Shiny colouring - Main Character Revisited.

Started by ThreeOhFour, Sun 17/02/2008 05:24:58

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ThreeOhFour

Howdy all.

A bit underwhelmed with working on gamey type things today so I though I'd have a go at drawing a coolish kinda sprite - with high contrast and fairly high saturation values, and few colours.



This be the result of the excercise, however I feel I may have done it badly. I got the black outline idea from a set of sprites I remember Krysis posting ages ago, I was impressed by the technique and thought I'd give it a shot. Your help to make this look better would be appreciated. I realise I basically wasted a colour by only using a few pixels worth of it, but I think the nice warm colour stands out well against all the cools.

Cheers!

EDIT:

I guess finding out that I had a day off tomorrow made me decide I could waste more time on this.... Kinda did a scene, using 14 colours.



I did it in paint, and it's been a while since I've done anything in paint so it's probably a bit rougher than I'd normally go with, but I am pretty happy with it.

Moresco

Referring to your scene, it's weird but I like it.  The sprites rock, and the high contrast works for me as well.  Honestly I can't see anything to dislike or to suggest where to improve upon it, maybe somebody else will.  *high five*
::: Mastodon :::

ThreeOhFour


mouthuvmine

Please let me play this scene...Pleeeease.

Ali

I think the background looks terrific, great use of areas of flat colour. I also love the sprite, but I think he's a little off-balance to the left. Extending his left (our right) shoulder further to the right would help stop him look like he's leaning.

Ghost

It's a very great sprite, but easily beaten by the background, which is gorgeous. I love it- retro and still very professional. I would compare it to Super Jazz Man in terms of sheer old-fashioned quality.
Did you actually do the AA on the ship and rocks by hand?

Tuomas

What really bugs me is the anti-aliasing on the black outlines of the background. You've got unwanted blur ewerywhere while not on the characters. I suggest you take some time, and even up the outlines. Had to be said...

ThreeOhFour

#7
Thanks for the point Ali - I'll fix that (hopefully) :).

Tuomas - the blur is wanted blur. I did this all as pixel art, so I went in and added the anti aliasing myself. I realise that many of the characters do not have it currently, because it is rather hard to antialias moving objects by hand, but where possible I will antialias the character outlines as well. I respect that this is your opinion, but I feel that the thicker, smoother lines look better than a thin, jaggedy line.

Cheers :).

EDIT: Silly me missed Ghost's post. Yeah - the anti alias was done by hand so as to stick within my 14 colour pallette. Like I said, it's been ages since I've done anything in paint, so it has been rather fun getting back into it. Thankyou for your nice comments - I feel that the Super Jazz Man comment may be going too far though (if only because I have so much respect for Big Brother's work).

Hmmm. I wasn't going to post any more pictures, but I've changed my mind...

Having the day off yesterday got me all excited about this project, and I started drawing some more. I'm currently at 6 backgrounds (6 backgrounds in a day and a half!) and I think I might be able to turn this into a short game just for fun. These new scenes all use the same pallette and are done in paint - I'm proud of them, even if not all of them are finished. Your thoughts would be appreciated :).






Moresco

Wow I love the girl, the new vehicle, and the tree.  Of course the scenes seem rather empty but I know you're just having fun.  If you made it a short game, I would definitely want to play it.  As for each scene, I think they all need more going on, at least for a game they might.  But hey I really don't know what your vision is for such a game, and maybe I'm wrong, they just seem a bit vacant.   Awesome though, neat style.
::: Mastodon :::

ThreeOhFour

Thankyou for the comment - I've been thinking the same thing myself, so I'll see about filling them up some more.

Cheers :)

TheJBurger

I really like the palette you've got going here, and yep, it does remind me of Super Jazz Man.

The characters look good, but to me they seem to have some posture/balance issues.

For the backgrounds, two things:
1) Some of the anti-aliasing (particularly on the tree branches and the 45 degree tower slant) seems unnecessary. They just seem to blur the objects out of focus instead of make a smooth curve.
2) I don't know exactly what kind of mood you're going for, but you could consider adding a light backdrop behind all the scenes to increase the sense of depth, but it's all up to you really.

ThreeOhFour

#11
Thanks for the comments :).

The characters do have posture issues of course - I plan on looking at them once I've got the backgrounds done. I hopefully should be able to sort them out without a problem.

With regards to making a backdrop... I would love to do it, but feel I couldn't show depth very well without expanding the palette, and I don't particularly want to do that. I guess I'll give it a shot - I just hope I can make the things in the distance look far enough away.

Cheers!

EDIT: Okay dokay - I've had a shot at putting a bit of a backdrop on this one, without expanding the colours. I'd love to know your thoughts and suggestions.



Also... could someone perhaps give me an example of how to do AA? I seem to be either using too much or too little.

Cheers!


ThreeOhFour

Oooh, thanks for the tutorial link, JB.

It seems I still have very, very much to learn.

Uhfgood

the images are great, my only gripe would probably put everyone at odds with me and that's the colors look sickly.  I realize this is a style choice, but the sickly greens and off color purples just put me off. 

Other people probably have seen graphics that use a color palette like that, but I have not, and as such, cannot think of it nostalgically.

Not that my opinion matters.

ThreeOhFour

Uhfgood - of course your opinion matters. I think the point here is that I am new to using limited palettes, and therefore I may have chosen some weirdo colours. I'll stick with this one for now, but hopefully I'll get better in future and you won't have to look at teletubby colours.

:)

(Ps - I don't have nostalgias about green and purple games either ;))

I had a go at reworking the anti aliasing on this one using the Gas13 tutorial tips... hopefully it is much improved. I have many others to attend to now - if you see anything you think should change, please tell me.



Cheers.

Again.

:)

Uhfgood

The pictures still rock though :-)

Evil

I really love it. There are a lot of things that bug me about it though. The perspective of the steps, the height of the building in comparison to the characters, shape of the islands. All minor things, but that damn square inside a circle sun is driving me mad.

I also agree that the tree could be a little fuller.

Andail

Your pictures are good because the colour schemes and the technique are well executed, but you could improve them tons by adding details. Pixel art benefits so much from details. Break up large areas with shades and cracks and just random hues. Add funny looking clouds to the sky, colourful flowers on the ground, textures to buildings, etc etc.
Add some sort of generic backdrop to the landscape, like washed out mountains with vague silhouettes.

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

You've picked up on the style quite quickly, Ben, and it looks good!  One thing I would say is that the sprites don't match the more lively, cartoony backgrounds, and that is because they aren't drawn in a 'cartoony' way, ie exaggerated features or proportions, and all of their poses are rather static.  This is purely a design choice, but it's something you might want to think about.  Meanwhile, I did an edit to adjust the pose of one of the characters to something a bit more natural.

1.  Tilted torso to the left slightly to bring in the right arm more.
2.  Brought left leg in and raised it a pixel to give the illusion of depth.
3.  Reshaded sprite with a more top-down approach that allows certain areas to fall into shadow (like the area beneath the torso).
4.  Added a few random details.





Hopefully this will help you get a better handle on poses at least.  Keep up the good work!

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