From paper to pixels: A DOTT-style character, round 3

[Zaidyer]

From concept art to game sprite:



Not exactly a one-to-one conversion, but the concept art helped tremendously in setting up the character design. This is probably the third or fourth shot at this character I've taken so far, but every improvement helps. I'd say it's a strong match for the Day of the Tentacle art style by now, but I'm looking for ways to improve and bring him a little closer to his initial conceptual design, without making him too busy or difficult to animate.

Crits and suggestions are encouraged.

[updownleftright]

Love the sprite, he's great!

Here's a quick list of what I think are differences between the concept and the finished thing, or just amends I would make. Hopefully one of them will inspire you...

• The sprites hair is a little flatter than the concept, less pointy.
  
• The collar looks a little wonkey, almost like it's twisted to the side, also a bit high maybe? I think you did the right thing losing the bow tie though.
  
• The outline of the shoes is too dark compared to the rest of the outlines, perhaps a slightly lighter gray?
  
• The trousers in the concept look a little 'jacked up' which adds to the geeky look, any way you can add that to the sprite?
  

And that's it! Keep up the good work dude, i'm looking forward to seeing the first edit

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think you've done a great job here.  I did an edit to correct a few things and to suggest a few others.

1.  Adjusted pose to equalize him.  If you look at Bernard's sprite, even though he leans back his head swings forward to compensate.

2.  Made the face resemble the sketch more by giving him a forehead and making his hair larger.

3.  Added one additional shade to each area.  This isn't really necessary but with your obvious talent why not improve upon the DoTT style?

4.  Made his left arm look like the sketch.

5.  Darkened the outer hair color and lightened the inner shirt color to increase the contrast between colors.





Hopefully this will help.  You don't really need the additional shades but I think highlights add so much to the personality.  Nice work!

[ManicMatt]

The shape of ProgZ's drawn glasses are much better, yours look like old ladies glasses!

And the hair and stuff.

Although I personally prefer it without all the complex shading he added, but Im probably in the minority. Sure it's impressive, but it takes away some of the character's simple charm for me.

[Steel Drummer]

Also, animating would be harder with the shading. I think the original is more suited to a DoTT style game.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Also, animating would be harder with the shading.

This is an argument I've heard used many times in the CL as advice and I would just like to point out that it's not really true.  Shading doesn't make animation any more or less difficult, really.  Difficult and time consuming are two completely different things, and while it may require slightly more time to redraw the character for a frame it is not really any more difficult to do so.  I just want to clear this up because I'd rather not see people keep operating under the misconception that additional shading makes animation a sudden chore. 

Either you can do it without a problem or you can't, and shading isn't going to make a bit of difference .

[Steel Drummer]

Prog, the shading style of yours actually looked a lot like Simon The Sorcerer's style (only way cartoonier).

[Zaidyer]

I had some time today, so I decided to redraw the sprite. Unlike last time, I shrank the concept art and used it as a basis instead of just winging it. The result is actually a big improvement.


I also took about 10-15 minutes to do a really quick highlighting job. I originally didn't want to do it that way in case it killed the style, but it's starting to grow on me.

[Sparky]

I like his style! Lots of character, good execution. The hair and eyebrows are much improved. His white vacant stare is very expressive, actually. It would be fun in a cartoony way if you treated the glasses rims like a pair of giant eyes, and made them frown, squint, etc. The lines and colors are very soft and pleasing, except perhaps the pure black on the shoes. His left shoelace also looks a little awkward in comparison to the rest of the drawing, which is very fluid and natural. He still has a bit of a center of gravity issue- it sort of looks like he's leaning backward against a wall or something. I like how far back he is leaning, but I'd recommend compensating by sticking his head and / or hips forward past his feet.

[updownleftright]

I vote no to the extra shading! I like the simpler style, closer to DOTT better

[Ubel]

I like the new shaded version. It looks much more alive than the simple non-shaded one. I'd love to see that in a game.

[Buckethead]

I agree, although I like the hair color of the non shaded version better. I think it looks more natural. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Prog, the shading style of yours actually looked a lot like Simon The Sorcerer's style (only way cartoonier).

That is a very nice compliment, thanks!

Very nice versions you've done Zaidyer, just remember that balance is important.  Move his head forward a bit, and increase the contrast between the shirt shades so they stand out more.  You should also put his left arm into frame, even if slightly (showing a bit of his hand by his pants would be fine).  Great work!

