options, I'd say no shading on anything.  The one on the left looks like it's only half done.

[Honza]

Limony: Good idea, putting it on my "things to try" list. Although I'm afraid what you say works better for low-res animations - with this level of detail, the shadow could look awkward if it wasn't animated.

Renal: Thanks, your vote has been counted in... it's 1:0 for no shadows now

[Limony]

Limony: Good idea, putting it on my "things to try" list. Although I'm afraid what you say works better for low-res animations - with this level of detail, the shadow could look awkward if it wasn't animated.

It does look a little awkward when walking and stuff, but IMO that's nothing compared to having all your characters float in midair throughout the game. It must be really subtle, I can't stress that enough. I made an example, it uses a simple elipse that is strongly feathered and filled with black. This layer is set to 50% opacity and stacked under the character:

[Anian]

So wait, might I know what is your proces of making a walkcycle for example (software and resolution wise)?

[Limony]

So wait, might I know what is your proces of making a walkcycle for example (software and resolution wise)?

I've never done anything like that (the image I posted was made with GIMP). I just said I had seen this in a game, not that I was capable of making it . Too bad I don't remember which. You need to have an alpha channel for this to work.

If you're using a vector program such as Inkscape or Illustrator, the equivalent would be an ellipse filled with a circular gradient from black to transparent.

And, your artwork is stunning, I'm not critizising it.

[Anian]

@Limony: Lol, I was not being aggresive with you, I was actually just asking Honza.

[Limony]

@Limony: Lol, I was not being aggresive with you, I was actually just asking Honza.

Oh, I actually thought you were Honza (I didn't read who was posting). I'm blushing here. I cannot believe I didn't notice that...

[Honza]

@Limony: It sure looks better, we'll see how that works with animations. Originally I pictured a big oval acting as a shadow for the whole character, but small subtle circles just around the feet might work. Thanks!

@Anian: I draw it in Photoshop using only a mouse. There are no higher resolution originals, what you see in my posts is all I have.

Outlines of body parts are different layers (head, torso, arms, legs, feet) - it can look like this for example. A walkcycle has 12 frames, with 1 and 7 being the middle ones, 4 and 10 the extreme ones (torso most rotated, arms and legs most apart). I usually start with drawing the rotation of the torso, then move the torso & head up and down, then do the arms swing, then do the legs last (but it depends what I'm in the mood for, the order may vary). I usually start with frame 1, then 4, then the ones in between. I test the animation either with Photoshop's animate tool or by exporting to gifs if Photoshop gets too slow. After the outlines are done and look good, I color the whole thing (each color is a fill layer, I fill them using the lasso and brush). Then when I export the individual frames, I apply a filter to each to match the room's color scheme. The filter is a folder of layers (gradients, color overlays, curves and the sort) with a mask in the shape of the character in that frame.