Messages

Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt.
It was in the soundtrack of Chocolat, played by Johnny Depp. Was also a score in Mafia, the game. That song makes you happier than drugs (or chocolate) can do.

I like your idea for the command buttons... It's (as far as I know) something new.

As for the background:
- I think the ground is overtextured. Too detailed. Probably because you used some presets from 3DSMax (I have no idea whatsoever of how it works...) considering you have not yet mastered the program. I agree with Ace_Monkey about doing your own thing, wether it would be in 3DSMax, Lightwave, Photoshop, M$Paint, whatever.

- It seems like the background is on a hill: the edge is still very sharp and the trees seem to stand behind it. Put the trees more on the foreground, to suggest depth. Also, the closer objects or surfaces tend to get to the horizon, the more they tend to blur and take over the color values of the sky. When objects are at a long distance, the contrast decreases... Depth of field and such... (I'm sure there are some great tutorials for this in the tutorial section.
It's possible to render DOF in 3DStudio, but it takes a lot of time.
A lot of words, I know, but since I'm not fluent in English, I have to help myself... With a lot of words.

- The opacity of the tent is to low, it looks like a giant mosquito net...

- If you have to see through it, fill it up. A matress, backpack,... would do wonders.

- Try to equalise the level of detail from your BG's and your characters. There's a lot of difference.


That's all I can think of, for now.

As for the GUI, it looks very nice, I like the drawing on the left very much, although it reminds me of a coffee brand here. The only thing I would suggest is to avoid brandnames, like Nokia... Make it Rockia, I don't care, but there are copyright laws and people have their own opinions about the brand. They don't have those about something you made up.

Hope this helps you a little. It's late, I'll check back in tomorrow.

Keep up the good work!

D.

However:
El Drey: Your image is colour reduced as is suggested by the noisy dithering and the random grey/green pixels, the closeness of some of the colours . Maybe you could show how your bigger original looked or your reference?

Well, I had no reference, just doodling with the Wacom. I saved the workflow, but the colors are all messed up. (That's Flash for ya)

It was actually created in 150x150, but with 9017 colors. I should have put more effort in it, probably.

[Edit] Removed the large gif, for being too big.

It's been a while since I participated, and I still suck at pixeling. But here's a shot.



150x131
32 colors.

This demon has a few hobbies, such as enjoying eternal damnation, bathing in a whirling fire, getting lava-tattoos and juggling with human souls (that would be the blueish things around his arms and chest).

Sorry for the awful background. It just had to be there.

Cheers,
Drey.

[Edit] Adjusted the dithering etc.

Well, since the overblurred mexican should be completely redone, I started on another one, this time pixel by pixel. Let me know what you think...



Don't mind the dropped shadow, it's completely screwed up.

Comments? Is this better/worse?

El Drey.

Hi there!

I did this "sprite" just for fun. (There's a lot of AA going on)

I'm not very good at making tiny images (200 pixels tall is tiny), but I gave it a shot.

Now I'm curious to find out what you think. Tear it apart, if necessary.



It's a mexican desperado.

I think there's a lot of room for improvement, especially the colors. I don't seem to get the spaghetti western color style.


See you around.

Drey.

Nothing to add on the crits. Superb looking sleeve!

And "mort aux vaches" means "death to the cows", meaning you're willing to kill'em all.

It shows you had fun making it! I certainly had fun watching it.

Cool movie, real funny. Now I gotta study.

Great job!

Drey.

Yay, quite a satisfying day, yesterday.
Too bad for Jan Koller and Francesco Totti, getting injured though. But that group's going to be interesting, since the runner-up (Czech republic or Italy, probably) will face Brazil the next round...

I'll keep my fingers crossed (but I can't decide for who...)

I'm not a big genius in masking myself (I never use it...) so what I mostly do is tediously selecting what I need, feather the selection (in this case about 1 or 2 pixels) and delete the rest. I use that technique for example on the ends of hair strands etc. It's not the professional way, but it's quite close. Most tutorials advise you to use the magic wand, but I'll burn in hell before I use it. But hey, I'm a photoshop heretic.

Hope this helps a bit.

Good luck!

El Drey.

It's a dang good background!

But if you want to make it look like it's high on a cliff, you'll have to (sorry) blur the water a bit, and lower the contrast. Objects in the distance tend to be less contrasted, less focused and more bluey (that's not a problem actually).

And the postion of the pillars doesn't bother me at all, it even fills up the compostion (Rocks on the right, pillars on the left... No problem there).

Great work!

El Drey.