[Steel Drummer]

I vote no to the extra shading! I like the simpler style, closer to DOTT better

So do I. DOTT's style was just fine, without a bunch of complex shading.

[Zaidyer]

The highlights are more or less an extra step that requires very little work. Crafting the sprite from nothing more than a piece of black-and-white concept art took an hour, but adding the highlights took ten to fifteen minutes afterwards. Plus, that's only four extra colors in addition to the base 12 of the sprite, making an even 16.
Day of the Tentacle was limited to only 8 colors per palette. There are a lot of places in the original game that would have benefitted from twice that amount, such as Doctor Fred's curiously jaggy lab coat. Most modern animated cartoons use simple color highlights anyway... What makes this different?

[Sparky]

I feel complex shading isn't good or bad- it's a matter of the style of the game. Regarding the hair in the shaded edit, it might look more natural if the highlights were smaller and sharper.

[Zaidyer]

I'm now working on the front view. Here's what I've got so far, side-by-side for comparison:



This is the part where the extra highlighting has come back to bite me, since it's a bit tricker to figure out how to make it look right on this pose.

[Steel Drummer]

Hey, it looks nice, but I think the original fits your background style better. The front view's hands look like lumps. Add some fingers.

[prowler]

in the front view, try making the light come not directly from the front, but slightly from the side instead

[markbilly]

It's a very good conversion from the side view. you could experiment with shading, like prowler says now. But if you just want to leave it at that, with some fingers that would pass for a more than good enough sprite.

[radiowaves]

Hmm, a bit ankward position it has  He might as well fall on his back...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

If you want to maintain accurate highlights you must first maintain consistency between views.  For instance:



Take a look at how the horizontal white lines match and don't match up to your side image.  Even though part of the character is turning away from the screen you should still match up front views to the lowest point (in this case the right leg in the 3-quarter view) for consistency.  Once you have consistency, lighting is much easier, but first the hair.

Experimenting with your hair I found the 3-quarter view to be problematic for modelling a straight forward view.  For one thing, the hair is actually moving straight off to the side rather than downward over his forehead as it would if he were standing at that angle.  As a result I redrew the hair in a way I could easily model a 3-quarter and side view with and made the highlights top-down, that is, imagining a lightbulb placed about 10 feet directly above him.





I realize that this is your work and that you may still want his hair spiky, but I would highly recommend adjusting it inward so you can make the front view look more correct.  For instance, the spike going off the back of his head would not be visible at all in a straight forward view, and the arrangement of the spikes as they are now would require them to overlap and bend down toward the forehead.

As far as highlights go, note that I lit the following:

1.  The top area of each major tuft of hair

2.  The top of his shoulders

3.  The top of his bowtie

4.  The area where his stomach and abdomen stick out most

5.  His kneecaps and hands

6.  The tips of his shoes


Likewise I shaded under his nose, upper lip, glasses, neck, above his stomach where his back is arched, the bends in his arms.  These areas fall into shadow when exposed to a direct overhead light source (ignoring bounce light).  Hopefully this helps, and keep going!

[markbilly]

Wow that's some paintover.

I am not sure it matches the style so well any more though.

My image of this character moving would involve very little movement in terms of the arms and upper body in general, but large movement in the lower body. This probably isn't relevant for the time being but just thought I'd say it. It might give you some ideas, and help with designing the character for now.

Also, this stance is going to make the "walk up" view very difficult to achieve. I look forward to seeing that one!

[loominous]

I think adding shading poses more problems than just extra labour.

We're used to judging the shape of objects by the way light reacts to them and when we start shading, we're providing these clues. The tricky thing is that unless you know the volume of the object well and some light theory, you'll be misleading the viewer, so instead of reinforcing the shape with the shading, you'll be contradicting it.

In the case of well known objects, such as humans, it's not like we're going to get stumped by peculiar shading, but it can often flatten or deform parts of it and suggest unintended materials (the way the tie is shaded in Progzmax's latest edit for instance suggests a metalic material (though that might've been the intention)).

Without any shading on the other hand, we'll just assume a bunch of stuff based on our experience and we'll even compensate for some peculiarities, so it's far more forgiving. It also has a nice stylistic look.

Anyway, if you're going for a top down lighting, I'd avoid simply shading the edges, which I guess also goes for any other lighting condition.



