Blorf - On the Quest for better Characters...

[Moresco]

Blorf starts out his spork-quality adventure by drawing...YAY characters! Heh, ok so here's my dilemma. I'm making this game, and well as it turns out, I needs a character! So I got this girl here, and sort of sketched her out a thousand million times, scanned till my motor broke, and I'm still going ARGH! Can you help me at all?


The original version.


With glasses & different facial levels.

I think the face is my biggest problem, but there's certainly others as well. I'm shooting for semi-realism, in an artsy sort of way. If that makes any sense at all.  Help help!

[Moresco]

Oo oo I know I just posted a few minutes ago but ooo this is a good improvement or two for ya:







Ok so there we have a little more contrast for the dress itself. I think it's better this way, what do you all think?

[dagooh]

I like the second draft with the blue dress better, I think you should do something about the hair, it looks like a wig, maybe the hairline is too far up?.
this is just my opinion, but if this is going to be the main character for the game, people are going to have to look at it all the time and an unattractive main character is something ppl don't want to look at for too long.. IMO characters should be beautiful and boring (laura bow?) or ugly and funny (guybrush, bernard, laverne) or good looking and funny [Indiana Jones (hey! Indy has his funny moments)] .
I'm not sure if i'm making any sense here, and this is just my opinion (hey maybe she is fun as hell), I'm just letting you know what I think, good luck on your game!

[Moresco]

Well there's just no telling what the character is like, it's just an image...

Later on I'll develop some really fun animations & hopefully people will dig it.  I gotta make a guy main character as well, but one thing at a time. Thanks for the input!

[MrColossal]

i hate to say it but listen to nothing that dagooh just said

i guess it's personal and personally he'd not want to play an "unattractive" main character but i don't see anything that makes this sprite unattractive. She looks real good and has a lot of character to her

she doesn't look generic or boring. she does however look like a JPG

could you post a GIF version for us to look at? they're clearer and show the actual pixels

her skin may be a little too light. as in the shading may not be contrasted enough with her normal skin tone. everything blends together for me at the moment.

the skin works better before the dress had a texture cause it seems kinda vectory and cute like Cruise for a Corpse-ish. but the texture is nice and i'd rather the texture than nothing. so my suggestion is mess around with adding darker darks

eric

[Moresco]

Yo Eric, I've got a gif version for ya.  I changed her skin tone some & the hair color as well.  This is the red version only, I didn't bother to redo all the colors.

For Dagooh, yah I think the hairline was a bit too high.  How does it look now with the different hair color? I think it lacks realism with the yellow hair, but it just seemed to be too light.

My biggest problem are the pixels & how unfriendly they are at this size.  Oh well can't do much about it. Lemme know what ya think about the changes! ^^

[dagooh]

It's looking better, have you tried doing the side view?
to me that's the most difficult part.

[MrColossal]

ooooh that looks real nice

how are the pixels being unfriendly? If i've told them once i've told them a thousand times to play nice. If they tease you just don't pay any attention! They'll get bored and leave you alone

now i can see her face and the skin colour works very well i must say

very nicely done, she looks really solid and there

is it a 3d model painted over or just painted by hand?

either way it'll be nice animating and also a pain, hehe

eric

[Moresco]

So far all I've animated was the behind-walking sequence.  It was fairly simple I just drew her hair down her back & did the arms.  To me, proportions are a pain but if I've got them right I tend to just copy, rotate slightly, touchup and go. Hopefully it works, sometimes the whole perspective is screwed up but it saves me time and at this size it's hard to notice.

The sideview is evil, but I haven't compared any actual side poses yet & when I do I'll have a better idea of what I'm looking for.

Everything is painted by hand & I use photos as a reference tool for shape, angles, that sort of thing.  I use the smudge tool in Photoshop alot actually.  Sometimes I can make use of a filter but it hasn't happened on this game yet.
Anyway gotta get some sleep been working hard on the images & I'll update more later tomorrow.

[GarageGothic]

That last version is excellent. I think you should add a little more shadow to the face though, under her nose in particular. There's too little tonal difference (contrast) in the face compared to the dress.

Also, when looking at her arms I really can't see where the elbow is. The left arm (her right) works ok, but the right one (her left) looks weird. Too short. Maybe it's a perspective thing (is it bent slightly forward?) but it's oddly proportioned.

Otherwise you've found a great style. The evolution from the first version to the last is amazing!

[Moresco]

Well here's a few updates.

I did try to add more shadows, and hopefully her skin looks better now.  Tried to work on the nose, glasses, & lips a little bit but mostly outlines & shadows etc were my main goals.  Her elbows are about at where the dress sleeves end, so it's hard to see the front crease in her arm but I did work on that too.  Anything else look out of place or abnormal?  Oh and here's a terrible attempt at a behind pose.  I just drew over her face in a hurried middle of the night session. I've got a full walking sequence, I'll try and get a gif of it soon.

This was my first edit:


And this is the final work I did. It should hopefully look slightly better than the previous.


Finally, her behind pose, in all it's sadness:


I've got about 25 roles in this game scripted already, so I better get to work on new characters eh? Egads!

[Jam Torkberg]

The progression is very nice.

In the newest drafts I was at first bothered by the way her left fore arm seemed longer than her right, but after further refection I think the shading provides enough of a feeling that her left are is bent more so than her right, solving the problem.  Though it might be shaded a bit more, to dispel all doubts.

I am baffled by her hair in the back view, however, which seems to constrict itself at neck level with out any visible means, then explode.  And though the hair is nicely textured, it has no shading, in contrast to the dress, which is very well done.  Thus, her hair seems very flat, despite the illusion of volume suggested by its width.

[Moresco]

Yes you've caught me, I cannot do hair.  I will give it another shot, maybe check out a model or two before hand, I'm sure that'll help.  More shading on the left arm? Okey dokey, shall try that.  ^^ Up with smilies! ^_^

[MrColossal]

i agree hair is a bitch and i hate it

i have nothing i can offer you in the hair department just that finding references is the best way to go and more people should do that around here including myself

and i did this stupid thing, Dagooh's ideal character for your game



no offense to dagooh, just being an idiot and having fun

eric