A pixely character sprite

[Tomas]

Been lurking on this forum for long enough now. Time for me to step in to the action.

I've been practicing the art of pixel-painting lately, and this picture of a well-known führer is my result. I had some problems doing the wrinkles and I'm not too happy about how they came out. I'm not too sure about the shading of the boots either. Also, I think I probably over-did the detail on especially the shirt (it's not really animation-friendly at the moment). But I get lost in the pixels whenever I try to change anything, so now I'm asking for your help. Any suggestions of comments are more than welcome.

And by the way, the inspiration for both the style and "object" comes from the Fountain of Youth project (waiting patiently for that demo...).

(2x zoom)

[ScottDoom]

I think it looks great, but he's maybe a bit short? Although I know Hitler was short... It just looks weird.

Also, in its current position, that staff/whip thing or whatever looks like a tail.

[big brother]

A tail? That could be good though. You could rotate his hat so the shape makes two subtle peaks on either side of his head. Then make his skin a sunburned hue...

[Mordalles]

wow, tomas, thats an excellent sprite! looks perfect to me.

[Ubel]

I agree with Mordalles. Nothing to critic here. Wonderful.

[DanClarke]

A good sprite, the proportions give it a comic style though, not sure if that was your intention.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I really like what you've done here, but the pose looked just a bit strange to me so I made an edit.  I also made the flesh tones stand out more.  You did very well with this one so I hope this small edit helps.

[Stefano]

I'd do the same if height was an issue, meaning the body couldn't be stretched.
On the other hand, if you shrink the head, It'll turn into an non-hitleresque mass of 5 square pixels. So, I would do the same...

Nice first sprite. If you'd like to improve the wrinkles try to add contrast to it. You could, let's say, use a lighter color on top of the bumps of the wrinkles (I hope this makes sense!  )

EDIT: Ok... ProgZMax did manange to shrink the head without turning it into a mess... that's an art!

[scourge]

Progz is an amazing pixel artist, much better than I can ever be. He rules in low res art.

but i do think tomas, that your sprite is fine as it is. Your stance is perfect since its that commanding stance hitler should have. And the size of the head is perfect for that size. Excellent job. Keep the legs that way, since body position is essential in such small pixel characters. Progz's doesn't look as much like hitlers as the original. Of course hitler was a small guy so a bigger head emphasizes this.

ProgZ, you still rule the hell out of most artistsÃ, 

[Tomas]

Thanks for your comments. Points taken. I do realize now that the head is a bit too big. Or rather, that the body is too small. It seems like everytime I try to draw something, especially people, they come out cartoony wheter it's my intention or not. So I'll try to make him a few pixels taller. Also, I do like some of the changes ProgZmax did to the pose so I'll work on that a bit as well.

[Renal Shutdown]

Name:    Tomas   
Posts:    2 (0.003 per day)
Date Registered:    17 April, 2004, 03:48:39 PM

You really have been lurking for sometime.  Welcome and whatnot.

As for the sprite, I only really have one issue.  That's the hat.  It looks more like the comedy-sized Russian officer's hat than a Nazi hat.  I know Adolf was a square-headed midget with a rod up his ass, but his hat usually looked like he hadn't borrowed it from one of the bigger kids in the playground.

As for head-size and stuff, let me ask you a question.  What style are you going for? In general.  Personally, I can't draw realistic characters worth a damn, so I've given up trying.  I now concentrate on on making them look okay in a cartoon style.  If you want the realistic look, it's going to take a lot of practice.  Cartoon style will take almost as much practice, but you can blag your way round the hard parts by saying that you've found your style.  In my opinion, I think it's best if you imagine the style you want and run with it for a while, getting it as close to what's in your head as you can.  After that you can start experimenting with new stuff.

Also, from the size of the sprite, I'm guessing you prefer 320x240 resolution (lo-res, old skool style).  Even though there's less pixels, that doesn't mean there's less work.  I find a larger resolution means that I have more room to play around and need to analyse each pixel less.  If I were you, I'd experiment with the same character, but double the size, just to see which you feel more comfortable with.  Disregard this paragraph if you've got your heart set on it being lo-res.

And as for FOY.  Join the club. We've been waiting for what seems like forever.

Good luck, etc.

[Tomas]

So, here's my attempt at improving it.

(2x zoom)

What I changed was basically the pose and I also desaturated the colors a bit to make them more natural. Hopefully it does a look a little less cartoony now.

The changes displayed as a fancy animated GIF:
(2x zoom)

Better? Worse?

[Sean]

Definatly better. There wasn't really much wrong with it in the first place. The new tones add to the level of realism and it just looks better in general. The head is still the weakest part of the sprite but overall it's very nice work

[big brother]

It's still very flat. Maybe try simplifying the shading so you can get a good feel for the volume of the shapes.

[seaduck]

Hi,

this sprite is simply beautiful! The only thing that concers me is that his torso says "I'm standing on my right leg", while his right leg is strangely twisted and says "No, he's standing on the other leg" (which he doesn't). So I tried to make his right leg look like he's standing on it. (Though I might not have succeded )



And the feet looked too small, so I enlarged them.

Great work so far!

[Tomas]

Hi,

this sprite is simply beautiful! The only thing that concers me is that his torso says "I'm standing on my right leg", while his right leg is strangely twisted and says "No, he's standing on the other leg" (which he doesn't). So I tried to make his right leg look like he's standing on it. (Though I might not have succeded )



And the feet looked too small, so I enlarged them.

Great work so far!

Hmm, I think you see something that I don't see there. I'm quite happy with how at looks now actually. Thanks to Google I found two images that show what kind of pose I was shooting for.

http://www.shopequip.co.uk/admin/uploads/M86255.jpg
http://www.clipartreview.com/_gallery/_TN/65498.gif

Perhaps less of his left arm should be visible from this angle. Anyways, I think I'll leave this sprite for now and declare it finished.

Oh, and I should probably have posted this before. Here's an example of a few characters from FoY to show the style I was trying to emulate.

http://www.barnettcollege.com/pix/profile_more.gif

[seaduck]

Ok, I'll try to show you the difference between the two stances:



Not the slant of the lines representing their left legs. For the girl it's like /, while for your sprite it's more like \.
The girl has her center of gravity above her left foot, while Hitler doesn't.

The girl is standing on a tiptoe of her right leg, even though her right foot is not extended so far away as your sprite's (considering the leg length). Your sprite's leg right leg would have to be much longer than the left to do this.

Your sprite's right hip is far too low.

A person typically stands on their left leg (|\) or right leg (/|) yours is standing on neither (/\) and both feet are in front of the center of gravity, which means the person would probably fall. You must pull both feet backwards considerably.

[Tomas]

I think there's something about it that makes you (and others?) misinterpret the perspective. I didn't mean for him to stand with both feet on a horizontal line, with the "camera" looking at him from a right angle. Instead, imagine the viewpoint being on his right-hand side and elevated a bit. Also, I meant for the legs to be quite wide apart to express a commanding stance. It's probably not executed in the best way, but it'll do for now. I won't change anything more at the moment.

Here's an image to show what I mean:


Thanks to all for your comments.

[MarVelo]

That is one of the most useful diagrams of persepective I have ever seen

[Tomas]

That is one of the most useful comments I have ever read