(the head shadow on the body should be larger to be accurate, but I thought a smaller looked better)

Something I've found incredibly important in shading is to leave areas in shadow in low contrast. A very common mistake is to shade every part of an object or environment separately, as if they all had their own little dedicated light sources. Beside flattening the image and generally looking alien to us, the focus is lost, unless maintained by other means, since you'd be trying to call attention to everything.

What I've found to be the most important though, is knowing your volume/mass. I'm not sure how the sketch looked, but constructing the character from simple forms, that you know how to shade, will give ensure convincing volume and will also give you the indications you need for how to shade it.

(I think working from larger sketches, hand drawn or with a tablet is really the key here.)

For instance, the head looks sort of like an egg turned upside down. If we lit it from above, pretty much the whole lower part will be in shadow. This means that nothing in this area should get any "highlights", except for the top side of the nose, that sticks out far enough to get hit.

Toplighting edit: (I made a couple of changes to the pose n some other stuff as well).



You can of course ignore these rules and as long as it looks good, who cares whether it violates some principle. The face in the toplit modification in the edit above (marked with an 'e') follows the rules, but looks kind of glummy (though that's pretty much a reality of topdown lighting). It does portray the shape of the head though, so even in the front view, where we have no geometrical indications to determine the shape of the face, we assume that the face slopes since the light is blocked by the upper head.

The face in progzmax's latest edit (lower left) on the other hand doesn't have this gloomy look, since it looks frontlit, and gives a more friendly and nice impression.

Beside not adhering to the proposed lighting setup, the problem is that while the face looks frontlit, the shoulders looks almost as if lit from behind, while the legs seem to be lit from the topfront.

These kind of inconsistencies will make a confusing impression, so instead of boosting the sense of volume, the shading ruins it. It does lend a more elaborate look though, so even strange shading can add a possibly desirable touch.

Anyway, a nice compromise could be to have the whole character lit from the topfront, avoiding the gloominess of the topdown lighting setup, while making at least some sense in most areas.

Really cool character in any case and good luck!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The face in progzmax's latest edit (lower left) on the other hand doesn't have this gloomy look, since it looks frontlit, and gives a more friendly and nice impression.

This is a compromise often made in sprite work for readability's sake.  As far as the shoulders go, however, I'd have to disagree with you; not in this particular case, but generally, the shoulders of a person stick out far enough from the head to catch light from an overhead source while the head casts a drop shadow over the upper torso, the length depending on posture and how close to the center of the light they are.  The head of this guy happens to be rather gigantic which throws this off, but for simplicity's sake I ignored it to get a more pleasing light distribution (imo, of course).  I was originally going to add an additional shade to properly shadow the face but the color selection wasn't mine and I went with what was there, ultimately compromising realism and readability. 

[m0ds]

I have a slightly off-topic question, but what is it with that stick-my-crotch-in-yer-face pose? I only know of one person that actually stands like that in real life and thats Eric. Never the less, great character!

[Zaidyer]

Gosh, my little topic seems to have snowballed quite a bit!

Let's do a quick comparison between my character and Bernard.




The two are relatively distinct from one another, but the inspiration should be obvious. I think that's where these paint-overs sort of got off track... They changed the overtly cartoony intention of the original design too much. Now we're talking about things like realistic lighting and hair. That's good advice, but it doesn't apply to this particular art style without changing it completely.

I'd prefer to think of the highlights as coming off of a light source that is most convenient for the readability of the sprite. Usually, that's somewhere in the air above the sprite and off to the side a little, between the character and the fourth wall. The importance of highlights is also another factor: I prefer to save them for the final touch, after the main sprite has already been established. It's icing on the cake, especially for a cartoon character.

As for the hair, well... I don't know what I'm going to do with it to make it stay consistent, but I'm not going to change the style unless I can figure out something appropriately wacky. Still, I may have to go back to the drawing board before I continue.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I'd prefer to think of the highlights as coming off of a light source that is most convenient for the readability of the sprite.

Definitely.  Stick with that and you'll have no problems, though I will say that the advice you're being given here is only going to help you in the future.  As far as the hair goes, like I said, my version isn't quite as crazy but I was trying to give you an example of keeping the hair relatively consistent between angles.  In the forward view his hair almost looks like a jester's cap, if you know what I mean.  I think if you exaggerate the spikes even more in the 3-quarter view so they can actually fall over part of his face in the front you'll achieve the look you want without making it look weird.  Good luck!

