I made something! Receptionist and talk cycle

[Cluey]

So I decided to kick my ass in gear and start working on The Darksiders seriously again. I made this character completed in one morning. She has got Standind, idle (she looks down at her notes), blinking and talking views completed. No walking as she's static.

Anyway, I just wanted your feedback, it's done in a superflat style like all my characters are. It's uber low res, so I've x2ed it, though on my browser that makes it blurry.









She goes behind the desk at the back there.

[ambientcoffeecup]

I don't know if it is image compression or what, but everything looks really blurry?

Aside from that, style is pretty neat!

[Matti]

The new Firefox 3.0.1 makes scaled pictures blurry. 

@Cluey:

I think it looks good, but I won't draw the eyes two pixels high, that looks a bid odd. To make her up- and downlook different I would just raise/lower the eyepixel..

[DanielH]

on my browser that makes it blurry.

I don't know if it is image compression or what, but everything looks really blurry?

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34850.0

It's a firefox bug. I use Opera now anyway, but there will probably be a fix in the works.

EDIT: Didn't see Matti's post, sorry.

[ambientcoffeecup]

Oh man that's CrAzY.

[Mazoliin]

Nice, but the nodding when she talks make it looks like she have some problems, maby you could make it a bit more fluid, so it looks like she's raiseing/lowering her head, not digging some music.

And I think the two-pixel eyes should stay, otherwise they may look too small.

[Misj']

She goes behind the desk at the back there.

Hay Mazoliin,

I do like the style; especially the details in the simplicity. But it were the details that bothered me a little on one point.

I placed the girl behind the desk, did some measurements and calculations...and well, she's tall. Very tall. Let me show you the assumptions that I made, and please correct me if I'm wrong:


(Click for double sized image)

The desk is 16 or 17 pixels high. The average height of a desk is 31' or when converted to cm about 80 cm. The doors are 43 pixels, with an average height of a wooden door being 6'-8", 7"-0", 8'-0" (or approximately 200, 215 or 240 cm).

A simple calculation shows:
  desk = 17px = 80cm than the door = 43px = 200cm.
or
  desk = 16px = 80cm than the door = 43px=215cm.

As you can see: the size of the desk and the door are what you would expect based on the pixel-size. Which by the way is a good thing, because that makes placing the characters in the scene a lot easier. So this is really good (better than my images most of the time).

But then I came to the girl. She's 45 pixels high measured from the bottom of her shoes to the top of her hair (so basically the height of the sprite; when measured from the heel of her foot to the top of her head (assumption: the height of the red pixel) she's only 41 pixels high). So that means that based on the desk-height of 17px she's 200cm and based on 16px 215cm.

Now, the average height of women in the UK and US is 162cm (in 2002) which would indicate that the girl would have a hight of 34.5px from heel to op of the head (assuming the 17px desk). Of course you could make her Dutch and gain an extra pixel. Or better yet a former miss Universe winner and gain at least 4 pixels.

Anyway, I like the style, but think that the girl might be just a little too high. I understand that you would not
want to get rid of 10 (or so) pixels, since every pixel is valuable. But maybe 5 or 6 would be possible.

[Cluey]

Thanks for all the comments.

@Misj, I like your post . I'll probably just cut off the legs a bit so it looks like she's sitting down, you won't see them anyway.

Unless the room scaling is suddenly alot better

The two eye pixel is something that most of my characters have. Keeping it consistent.

As for the jerky head bobbing, it's 1 pixel down so there's no inbetween I can have. Low res has these problems.

[Mazoliin]

As for the jerky head bobbing, it's 1 pixel down so there's no inbetween I can have. Low res has these problems.

Yes indeed, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved

IMO, the problem lie in the fact that the head is only down for one frame, thus, the bobb occurs quit fast. You might solve this if you add another frame with the head down.
It's maby also possible to add a frame that looks like she's lowering her head, but it dosn't move (like the reading frame, you see that she's looking down, but the head haven't moved).

Of course this isn't too important since she appear to be only a briefly NPC.

[WHAM]

Great job man! I like your style, and the only thing about the talk cycle is to make it longer and make her nods less frequent. Simple fix.

[Evil]

Both what Wham and Mazoliin suggested are great ideas. Making the head turn down as well as an occasional bob would make it less jumpy.

The background looks good. The doors feel a little flat. They could also be recessed a little bit, especially the angled doors on the right. The dithering on the pillar is a bit much. If the whole room used dithering, it might look better, but it's out of place. I think just the dark shade there would be fine. The bench is also a bit flat. Maybe add a darker edge on the bottom and right side for the bottom, and a darker left and lighter top side for the back part.

[Cluey]

As far as the bobbing goes, I can simply mix up the frames in AGS, no problem there.

As far as the room goes, unfortunately that room is "finished" and since I'm on a new PC I don't have the Graphics Gale file anymore :O. I could change some things in photoshop, but nothing too major.