Colour Scheme and Shading Help :)

[OzzieMum]

Hello,
I'm a 23 yo  Aussie/Kiwi Mum of 2 (not the place I know) and I've finally gotten a background up to some simple enough standard, but it still needs some tweaking
I'm not so confident about shading on the sprite or the background any tips?
I also seem to have no colour co-ordination what-so-ever any ideas on the colouring for the bg? (I shrank it a bit so it would fit) full size image here http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/goodhallway2.png
Its a hallway (like duh...) of a zoo, there is a Utility Closet to the left and Break Room to the right and far back right there is a Security Office, the big brown doors lead out into the behind the scenes part of the zoo and the bottom leads to an indoor enclosure...
Hows about helping a girl out?




Did I do that right (no breaking of the rules?)

[ThreeOhFour]

I would just like to say this.

Hooray! Another Australian!

Hehehe

The room and character look fine to me - so do the colours. I'll try a paintover tomorrow if nobody else has to give you some simple shading ideas.

[buloght]

Hi ozziemum

The background is extremely big (1880 x 2354), and the character is tiny tiny (103 x 306) compared to it, are these how they will be in the game? It's always good and faster to pick an easier solution like 320x240, 320x200, 640x480 or 640x400. You don't need bigger than that. Plus animating a sprite of that size would be incredibly hard.

(I assume these are for an ags adventure game)

[OzzieMum]

Hi ozziemum

The background is extremely big (1880 x 2354), and the character is tiny tiny (103 x 306) compared to it, are these how they will be in the game? It's always good and faster to pick an easier solution like 320x240, 320x200, 640x480 or 640x400. You don't need bigger than that. Plus animating a sprite of that size would be incredibly hard.

(I assume these are for an ags adventure game)

Oh crap, I didnt think of that.... Whats the best way to change it to the "right size" I cant just resize it (im using paintshop pro for the bg and mspaint for the sprite) because it ruins the detail of the bg, should I start again from scratch?
You shouldve seen some of my earlier edits (been editing off and on for more than 2 years ) I tried a floodfill of a tile photograph eek it was terrible
What size should the sprite be? I'm really happy with how it came out my first attempt was really pixelated

[buloght]

That is a very good first pixellated sprite

Well depending on your resolution choice, your sprites shall follow. If you would go with 320x200 (240) typically sprites are either in templates of 40x50 to anything up to 100x100. A game like Monkey Island has sprites at height 46-50 (also in 320x200 res), while DOTT have sprites to height 80 (I think).

Doing sprites at these small size make them quick and easy and much easier animate. It is always nice too when the sprites are proportionally correct to the background. Here are examples of games, and the rough sizes of their sprites:

Monkey Island 1 (320x200, 40x47), Monkey Island 2 (320x200, 40x47), Dott (320x200, somethingx75), King's Quest 5 (320x200, somethingx47), Blackwell Legacy (320x240, somethingx70), Curse of Monkey Island (640x480, randomly size big sprites, cartoony-ness, but proportionally works)




[edited] mistake in comment.

[ThreeOhFour]

Interesting info on the Sam & Max & DOTT chars vs backgrounds, Buloght - I did not know this.

I agree the sprite is good for a first sprite, but must point out that you have mixed resolutions (Used big blocks with little blocks), and it is generally advised that you don't do this. Have a go using all 1 pixel blocks, perhaps, (while zoomed in) and see how you go.

[buloght]

Actually I think I made a mistake on that, oops, I think DOTT has res 320x200, I just got confused by the ingame res. Sorry, my mistake, the rooms are actually fitted to 320x200.

[Uhfgood]

You might not like this, but I attempted a paint over (well modification really). 





I don't claim to be an artist but a few things bothered me.  Firstly her "hourglass" figure is a bit exaggerated, and a little bit too high.  The bottom of the "hourglass" is usually the hips and then is smallest at the waist before widening out towards the breasts.  I'm not an expert on anatomy but these are just my opinions which you will probably through out :-)  So I modified it a bit to account for this.  Maybe it made her a little less interesting in shape, but I think it's a bit more realistic.

