Robot to C&C

[Kabbed]

It may be painfully obvious, but this character is a first for me (also my very first post here). So it's a robot, but if you couldn't tell that, then I've already got problems here. I'm not sure if my shading is looking right. Its body parts are essentially cylinders, but how can I emphasize that? Also, any suggestions for the eyes? This is a "bad" robot, so he should be intimidating, or at least apathetic looking.

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EDIT: Thanks for the help, visible now?

[zabnat]

Hope you can see these pics...

I afraid I can't... (bcvrf.yahoo.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again.)
EDIT: Ok works now.
This doesn't really strike me as too "bad" robot, more like a neutral one that can be either bad or good depending on the context. Maybe you could darken the color and use some triangular shapes in the design? A typical muscular shapes comes to mind when thinking about an evil robot.

[Khris]

Upload the pics to imageshack.us.

[radiowaves]

No, DO NOT USE IMAGESHACK!

There are tons of other image hosts out there. Imageshack is crapo, slow and known to leak viruses.

[InCreator]

Cannot see any image, mate.

Try this
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/upload/upload.html

[Dualnames]

Looks good. I'd like to see him animated to form a better opinion than 'looks good'.

[Scraseface]

I'd suggest giving it eye sockets. At the moment it just kinda has eyes but no indent within the head. Eye sockets done right can really make someone's features look scarier. Check out Marlin Brando's eyes in "The Godfather" or as a more direct example; the endoskeletons in "Terminator 1/2" and you'll see what I mean.

Also might be good to give it a mouth or teeth. I know that technically as a robot it wouldn't need that, but lots of robots in fiction still have something that resembles teeth or a mouth.

Legs are kinda long, but you might want that. I don't really know what the robot is actually FOR, so long legs might help it do the job it's supposed to do.

In fact, I think it may help to think about the specific jobs the robot was created for. If it is some kind of assasin, think about how the robot would work practically in battle. It might have inbuilt holsters, or areas for concealing weapons. If it was built for thinking and diabolical scheming, you could give it a large head to represent that.

Either way I'd say you should probably lose those breast plates. They look like boobs to me, and I'm not sure how seriously people playing your game would take a robot with boobs.

But to me it does look like a nice style you've got going. At the moment your robot does kinda look more netural than evil though. If you want inspiration concerning robots, I highly suggest watching James Cameron's Terminator movies, reading Isaac Asimov's science fiction works, and possibly even trying to find pictures of and information on actual robots. They're begining to develop more and more robots with that resemble human figure.


Edit:

Here is just a little something I did quickly, just to give you an example of the kind of things you could do. I've changed the style quite a bit, so you might want to just see if there's any features that you like and emulate them when working on your robot. Of course you could also just use my paintover if you wanted, I don't mind.

[Candall]

Whee!  Robot!

Heheh... I like the design, and couldn't resist a paintover.



As you can see, I took out some of the darker outlines (especially around the feet) because they were robbing your 'bot of a sense of roundness.  I also took out the segmentation on the chest, because Scraseface was right about that.  He was also right about the eyes... I added dark lines above them to make them look deep-set and more sinister.  I also widened them by a pixel each and moved them down a pixel.

As for a mouth, I don't think that's necessary at all.  Some of my favorite robots don't have mouths.  Err... anyway, with a simple design, you can achieve a lot of expression with limited features.

To further promote the roundness, I added an additional color... a lighter shade of your gray.  You can see that I used it as a highlight, which was something that was very badly missing.  Your shadowing was very nicely executed except in the case of the feet, where it was inverted from the rest of the image.  I altered them significantly.

I also changed the color of the dots on his chest to make them stand out more since the indentation was removed.

[Scraseface]

Ah, that kicks the hell out of my paintover. Sticks closer to the original style too... do something like that.

The only other thing I might try is making the eyes lower. Eyes appear to be lower on the face when you look up at someone, and low angles are often used in movies to represent a character who is powerfull and threatening, because the camera angle suggests that they are towering over the audience. It can also suggest the eyes have sunken, which is a sign of unhealthiness, and the human mind has a tendency to be repulsed by unhealthy features on a person, (this has to do with the theory of sexual selection, but that's going a bit off topic).

[Kabbed]

Thank you very much for the constructive feedback. It makes me want to return the favor. It's a tad long-winded from here on out, so if anything just know that I'm grateful and very impressed.

InCreator, thanks for directing me to the upload feature, I suppose I missed that detail. A lot of you mentioned he doesn't look very evil, which is alright, as he's supposed to be a functional robot turned bad. I merely mentioned it because I wanted to deter anyone suggesting wide, cartoony eyes on him or something. As you inferred zabnat, the context will make him more evil than any shading can do.

Scraseface, you're right. Eyesockets were needed (I knew something was missing from the eyes, but I couldn't put my finger on it). If I had more room on his head I'd have eyesockets similar to the ones in your paintover. I also made him slightly stockier (the leg height is something I played with a lot). And I suppose the world just isn't ready for robot-boobs yet.

Candall, I'm very impressed with your paintover. A lot of my style remained intact and I like what you did with the eyes, shading, and chest (more cylindrical). But if words aren't enough, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

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I originally created my robot for a 640x480 game, but I'm seeing that 16-bit 320x200 still provides room for pretty art (hence this lower res robot), and is more manageable for someone at my level of experience (read: none). He's slightly stockier, and will be prominent on the screen. This isn't so much a post for more suggestions (though any comments will be accepted graciously), but to say thanks and to show you where I'm going with this. Next up is animating this homicidal tin can.

[WarpZone]

I think the forearms and especially the legs look a little more organic (less cylyndrical) than the rest of the body.  It's like the torso and head are early 50's cylinders-stuck-together, but the legs and hands are anime sports-car mecha with sweeping organic curves.  Nothing wrong with either style, mind you, but they seem to clash.  You'd think a robot would be designed along a single aesthetic, either curvy or boxy, but not half-and-half.

That's purely a design criticism, of course.  The implementation is beautiful!