Some quick crits:
- try to put her feet together, to find an elegant pose which is probably more feminine
- women tend to bring their elbows closer to their body than their wrists, also in benefit of elegancy
- it wouldn't hurt to stretch the neck a little, but I dunno, maybe that's just my style.
- is she supposed to be skinny? 'Cause her shoulder bones (don't know the proper word) seem to stick out... I know models these days lose weight by sniffin' coke, but really beautiful women have nuth'n too much, nuth'n too less
- try to relax the pose a little, for example: bring a more curvy line in the side view. It's like they say on the Polykarbon tutorials: think of women, think curvy, curvy, curvy!

These are just my impressions, you've made awesome progress with this sprite overall.

I'll try to post animage to show what I mean as soon as I get the time...
And I'm also in favor of 3/4 poses instead of front/side poses. But that's completely up to you.

Keep up the good work!

El Drey.

Its a dwarf orc so its a dorc?

Hey! That was my joke!Ã, 

Meet Grimbold, the mighty dwarven bounty hunter. He hunts orc, dragon, bunnies and dwarven ladies who shave their beards. His job is a lot of fun.



Later!

Drey.

I vote

1) Buloght
2) Krysis
3) TheAmazingLardo

And a special co-op prize for Pablo & pslim for cracking me up like almost never before.

Mine's there cause my avatar depicts my behaviour when I'm all out of ideas.
And my avatar is there because everyone else has had more sex than me.

You guys like handing out credit for free?



Quick paintover...

I tried to meet some of your suggestions, so...
- made the bottle and stuff less etheral
- made the 'blind-light' hit the desk in upward direction
- made the overall picture a tiny bit darker

Luckily the whole setting of the story is kinda dark, 'cause I'm as colourblind as an ox.

As for textures, I try to avoid them as much as possible. They easily become too digital.

The rest of your much admired comments will be taken care of, like tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice.

My first background, it's supposed to be the messy office of a P.I. (who is saving on his electricity bill, hence the darkness). I realise I still have to add the dropped shadows, so I'll add them later...



Any comments?

Thanks.

Drey.

[was]

x2

Checklist:
Max 150 x 150Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã, => Check (74 x 150)
Max colors: 32Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã, => Check (25)
Original Character:Ã,  => Hope so
Drawn by me:Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  => Check
Ork?Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã, => Dork

Yeah, I've drawn a Dork-orc. But don't pass judgment too swiftly, he was created while listening to Metallica's horrible Saint Anger album, so there's more orc in him than you can see...
He has mastered the art of wearing demonic white socks! Beware!

This is so lame...

Maybe my next entry will be more serious in nature... Maybe.


[EDIT]
Second entry:
(We were allowed to enter two sprites, no?)
x1x3

I seriously don't understand how you guys can dig up such awesome sprites while using MSPaint...

[/EDIT]

See y'all around!

Drey.

My first entry ever! In fact, my first shot at pixel art as well...

An alien cocktail-upper-class-lady of some sort.

1x 2x

She's 103x240. Forgot the exact number of colours, but it's below the limit. I hope.

EDIT: Changed the colours a bit, so I got rid of the damn grey background.


See y'all around.

Drey

I read it! I liked it!

Just some nitpicking (as I really enjoy that...)

- You describe the weaponry well. That's obvious since war is all about weapons. But the weapons are a little too similar to those of WW2, IMO (this stands for "In My Opinion", right?). I get confused. However, when I looked it up, it appears to be correct, only I didn't find anything about WW1 silencers. If you can, try to find some weapons that were distinct to WW1 (think 'cheap revolvers'), just to avoid confusion. With all those WW2 films and series... Also, "Luger" is an Anglicised name, the Germans call it a Walther P-something-something. But hey, you're writing from the allied POV, so who cares.

-I think Wilson's case is... rather extraordinary. On one hand, I don't think his name sounds very Italian, but then again, "What's in a name..."? On the other hand, he got hit by a sniper bullet, and therefore he had to choose between home or Special Operations? That's quite an extreme dilemma, no?

- Isn't it strange that English maps are found in the German HQ? Since Germans speak... well... German?

- Finally, I got the impression that the names you use sound more British than American. American soldiers in WW1 were mostly immigrants, I presume, so some Irish or Italian names couldn't hurt... But once again, I refer to the Shakespearian line above.

This is, as I said, nitpicking. I look for details, that seem strange. They don't actually bother me, so I guess there's nothing wrong.
I liked the story, and I'm actually curious how the guys are going to get out of the mess they're in to.

Good job, keep going, and see you in the trenches!