Messages

Petteri: Don't worry, I can always do that style whenever I want. The new ones are just me trying to learn other things. With learning basic anatomy, drawing whole persons won't be sort of like a puzzle to me because I'll actually know where to put things. Shading and feathering can also be applied to my old style, but I'd do it in a more basic way than I'm doing now.

Helm: I hope so! For now I've got a lot of stuff to try out and learn. I'll post the results in a few days or weeks, depends on how well it's gonna work out. Thanks for all the help!

loominous: I actually prefer not to build the actual character's face on the polygons themselves. However, putting them over an existing face and working from there seems to work very well for me. Thanks.

Skurwy & txarly: Thanks for the links!

evilspacefart: Thanks, I'm glad you liked it.

fanton: Well, they do say graphics aren't everything, so who knows if the graphics live up the content. I'd say your only option left is to play it, eh?

Wow, thanks for the informative post! It makes shading a lot more logical to me. I had to give this a go right now:



(Left: Photoshop, Right: Painter, still pretty hard to handle for me)

I'm going to try this on characters in different views with different lightsources later tonight and try some more complex polygon meshes. I used to work with 3dsMAX, but I never thought of applying it to 2D art like this.

I've also been looking into a bit of face anatomy earlier (Dynamic Anatomy/Burne Hogarth). Interesting book. I'll also try to acquire Loomis' books. I'm sure I can find them at the local bookstores.

Helm: Thanks for the edit! I'll go and find some literature about anatomy for art. I think all these issues stem from starting to draw comic stuff thinking you wouldn't really need anatomy because it's 'just comics'. It's a big mistake to make, but there's always time to go back and study it - like right now.

I posted here because I wasn't sure what to work on, and now I have some good directions. Zat is gut!

biothlebop: Your pic is good fun. I'd say I prefer the original image of fatty guy over the filtered ones. I usually use very few filters and generally none on lineart. I like my lines the way they are. And your lines are good, no need to filterize them.

I've been drawing men because it's easier to do details on them. I think I could give an old woman a go, too. Another thing I'll start doing now is sketching stuff before I draw my lineart. I haven't done that for pretty much all of the pictures I've posted in here. I hope that studying anatomy will also get rid of most of the weird drawing habits I've collected over time.

Drawing motives... I'm not sure if I have any, I just love doing it.

Thanks for posting that link, there's a lot of awesome stuff on there.

I'm off to learn anatomy. Thanks so far, Critics Lounge!

A bug has been found in v0.5 of this module. If two or more characters background-talk for a while, it will make all involved characters display the speech animation. I tried to fix it but couldn't figure out how - lack of coding skills, I presume.

My old code works without problems, so I've decided to make that version available: http://www.origamihero.com/files/bgs05a.scm

To use it in versions above 2.70, deactivate 'enforce new-style strings' and 'enforce object-based scripting'. No special settings are neccessary for v2.70 and below.

DisplaySpeechBackgroundEx(character,text) will display speech and animate the character, and IsCharacterSpeeching(character) lets you find out if a character is background-speaking.

I have yet to figure out how to convert this thing to object-based scripting, so it may take a while until such a version is available.

Helm: Very informative. Thanks for posting the picture! That gives me a few general guidelines. I'll post more pictures later.

Geoff: I can see what you mean. It's like his face is kind of narrow. I'll look into it, thanks!

EDIT - More photoshop feathering (still need to work out a good way to do it in painter):

biothlebop: Hehe, that's a wild picture, and it speaketh the truth! Thanks for the feedback. I usually draw more comical things so there's bound to be a lot of mistakes in these new ones, I never bothered to look at face anatomy before. It's good you point these things out. I'll keep it in mind for my next drawings. Thanks once again!

Helm: I'll go and grab a few of these pigment ink markers, they sound easy to get. I have a few but they don't work very well anymore. I'm a bit scared of actual brush/well pens... sounds like messy business.

I noticed that my hand is very unstable and shaky when drawing things with pens. Can that be trained away?

I've had Painter 8 installed for a while but never started to use it, so I spent a few hours getting used to hit. It certainly is tougher than drawing stuff with 3-pixel brushes (which is cheating in a way, but great for sketches). However, Painter has cool smoothing, allowing me to draw at 50% size or lower, even. If my art had to be printable, would I have to draw it at A4/300 dpi? It's a pretty huge image and drawing at that size is very difficult.

Is it normal for lineart at A4/300dpi and 100% zoom to look rather messy? It seems to be okay when I print it. I'd love to take a look at one of your comic panels scanned in at that size. Would that be possible?

Thanks!

Here's my first Painter pic that actually looks like something (and he looks friendler than the guy before):



EDIT - one more:



EDIT - 'nuther one, to adress the combed back hair thing biothlebop mentioned, should look better now:

LilBlueSmurf: I see what you mean - more black could have put more effect into it. It would make the light behind the guy appear stronger. The black background also is a good idea. Thanks!

Helm: Thanks for the feedback. I drew a new face, trying to adress these things. Then I added the high contrast shadows and a little bit of feathering. I don't think it turned out very well, I must have done something wrong... the feathering seems unbalanced somehow. And now that I look at it, his left eye (from his view) is a bit misplaced:



I'd like to give inking by hand a go. What would you suggest? I'd need something that can do very thin lines and I like going over my lines to make them thicker.
Your exception is also very awesome. I'd like to explore all the options I have, so I'll also check out painter and illustrator.

