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I haven't yet tried this myself, but thought, if it works as advertised, that it might be useful to you guys: LazyNezumi.

B minorrrrr

Oh crap. I'm sorry to have derailed this guys. I don't think I ever saw that I won that round. CW can have my turn with his pirate shot.

EDIT: Hmm...except I'm pretty sure I did post again. Maybe those posts got lost when the forum was being worked on?

I would support a series of workshops separate from competitions. There's no reason there couldn't be a writing workshop, a programming workshop, a sprite-making workshop, etc. We just need to find folks who are willing to step in as instructors/moderators. I could see this being highly beneficial (to me).

Also, it might help to set the transparency on your layers, not on the brush settings. That's why you

feel like each time I release the mouse button I need a new layer

.

Snarky, do you have all of these former threads and blog posts saved for yourself somewhere, or are you finding them on an as-needed-in-this-thread basis? Because it strikes me that it would make a nice sticky to have all of these sorts of threads linked from one post.

I like your progress so far! What was your background in art before getting the tablet, if you don't mind my asking? Did you have experience painting? I've found that things that I thought the tablet would magically fix have only gotten better as I've learned more about traditional techniques, like color theory and under-painting.

I always wonder if other people pick that stuff up right away, like the key light colors you've chosen for your board pattern is something I would struggle with.

If the Wacom is cost-prohibitive, I'd check out the Monoprice line as an alternative. I got this one for Christmas, and have been very happy with it.

Oh man, when I was 16 or so I gobbled those Loomis books up. I still use things from them! They are so useful.

I get the feeling that everyone who draws either learned from Loomis or learned from someone who learned from Loomis.

I treble the Understanding Comics recommendation. It's not just good for comics, but for any form of visual storytelling.

No art classes, you say? These classic books are a good start, and they're free: http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/

Once you move on from Loomis, try George Bridgeman: http://drawingbooks.org/bridgman1/index.html

FYI, this is why people think you ignore their advice:

It's not that it doesn't work but I spend most of my time drawing my usual anime stuff.

Basically, what you're saying is, "Yes, doing this would make my art better, but fudge it. Not interested."

The problem is that, when you look at and copy other peoples' styles of art, you don't get the basics. It's like building a house where you didn't lay a foundation, but instead focused really hard on the color of the shingles on the roof, so they'd look like your neighbor's. It might make you happy to have the same shingles, but your house fell down.

With art, you might say, for instance, "Oh, how do they draw eyes in FF? How do they draw hair in FF?" You never ask, "What does a human being look like, and how are they replicating that anatomy through a style all their own? And why does that style work?"

Everyone who draws well in a cartoony style can also do a basic photo-realism style, because you have to learn to draw before you can learn to cartoon. That's why you start art school with basic classes, and they don't let you move on until you get the basics down. You don't have the basics down. For your goals, this is what you need to do:

1. Learn the basic human form.
2. Learn how that form is done in FF style.
3. Modify that style for your own.

This is what you're trying to do:

1. Learn the FF form.
2. Modify the FF form for your own.

You can't skip step one. Otherwise, you wind up with eyes in the middle of your foreheads, and you don't recognize why that's happening. Your house falls down. Even the simplest of anime or cartooning styles of drawing people is based on the fact that people are a collection of bones, muscle, connective tissues and skin. You need to know the basics of how those things work together and how they're proportioned to each other. Especially as I've learned, if you plan to animate them.

You can look in my art thread to see all of my wrong steps. I've left them all there. I've gotten a metric ton of good, free advice from folks here, and I do my best to be open to it. There's a danger in, when you make things like this, being too close to it to be able to see it how others do. Again, you're on the ladder thinking the shingles look great, and we're across the street cringing for the time when the building inspector comes by.

Icey, you are the Rob Liefeld of Adventure Game Studio, and the reason is what veryweirdguy mentions above: you're copying copies, extremifying their extremities. Keep doing that, and your art will become a simulacrum, faces that are recognizable only as attempts at specific anime or FF characters, and not looking enough like real people that we understand them as characters.

Take some time, a week, a month, and stop replicating. Sit down and draw some real people. Get some anatomy books. Find a life drawing class to attend. Before you draw a head of any kind, you need to know that the eyes come at roughly the halfway point between the crown and the chin. You're skipping straight to style without substance. Do some underdrawing. Use a photostat blue, or just a blue colored pencil, to lay the basics down first. Make sure your anatomy is right. Then add on the style, the character, the Iciness.

I type all of this knowing you'll probably ignore it. But maybe don't ignore it, and take some advice!   

Well, my game is only a couple weeks old, so I'm far from needing voice, but I'll keep you in mind.

I'm a Southerner too, and by the time your game is in need of voices, I should have the spare time to record some. I can do a variety too, from upper crust Savannah to trailer park Tennessee.

In case there's still a chance to sway some votes, or if anyone is trying to avoid a Resonance straight ticket, I strongly advocate looking at Patchwork for best background art:



And Anna's Quest for best voicework (you can get a solid taste from the demo, but I also advocate shelling out for the full chapter one).

Question: I nominated, then went back to nominate an additional game. Should I have re-entered all of my first nominations, or were they saved when I submitted the first time?

Games I would have voted for, had they been in the database:

Kitten Catastrophy
The Samaritan Paradox (demo)
Skrumring (demo)

Programmers: add these for next year!

I got a Monoprice 10x6 with 8 hotkeys tablet for Christmas. Cost was $50. I got it on the recommendation of Ray Frenden's blog. I've had a Graphire and a Bamboo, and this is better than both of those, for less money. The pressure sensitivity is great. The only issue I have had so far is with drivers -- Windows kept trying to reinstall the Wacom drivers, but once I got past that, I've had no issues.

Frenden also just positively reviewed the Yiynova Cintiq alternative, which retails for a mere $500.

Maybe he'd be inspired by playing another game with art by a nine-year-old?

African Queen
Big Sleep
Casablanca
Dark Passage

The thinner lines help, I think. The perspective is a bit off, but not so as to make the game unplayable. I still think those images look pretty good. I like your style.

If you do go with a gradient on the sky, have it go vertical instead of horizontal. Start lightest at the ground, and get more saturated as you go up. You might want to fade the mountains a little too, to simulate atmospheric distortion.

[W]

World
Organizations
Research
Locations
Dossiers

***

All D's:

Dynamics
Divisions
Developments
Destinations
Dossiers

***

Can you come up with an E and an R category too? If so, you could have DOSSIER, which would be appropriate:

Developments
Organizations
Settings
Society
Individuals
E
R

Or, a D and an E:

D
Organizations
Settings
Society
Individuals
E
Research

Maybe

Data
Organizations
Settings
Society
Individuals
Events
Research