My Character - For my MAGS Game. All Critics welcome

[Jbass]

hey guys,

well i'm working on my MAGS Game and it came time to create my little guy for the game.
i'm very bad at making characters so I'm putting him up here so you guys can tell me what to improve on so I can have a decent MAGS game.  (if i finish it in time)

anyways, without talking too much, here he is!

[LRH]

To be honest, I can't really tell you what to improve because you've got your own defined style. This is by no means a bad thing, but could you be a little more clear on what you would like improved? I feel like anything I could comment on is the way it is for a good reason.

The only thing I could suggest from this initial post is that his feet could be slightly more defined from one another.

[Jbass]

ok i see what your getting at.
i guess i just wanted to know if theres anything in particular that stands out thats not quite right, like what you said with the feet.  i'll go about fixing that

but as a whole its good, yeah?

[LRH]

Not being much of an artist myself, no, nothing else really sticks out. I like it.


HOWEVER!

Don't stop checking the thread because I said it was neat, or anything like that. (Not saying you would, of course.) I'm hardly the forum's resident art expert.

[Jbass]

haha ok well thanks for that i appreciate it.
i'll make the changes and update later, and see if anyone else has anything to say

EDIT:
Made some changes to the feet.  Hopefully they look more seperate now, and i also shortened them because they looked quite huge actually.

see?


and now with the smaller feet.

[Calin Leafshade]

Ok a couple of things I feel could be improved:

(bare in mind that I am a terrible artist and have about as much authority in art as I do in thoracic surgery)

Paintover:


1: Make the feet flat to the floor, remember he is standing on something.
2: There are some pretty nasty artifacts in there which i imagine came from flood filling. Do you linework on a separate layer and do your colouring behind it, that will allow the anti aliased brushwork to work properly.
3: I think the left eye is too far over. Eyes dont move position when the head is seen from an angle, they just change in perspective.
4: I moved the nose down.. thats largely an aesthetic choice but i preferred it that way.
5: the way youve shaded the feet looks basically backwards to me.. youve highlighted the shaded areas and vice versa.

just a general comment, the way youve drawn him will be quite time consuming to animate.. this is not necessarily a bad thing but consider pixel art (like my paintover)

[/end incoherant comments]

edit: A bit more facial editing.. im still not happy with it tho..

[Wonkyth]

Calin, you never mentioned that you were a thoracic surgery intern!

I haven't got much to add, but the radius of the head could be a pixel or two smaller.
As long as you're the one doing the animating, and you have a very little skill with it, I don't think you'll have too many problems animating it. Just don't try to animate it the way you would a piece of pixel-art.
Also, in my mind a head that bald should have eyebrows like furry eels!

[Calin Leafshade]

So since I am actually an obsessive compulsive Ive done another pointless paintover because the eyes were just bothering me so much.

So I've changed the skin tones because they looked too yellow to me.

Fixed some of my poorly chosen shading colours

and completely redone the eyes without an outline.. I just dont think there's enough screen real estate to use outlines for the eyes.. not for me anyway.



I do realise that alot of your characters original facial expression is lost, so i may have destroyed the characterisation you were trying to get across.

[ddq]

Just out of curiosity, is that supposed to be Flea or Charlie Brown as an adult?

[Jim Reed]

The red is Calin's outline, on top of my edit.

[Jbass]

wow guys thanks so much for all the tips
all these paintovers looks GREAT, from the neck down i think looks fantastic, and i'll do a version today with all of whats you've said in mind.

like you said however Calin, after many facial paintovers the original expression is lost.
the VERY first paintover done grabs the expression how i wanted it pretty much perfectly.

just a general comment, the way youve drawn him will be quite time consuming to animate.. this is not necessarily a bad thing but consider pixel art (like my paintover)

[/end incoherant comments]

i've tried animating him and you are 100% correct.  especially considering i'm HORRIBLE at animating walkcycles, its turning out really bad.

Just out of curiosity, is that supposed to be Flea or Charlie Brown as an adult?

haha no not Flea, although he is my idol... how'd you pick that one up??

ok i'll do update later today, thanks again so much for all your tips