Actiony hero type guy

[Punch]

Hey all. Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything on the C&C boards (about two years I think ). Anyhow, I have this guy that I'm working on for a uni project and thought I'd post him here to get people's comments/crits etc. All done in paint (except for file conversion done in irfanview... but that doesn't really count. Plus it smudged the JPG of the big picture)


Actual running around in game images.


Death/Title screen (not sure yet).

It's not finished by a long shot, and I'm not really happy with all of the shading. I like the shading on his shoulder pads, but they don't really look right (and how are they attached? It's magic! Maybe he has magnets surgically implanted in his shoulders)  I'm also having a fair bit of trouble with the arms and legs.

The final image will be 640x480, but I couldn't see the point in wasting people's bandwidth with blank space at the moment.

Any advice is more than welcome!

Thanks,
Punch

[Mephistophilis]

I think the problem with The Shoulder pads is that his Arms don't appear to connect to his body underneath them.

[mousemat]

hes one lean mean killing machine .
are you shore you want him as a hero.
a bad guy would suit him much more.
all in all its brilliant

[InCreator]

Sprite looks lovely.
Can't say same about the closeup, though.
I could find few things to pick on with both pics, but --
this just is your style and it has to be exactly as it is right now. With all it's good and bad sides.
Good work. Keep it up.

[mornin (away for quite a while)]

I think the problem with The Shoulder pads is that his Arms don't appear to connect to his body underneath them.

I agree with that.
I think the title/death screen pic is just fine. Looks really good. Perhaps you could just use some straps that hold the shoulder pads. The smaller images look nice as well, but like Mephistophilis said, the arms don't appear to connect with the rest of the body. Maybe you could give your character a little bit of neck. It now, looks a bit like he's humping his back or something. I'd also suggest to make the pads a little smaller so that you can actually see how the arms connect to his body. To show you what I mean, I did a quick rubbish paintover:

100% 200%
- added neck
- narrowed the shoulders
- made shoulder pads smaller
- added a strap to hold them
- changed arms and hands a little
- changed legs and shoes a little

I also noticed that the position of the feet of the second image looks a little like he is standing on his heel, because of his toes pointing up like that. Maybe you should try something more like this:



Just some suggestions. But I agree to InCreator that the sprites look lovely already and if this is your style, just leave them as they are. 

[Punch]

Thanks for the help people.

I was never really happy with the close up. I think, for now, it's going to be too much work for the assignment so I'll just leave it. I kind of like the head. And the cigar. That's about it. 

I had a quick play with the sprite and ended up with this:
100% 200%
- Added neck
- Made shoulder pads smaller
- Removed cigar. When the sprite has to be this small to fit more actiony stuff on the screen, it just looked like a few errant pixels.

I don't think I really succeeded in making his shoulders seem more attached to his torso. I might go over the shoulders again. I'm planning on adding the straps for the pads onto the back. To be honest, I'm not really sure why he even has metal shoulder plates. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

The original idea was for him to be a ridiculously buff gorrilla-esque kind of character, hence the lack of neck and stupidly oval arms. I decided to keep the arms, and the hands don't really matter, 'cause eventually he'll be holding a gun. And when he's not, he'll be partially mutated into an alien.

Oh, and thanks for the back view feet advice. I was having trouble getting them to look right, so I just angled them up a lot.

Thanks again,
Punch