Trying out new dialogue portrait technique

[deadsuperhero]

It's been a while since I've had anything to post here. Recently, I purchased the very-excellent Aseprite program, and it has rekindled my interest in making pixel art.

When it comes to dialogue portraits, my old technique relied on a process like this:
1. Draw a character on paper
2. After adjusting features, ink it
3. Scan the drawing in
4. Color it
5. Resize it to adventure game dimensions (something native to 320x200)

Aside from taking a lot of extra time, this process leads to some significant loss in quality. I used to think that the general logic should dictate that you should color and shade a character at a high resolution, then resize them to something much smaller.

This new technique throws that out the window by instead attempting to draw a face from scratch at a lower resolution, directly in a sprite editor itself.

Here's how that looks:

1x:


2x:


Obviously, this is a first attempt. There are some small imperfections in the line work and the shading, and I'm sure adjustments could be made to the general shape of the face. With that being said, I'm pretty happy with this new technique, and since most of the elements are in different layers, animation is much easier than you would expect.

[Scavenger]

It has a good, solid base, but there are a few things you need to keep a lookout for. I did a paintover, because I like doing those. I'm sure it itself could be improved, as I only did it very quickly.

[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50882197/crit/face_crit.PNG[/imgzoom]

Firstly, try using less, more contrasting shades of a colour, rather than many shades of the same colour - you don't need that many to get across the shape of a form. This will make it easier for you to keep hold of the form of the piece, rather than focusing your time juggling colours. Once you got the basic shapes down, THEN you can start to make them more defined with more shades, but right now there were too many shades close together that weren't really doing anything.

I also put more greys around the rim of the glasses, bringing them out more and giving them more definition. Some objects don't need that many shades - the eye colour is just two greens instead of three now, and I removed a lot of the colours from the hair. The hair is shaded with more noise than the skin, which is very smooth - the noise hopefully gives enough definition so the hair reads as a different texture to the skin. I removed the lightest colour from the side of the hair, as less light would hit that part of the head directly.

The rest was pretty ok, with just minor tweaks like making the teeth more realistic and the ears more in proportion (the top lines up with the top of the eye, the bottom with the bottom of the nose). I tried to keep it as true as possible to the original though.

It's always good to find a more efficient workflow, pixel art is especially good for making a lot of changes on the fly - traditional animation is way, way more time consuming, I've found. Just make sure not to make too much work for yourself while doing pixel art! It's easy to overcomplicate a sprite and lose track of how to animate it.

[deadsuperhero]

Wow, that's a huge improvement and really useful feedback!

I'll keep playing around with this. It's been ages since I've attempted making heads for dialogue. I particularly like how much smoother he looks, as well as the highlights in his hair.

It's easy to overcomplicate a sprite and lose track of how to animate it.

That is a fair assessment. At the moment I tend to rely on lots of different layers - while it works very well for editing and composition, I find myself working with too many moving parts. The temptation is that layering can allow you to easily undo a bad decision without requiring a total repaint.

[Danvzare]

Firstly, that portrait would be perfect for a horror game, because it's absolutely terrifying!

Secondly, Scavenger has given some great advice and done a brilliant paint over. There's nothing I can add in terms of advice.

Thirdly, layers are always good, but you shouldn't be using a load of layers just because it allows you to easily undo a bad decision. This is pixel art, it's incredibly easy to undo a bad decision at any moment by retracing your steps. You should be using layers for when stuff is overlaid, such as the glasses here. Or for exploring alternate options, such as eye colour.

[deadsuperhero]

Thanks for the feedback!

Okay, so after some hours of noodling around with this, here's where I am now.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/S158UMl.png[/imgzoom]

I'd still rather keep his facial hair textured; there's something very "90's VGA DOS game" about it. Maybe it's excessive, I'm not sure.

He's a little on the shiny side now, but I'm not entirely convinced that's a bad thing.

[Danvzare]

It's looking better, but I think the guy is still missing his lips.