character sprites & BG

[hedgefield]

These are very good-looking sprites, nice work! The back diagonal is still a little wonky yeah, her arms looks more like she's holding it tight against her side instead of having it in her pocket, but I know from experience that that is a super difficult angle to get right.
But other than that the only thing that kinda bugs me is that in the front and front-diagonal views she is clearly leaning on one leg, maybe a little slumped, yet in the side view she seems more like her head is leaning back and she is standing more upright, chest out. It's not that jarring but it itches when you see the different views next to eachother. I think moving her head a little forward and maybe a little down in the side views would go a long way towards correcting that.

[subspark]

Yeah I'm inclined to agree here. I think hedgefield has made some honest suggestions that are likely to further improve this characters fine aesthetic appeal.

Sparky.

[Matti]

I haven't worked on the views anymore, but started to draw a first BG. It's a mockup containing two other (unfinished) characters.

It's obviously very unfinished, I'm mainly posting to show how the BGs will roughly look like and to ask if you're okay with me not caring too much about perspective. I'm not going to use any real vanishing points and will do the perspective by the rule of thumb, like I did in my first attempt at making an adventure.

I'm trying to avoid character scaling as often as possible, and in this example I don't want to use it, despite the fact that there obviously is a significant room height difference between the fore- and the background. I'm curious how many of you would care about it.

[Tabata]

I like this background and also the perspective is okay for me.
Yes, there are some little things wrong about the perspective. But this won't stop me having fun while playing. So I would say: If you like it this way, don't get lost in getting perfect!

Also maybe the spot is turned off, so I don't mind the missing beam.
Only one point is irritating for me (a very little bit): If „the gray flat parts“ are (very high) doors, I'm missing the door handles and if these are simple passages, I would like it drawn like the passage to the right. But you told us, it's not ready, so:

Nice work (the laptop is cool)! 

[Matti]

I like this background and also the perspective is okay for me.

Cool 

Also maybe the spot is turned off, so I don't mind the missing beam.

It will be turned on. I already did some shadow/lighting stuff for the room, but then changed the shape of the room and need to do the lighting again.

Only one point is irritating for me (a very little bit): If „the gray flat parts“ are (very high) doors, I'm missing the door handles and if these are simple passages, I would like it drawn like the passage to the right. But you told us, it's not ready, so:

Yes, they will be doors. All the grey and white parts are remains of the first sketch I made for the room. It's still very much WIP. Also, I cropped the whole thing as it will be a scrollable room, but the right part is still empty. But the doors aren't much higher than the characters, so the size should be okay, don't you think?

Nice work (the laptop is cool)! 

Yeah, the laptop turned out nice. While drawing, I switched between Illustrator and iTunes, the latter was pretty much the inspiration for the screen.

[Tabata]

Yes, they will be doors. All the grey and white parts are remains of the first sketch I made for the room. It's still very much WIP. Also, I cropped the whole thing as it will be a scrollable room, but the right part is still empty. But the doors aren't much higher than the characters, so the size should be okay, don't you think?

Yepp - that would fit!

You make me soooo curious about the story, the game, the ....   hurry up now, will you!? PLEASE!

[Chicky]

Lovely bg, i don't have a problem with the perspective. Curious why there are barn door on that back light?

[Matti]

Curious why there are barn door on that back light?

Heh, to be honest - I don't know! I just drew them, but it doesn't make much sense.  :

Maybe it's a style thing and someone attached them to the light?

You make me soooo curious about the story, the game, the ....   hurry up now, will you!? PLEASE!

Sorry for the teasing, but it still is in a very early stage of development and I only work on it when I'm tired of scripting and want to do some drawing for a change. I have a lot of other things to do.

[Matti]

I worked some more on the background and right now I'm playing around with lighting and shadows. Do you think I should mix blurred lights with the rather sharp vector style? And if so, should I make the shadows blurry as well?

Note that the shadows (and the lighting too) are roughly painted just to have an overall idea of the room's colors and mood.

Btw, it's supposed to be a bar on a small ship, some sort of a modern and rather huge junk.

[Matti]

So, today I tried to make a back view. I'm not too happy with the shading of the jeans and not at all happy with the shoes, I'm not sure on how to draw them from the back. Any suggestions?