Secondly her eyes looked cross-eyed in your pic.  This doesn't seem through any fault of your own but rather the nature of the low-resolution.  I attempted to make it a little better, although I couldn't ultimately get it "right".  I essentially lightened the pupils (well technically the iris but since this is low res it's the whole blue part of the eyes).  Basically the white of the eyes sort of framed the blue part which made it look a bit odd, so I made the white of the eyes grayer to sort of match the tone of it.  If you look at someone far away you notice the whites alot less.  But this left the part in between the eyes, it also was too light, so I had to use a darker flesh color to make it uniform.  The eye shadow looked a bit dark compared to the rest of it, I lightened it a bit.  Now it's not perfect, and I don't expect you to automatically say it's any good, but at least use it to maybe look at how you can stop the "cross-eyed" look.  (Hard to do in low res).

Also I looked at her crotch (okay no snickering here), to me it looked too rounded -- while it doesn't look male, it just didn't really work for me, so I tried to make it less pronounced, more triangular.  I also understand these are supposed to probably be blue-jeans and it might be appropriate for that, but I felt it should be a bit more feminine looking.  I also moved the bottom of the crotch up a bit.

The pants themselves looked a little too blocky and straight.  After looking at some pictures for reference, I decided to add a small crease in the pant legs, and make them more pointed to hang over the shoes.  The crease sort of dictated how to angle the bottom of the pant legs.

Finally we get to the arms -- to me that just looked un-natural -- While the upper part looks okay, the lower part seems to long to me and too forced, like she's holding her arms out to her sides on purpose.  First I made the shoulders less pronounced (not necessarily needed but again to make her look a bit more feminine, then I brought the arms in a bit so they don't looks like she's trying to imitate a bell with her arms.
The hands are also by her sides and the arms are shortened a bit.

A few other odds and ends.  I made her breasts a little more rounded, not alot but the low res made it more blocky, so I decided to compensate.  I also fixed up her mouth to be a bit fuller by adding a bit under the lip line.

There's also a little discrepancy between your mouth and my mouth because what I did was shrunk the image down to a one pixel by one pixel height (for each of those pixels) and it seemed to flatten the lip line a bit.  Also the necklace part somehow isn't centered anymore as in your pic.

Please forgive me if any of this post is out of line.

Keith

[Emerald]

I prefer her original one, though he's right about the hourglass part.

[PixelPerfect]

I thought to start my pixeling and cooked up my own character sprite based on your picture.




EDIT: now that I looked at it again, the arms were kinda funny up in the air, so I did another pose for the gal


Now she looks pretty introverted though...

[Layabout]

Where are her hips, where is her crotch, her boobs are smaller and the head doesnt have enough colour variation. And i think her legs are too long. She looks like she is on stilts!

On the original, Far too big. NIcely done, not much variation of colours or shading.

I would use your second attempt (the smaller one, and go from there.

Make her symmetrical, since there is no variation on either side. Give her 3 shades of colour for each main colour. Light, mid and shadow. Outline if you must using an even darker shade. And I usually have a definite column of a single pixel in the centre to do details like a nose, as opposed to having the centre 2 pixels wide.

My advice for now. I may do a quick paintover in a sec to show what i mean.

[Buckethead]

this might help getting your proportions right.

http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/body/proportions.html

[Afflict]

As always Buloght departs great wisdom.

[PixelPerfect]

@layabout: I didn't know I had to be perfect and all knowing in my first pixel drawing. But thanks anyway for your positive feedback.

[Layabout]

Ah, I didn't imply such a thing! I was just pointing out the areas that could improve, giving suggestions on the way I work when pixelling.

Oh and don't be afraid of overlapping. That is where the shadow shades come in handy.

[PixelPerfect]

I guess I took it a little bit too personal there. Don't know why. You had some good points there.



That's what I ended up with. I don't really have a hang of the shading yet and I guess it shows.