[loominous]

I think that's where these paint-overs sort of got off track... They changed the overtly cartoony intention of the original design too much. Now we're talking about things like realistic lighting and hair. That's good advice, but it doesn't apply to this particular art style without changing it completely.

I think the main common misconception about the dott style is that it's not based in realism or if it is, that connection is very weak, which is also why I think it's almost always poorly mimicked.

The style stretches the rules quite a bit, but it's still anchored in them and I think it demands even more from the artist than realistic styles, since it's warped realism.

-

Looking through the thread, the style of the character did move away from the more goofy dott like initial style, but I think the concepts introduced, such as shape consistency of the hair etc, are all important things to consider, regardless of the style (well, it may be pointless in certain styles). Since dott featured cut scene close up animation, these things were even more important, where a thing such as morphing hair when a character turned their head would have looked really weird.

I'd prefer to think of the highlights as coming off of a light source that is most convenient for the readability of the sprite.

If the choice is between readability and realism, I'd go with readability as well.

Lots of classical realism works break rules to enhance readability and composition. Thing is, only the rules that need to be broken are actually broken. It's like a poet deliberately misspelling words or ignoring grammatical rules for effect. Reading a poem with crappy spelling or poor grammar due to the author's ignorance is just annoying (can be interesting at times though).

Take the shading of the hair, shoulders, face, torso, legs and pelvis in your version for instance:



From the point of readability, the bottom lighting of the shoulders, front lighting of the face (camera front), the small lit areas on the legs, the top lighting of the hair etc serve no purpose as far as I can see.  All it does is mislead the viewer. (the left version is the compromise I suggested in my other post, a sort of upper front (character's front)

-

It's not like these things are really important, especially if there are only a few instances of them; a book with great plot n dialog but with lousy composition n spelling is still enjoyable. They're often rooted in ignorance however, which means that if you'll be unable to spot what might be wrong, or what could be improved, so you'll keep making the same potential mistakes over n over.

Luckily, the theory behind improving these things is often quite easy and requires no talent, so if you're interested in improving, I think you should keep an open ear.

Edit: added a small comment

Edit:

As far as the shoulders go, however, I'd have to disagree with you; not in this particular case, but generally, the shoulders of a person stick out far enough from the head to catch light from an overhead source while the head casts a drop shadow

So you're disagreeing with my edit not because it's wrong, but because it could have been wrong if the character had had a smaller head or wider shoulders? Whatever you're on about, the point about the shoulders was consistency. If the head is shaded in one way, and the shoulders in another, we'll be recieving peculiar data that we can either ignore as crappy/creative shading or interpret as his shoulders being wet (which would add a darker shade to them), or that they're deformed by birth/accident, or that the fabric features a darker shade of red in those spots, or whatever.

I guess this is mostly an issue where there's already some consistency. If a pic is shaded seemingly randomly, we'll ignore the shading data, whereas if everything makes sense to us except for one thing, we'll start to ponder.

[markbilly]

As for the hair, well... I don't know what I'm going to do with it to make it stay consistent, but I'm not going to change the style unless I can figure out something appropriately wacky. Still, I may have to go back to the drawing board before I continue.

I think what you have here is great, the hair may not be consistent, but it looks great and wacky and the style works. Don't go back to the drawing board, it really isn't worth starting again now, as you will probably end up right back here again anyway.

You also need to consider the animation, as making the shading too complex for the style can make the animation an absolute nightmare.

[Moresco]

Wow that's crazy.  If I were him, I'd just color the entire character black now. :p

Seriously, "inconsistent" - "consistent" who cares??  The sprite looked great the first time, the second time, the third time.  And for all you know the white sploches on his pants were meant to be paint stains and not "lighting".  lolz.  Interesting discussion on light, but meh....

Personally I'd keep with the original sprite.

[Evil]

I agree with Loominus. The lighting on the shirt and face could be redone, but I like the sort of pompus hip shape like Bernard has. Loominus's stance change helps too.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Seriously, "inconsistent" - "consistent" who cares??  The sprite looked great the first time, the second time, the third time.  And for all you know the white sploches on his pants were meant to be paint stains and not "lighting".  lolz.  Interesting discussion on light, but meh....

I was going to pm this to you, but you seem to have blocked pm's.