                        front view for reference:

     


..and yes, the head obviously isn't finished yet..

[Hudders]

With jeans that baggy, you wouldn't see the shoes from the back.

[Tabata]

         

                                                        I tried a bit  :
                                       (didn't do the cap, but hopefully the rest isn't too bad)


Edit:
Ups â€" I totally forgot to tell, that (in my oppinion) the shading of the jeans is okay, as you did it. I tried to show some of my suggestions this way (because you told not to be happy with it). I can't explain my ideas  in text, so I did it this way â€" sorry for being late with telling this.  :  You made a good sprite again!

[subspark]

Wow these character views have come a long way! Only things I can see now (The only things that need a little work) is the hat, cloth detail on her top, the hair (avoiding over-contrasted simplicity of her hair lines) and the absence of trowser -> sandshoe overlap. I don't necessarily agree with Tabata's inconsistency in the shading on the back of that left leg, but I would take her advice on the trousers where they meet the heels.

Tabata, I think Matti could get away with maybe 5% more shading detail on the legs in her back view but it wouldn't fall apart if it was left as is. But holy smokes, this character is one of the most finely drawn I've seen.

It's an absolute winner, Matti! Congratulations.

[Matti]

Here's a new try:



Hudders: True.

Tabata: Thank you. I really like the shading you did for the trousers but I'm not going to use the bright shading color for the back. But I think you still did a better job on the trousers-heel part, so I'll tweak it some more..

subspark: Yeah, I just realized that I started this half a year ago.. how time flies! You're right about the hair, it's too simple. I think I'll keep the high contrast (it's not supposed to be natural red hair anyway), but I'm going to make it a bit more detailed as seen above. Thanks for the compliment, I really hope that at some point I'll find the time to make a decent adventure with this sprite 

Hm. I just realized that I should add part of the ears..

[theo]

Hi. I like the character! Very clean and still a lot of personality. Good balance too.

Regarding your backdrop. The yellow circle from the spotlight has the same value as the area it does not light up. This is theoretically impossible and because of that, looks off. Simply select the ring area and brighten it a bit. I see people do this mistake a lot. Fortunately it is easily remedied if you understand the underlying theory behind the problem.

As the perspective fascist I am, I must voice my opinion and mention that I believe the style you have chosen suffers from having faulty perspective. Clean style usually works better with clean perspective. Go ahead and ignore this bit if you want to, I'm indeed being overly picky, as is my normal mode when discussing perspective. I spot faulty perspective a mile off and it makes my nose wrinkle.  :

Out of curiosity, why do you chose to ignore the laws of perspective? To be frank, your composition has not gained anything from it.

-End of perspective fascist rant.

Other than that, good job

[Matti]

Thanks for the frank criticism, it's appreciated. And sorry for the late reply.

It wasn't really a decision to ignore perspective rules, I justed started drawing like this and nobody really complained (well, except for you obviously ) It's just a practical thing because I can always cheat a bit to have a certain size for the walkeable area or a specific view on objects or other stuff in the room, and I can often avoid character scaling.

But maybe you're right and I think I will redo this background with proper perspective and then decide on how to proceed. I'll post it here when I'm done.

[theo]

But maybe you're right and I think I will redo this background with proper perspective and then decide on how to proceed. I'll post it here when I'm done.

I suggest at least redoing it with proper perspective for the sake of practice. If you don't like the way it turned out, throw it out the window! At least you will have done some good old perspective drawing and will likely have learned a little from it:) The more perspective drawing one does with the help of perspective lines, the easier you will find it is to approximate perspective on the fly, and the more natural everything will look in the long run. Also, breaking the rules is OK in my book, as long as you have a good reason for doing so. Unintentionally doing so always shows.

There's no doubt about it though, the more "correct" your perspective is, the more awkward it will look if you don't scale your characters as they move around in your scene. Personally though I see no reason why you shouldn't scale them. Your characters look like they'd work beautifully with "real" alpha transparency and thus would scale gracefully as they move up and down on your screen. With a more pixly style, I can certainly see why people don't want to scale their characters. But with this high-res sharp look, you've got nothing to loose in doing so.

Good job on handling my criticism with grace, this shows a will to improve, which something I respect a lot.