LilBlueSmurf: You're not being mean if you point that out, and you're right, too. I'll try to shade a couple of 3/4 views tomorrow. I just felt like experimenting.

biothlebop: Those pictures are interesting, thanks for sharing! You're right about the forehead issues, I wasn't sure how to draw a few parts of it, specifically the area where the nose connects with the forehead.

The recent picture was a foreshortening/pose excercise. I'm not very confident with those two aspects and end up guessing most of the time. I really should look into more basic shading for now, though. More pics tomorrow.

Thanks for the feedback!

biothlebop: I'll keep this image as a reference, it's pretty interesting. First time I hear about flowlines... very interesting indeed! Thanks!

Here's a go at shading with a strong light source coming from behind - possibly a bad choice for excercising shading:



(By the way, this is what I'd consider manga style. It's shown me that I'm still very clumsy at doing poses.)

Helm: Thanks! You're an awesome artist. I'll give each technique you've shown me a go, even if just for the sole reason of excercise and memorizing them. All my drawings here are 3-pixel brush photoshoppy pictures (you probably noticed), so I'll have to start looking into Painter or Illustrator soon - that, or maybe even actual inking.

The comic page you posted is fantastic! Did you ink it by hand? Can something like this be achieved using Painter or Illustrator at a printable size (300/600 dpi)?

Thanks for the time and effort you've put into this. I appreciate it.

TheYak: Unlike myself, you're using non-computery stuff to draw. That's a good thing and I'd recommend to keep it up!

Kinoko: Well, I drew that avatar, so it doesn't count! ^^ It's a leftover from a manga style I tried out a while ago.

biothlebop: I do neglect the ears a lot, I often find myself browsing through my reference folders when I have to draw some. I drew the ears for my light comic style simple on purpose. It would be weird if I made the ears very detailed when the rest of it isn't. That said, I haven't looked into drawing ears much at all, that's something I should catch up on.

It would make a lot of sense to draw the lines either along or across a surface, both could compliment the form of the surface which I think would help to increase the feeling of depth. But I'm just guessing. It also sounds right to make sure not to use many different shading line directions to keep it focused, so I'll try doing that. Thanks for the informative post!

Helm: That would be very awesome indeed! Would THIS PICTURE work?

biothebop: That picture is pretty awesome, thanks.

Just to clarify, the shading question was actually about how to align the lines I define the shadows with on the surface, not where to place the actual shadows. I could make these lines that make up the shadows horizontal, diagonal or vertical or whatever I want, but what would work best? I was hoping there were general rules or smething similar.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'tricks'. I tried to keep the characters in the older images in the same style, which means they will share certain ways of drawing bits of them. Please elaborate, I'd like to know what exactly you meant.

The image you posted will definitely help with my shading itself. Thanks for the ideas!

Kinoko: Thanks! :3 I'm not a natural, I've been drawing for a good 5 years now and only got this far. I'll keep at it, though. By the way, your comics are awesome (the mangas on your site).

LilBlueSmurf: Thank you. A comic is what I wanna do and I need a simple, light style for it.

Why, this thread is like Janet Jackson's boobie popping out yet again!

Personally, I don't care how big those boobies are. They don't cross the line of 'omg so vulgar and sexist!1' for me. I'd say have your boobies the way you want them. It is okay and won't keep me from playing the game. I'd probably not draw boobies that big for one of my games, but that's nothing you should worry about, CaptainBlinky.

Thanks for the entertaining discussion. It was fun to read.

Don't worry about being popular on an internet forum too much. I think this place is mostly about having fun, so go have some! \'3'/

I'm not sure that one should be compared to the other pics since it's a completely different style, but still, thanks. I'll look into this eye thing.

I've been trying out other styles lately, ranging from 'cartoony' to 'a bit realistic':



I tried to do shading on the lower right guy. I never know how to adjust the shading lines... should they complement the form of whatever I want to shade or do they align with where the light comes from?

I'm unsure what you're attempting, but if you're making a platform game, it may be worthwile to look into gradual gravity.

One way would be as follows:

Code: ags

int grav;
int b=0;
function repeatedly_execute() {

 int a=0;
 while ((grav>0)&&(a < grav)) {
Ã,  Ã, b=b+1;
Ã,  Ã, if (b==10) {player.y = player.y+1;b=0;}
Ã,  Ã, a=a+1;
 }

 while ((grav<0)&&(a > grav)) {
Ã,  Ã, b=b+1; 
Ã,  Ã, if (b==10) {player.y = player.y-1;b=0;}
Ã,  Ã, a=a-1;
 }

 if (grav < 20) {grav=grav+1;}

}

This gives you a smooth gradual gravity. Thanks to the while loop, you can check for a collision every pixel the character moves, very important for clean movements. To test this, you could put a 'if (keycode==32) grav=-20' (32 = space) into your on_key_press function. It'll make your character jump.

(Beaten by besh81 who posted while I was typing! )

Jozef, have you considered splitting your reviews into two kinds - Quick Glances and Reviews? I'm suggesting this because that way, you could focus on a selection of games and spend less time on others.

In their current form, the reviews feel rather unbalanced. I'd rather read more detailed reviews of a handful games than many reviews which may contain games you only gave a quick spin (as appears to be the case with The Family Treasure, a game I personally like a lot). What do you think?

Well, I could do Zelda (NES) style scrolling, but that may not be suitable for Kinoko's or your game.