This sort of thing is not helpful to someone looking for tips on improving their work, it just confuses them.  The input offered on lighting and consistency is a valuable asset in improving anyone's sprite work, so it definitely matters! 

[Moresco]

Seriously, "inconsistent" - "consistent" who cares??  The sprite looked great the first time, the second time, the third time.  And for all you know the white sploches on his pants were meant to be paint stains and not "lighting".  lolz.  Interesting discussion on light, but meh....

I was going to pm this to you, but you seem to have blocked pm's.

This sort of thing is not helpful to someone looking for tips on improving their work, it just confuses them.  The input offered on lighting and consistency is a valuable asset in improving anyone's sprite work, so it definitely matters! 

That's weird, I don't remember blocking PMs.

To quote Zaidyer:
"The two are relatively distinct from one another, but the inspiration should be obvious. I think that's where these paint-overs sort of got off track... They changed the overtly cartoony intention of the original design too much. Now we're talking about things like realistic lighting and hair. That's good advice, but it doesn't apply to this particular art style without changing it completely."

I didn't read that post earlier, but that's simply what I was trying to say.

[Neil Dnuma]

There's a point when "help" goes a bit overboard is all I was saying.

Sorry, don't agree. If Zaidyer doen't want to pick up on it, someone else might. I find the input to this thread very valuable.

[Nikolas]

Indeed.

There are a handful (maybe 2 handfuls) of threads that I have printed out for continuous reference. None of these threads are mine.

[Moresco]

There's a point when "help" goes a bit overboard is all I was saying.

Sorry, don't agree. If Zaidyer doen't want to pick up on it, someone else might. I find the input to this thread very valuable.

Not debating whether or not it's valuable.  I'm just saying it seems to be off-topic.  But yah...if you need to know about lighting it's great - use google you'll find a whole slew of info on lighting.

[Neil Dnuma]

OK. I'll use Google next time. Now back on topic!

[Moresco]

I really honestly preferred what you had in the beginning with the exception of the shoe laces.  I don't know why, but in the concept they were very much in towards the middle of the shoe - but in your drawing they're giant patches of shoe lace.

Other than that I really have no suggestions, the character is perfect.

[loominous]

Seriously, "inconsistent" - "consistent" who cares?? 

Judging by the look of dott, the artists did.

I like Zaidyer's sprite, but there's a huge quality gap between it and those of dott, something you don't seem to realize. I don't claim to know everything that separates them, but among what I register are some fundamental flaws.

These are rooted in a lack of volume, a very common weakness. If you don't know the volume of the character, you can't draw outlines that encapsulates it, apply shading that boosts it or maintain shape consistency in different angles.

Even if by a freak occurrence Zaidyer's sprite would happen to be in its optimal state as is; that applying these things in any way would topple a delicate balance of pseudo-errors that together form perfection; then unless he knows this magic formula, his remaining artwork would probably benefit from learning/improving on these fundamentals.

My sketches were meant to comment both on the volume of the character, the construction of it and on the shading that comes as a byproduct of this.

These are general pointers that I suppose could possibly be considered a bit off topic, but that's precisely why I prefer them; because they don't comment on the shoelace of a particular sprite but themes that can hopefully be applied to any drawing/painting.

-

I can see how all this might suggest that I'm in favor of elaborate shading, but I myself prefer the simpler shadeless style of dott. Knowing how to shade doesn't mean you have to apply that knowledge to everything, but rather when you see it as beneficial.

My preference regarding whether to shade or not is totally irrelevant though, since it's Zaider's taste that matters, which is why I haven't mentioned mine before. But thanks for improving the thread by so thoroughly sharing yours.

Edit: grammar

[Moresco]

My preference regarding whether to shade or not is totally irrelevant though, since it's Zaider's taste that matters, which is why I haven't mentioned mine before. But thanks for improving the thread by so thoroughly sharing yours.

I suppose what I said seemed a bit stupid.  Maybe it was, but I just speak my mind and I meant what I said.   It was good information, I didn't bash that.   And, you're welcome! ^^

[Zaidyer]

Here's another update:

This time, he's a little shorter. I reduced his height to 73 pixels so that he would fit better in a playing field that is only 144 pixels tall. I also tried to correct the perspective a little bit... Shading is still not final.

[markbilly]

Looks great.

Maybe a slightly lighter outline around the shoes, and sort the shading on the front view trousers and he'll be perfect!