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That main melody can get a bit annoying after all of those repeats. Maybe have them fade after the initial note, like a delayed signal. The bell mixed with the organ just does not blend well. A single bell might sound even more dramatic, adding doubles on important notes.

The bass is definitely not prominent enough. A cello might help, but a contrabass might be a better choice. Probably just a volume level thing, but when you're working with midi, there are always going to be some volume issues. It's not that there's not enough bass, it's that they're way too much high end, which, again, is just a problem with midi.

I layered the two views so you could see some of the problems with the face. I adjusted the layers to the neck and shoulders. Most of her features don't quite line up, which is why she looks so different in each view.



Aside from the features not lining up, there are a few other things that would make her the front look more like the 3/4. The hair is big part of what makes two views look like the same person. In the 3/4 her hair on the left comes across her face. Think of the contours of the forehead and how hair lays with the curve. To make the 3/4 look more like the front, the hair should have sharper curve at the top. To make the front look more like the 3/4, the hair should have less of a curve to it. Less "C" shaped and more "(" shaped. Make sense?

The shape of the chin is really working against you in these two views. Honestly, making the hair taller and fixing the chin would solve most of your problems.

The eyebrows are slightly different in each view too. The 3/4 is much more relaxed and up while the front is much more curved and stern. And the collar bones are way off.

In the bottom right I did a really poor paint over of some lines on the nose. If you're going to go with just nostrils, make the contrast between the two colors of the face much stronger and use the color to suggest the curves of the tops of the nostril and the ball of the nose. Just nostrils always looks like an alien or MJ. Or both. 

Anian beat me to most of it and their paintover looks pretty good.

It's the Hot Brand Hot-Dog factory! Rendered in a quick isometric style. Who doesn't love a Hot Brand Hot-Dog?

I think you should continue the style and give him some simple arms with some haz-mat gloves. if you make them slightly curved, like this ( , then you can just rotate the arms slightly when you animate. Something similar to what a lot of flash users utilize. Looks good, I think the style will fit the atmosphere of an apocalyptic game very well.

I dig the black/white idea, but the finished product looks so processed it loses it's feel. I'd maybe clean up some of the grayish spots and make it strictly black antialiased lines. The side views look pretty good, other than the feet look a little bulbous. I like the profile of the face, very melancholy. The back view looks okay too, but the feet look like they're pointing up. I like the V on the back of the coat, but the length doesn't match the side views. The back of the coat should be higher than the front of the coat.

The front view looks strange because of the head proportions. I drew some lines to show continuity between shots. One of the front views is aligned to the head, the other to the eyes. I did an edit of the front view next to a side view, just to clean the head proportions up a bit.

If I recall correctly, I think I hosted the first fighter sprite jam, way back in 2004.

Well, I had a lot of fun with the Camp Copycat Jam, so I decided to attempt to make a self portrait fighter in the same style. I worked on the body and the head independently, so their proportions are a little of. I tried to adjust the head to body ratio based off the sprites from the Copycat jam. And honestly, this is the most accurate self portrait I've ever done, in any medium.

Edit: For fun, I did another in the same style, this time of my girlfriend, complete with panda t-shirt, Totoro plushie and Blackberry cellphone.




Edit 2: Ugh, I couldn't help myself. Here's a quick one of LGM, holding a cigarette and an advance copy of Phil Reed's new book.

My girlfriend had something similar on her computer. As Vince said it also blocked any virus checking websites (actually made the browser close whenever I typed hijackthis in the search field). Ended up fixing it by running a boot-time scan with Avast!, because once Windows has started up most well-written viruses/trojans will be undetectable. Also, you may want to turn off the System Restore feature before cleaning because some viruses uses it to revive themselves.

Ugh, I just got one of these over the weekend. The virus rerouted my google searches to ads for porn and whatnot, and blocked all of my attempts to visit any anti-virus website. I never had any problems before, so I didn't have Ad-Aware or Spybot or whatever. But every program that I tried to download would error during the install. I had to go back 3 versions of AVG in order to get it to install. Extreme hassle. I recommend everyone downloading at least Spybot just in case, or like me, you'll spend you're whole weekend trying to fix it.

Shading looks good, but there's something about the angles and pose that doesn't look right. His shirt is pointed to his right a bit, but the buttons should line up with the underside of his abdomen. I've tried a few paintovers, but I can't seem to figure out what's misplaced. Angle of the tail? Depth issues?

I really like the revised version of the red-head with the gun, though her awkward pose doesn't fit her assassin persona. Still a great pose to keep on file. The variation in characters is nice too. The black chick looks nice, other than the red eyes.

But the bikini bent knee girl has been driving me crazy. Yarooze's edit is very nice, but doesn't fit the style. I tried my hand at it, trying to maintain the style. She definitely needed more sass in her pose. I fixed the legs for the bent knee pose, but in order for that pose to work, the hips need to be leaning one way to get the other leg up. I'm not a fan of the 80's/90's high-side thong thing. I think low sides is far sexier, if that's what you're going for. So I shifted the hips and the shoulders to match. Gave her breasts some more *ehem* definition. Also defined the jaw which will give the character some visual depth.

I also changed the hair. The red-head has awesome hair, but this girls Sailor Moon thing doesn't looks so great. I adjusted to to the "back" of the head and gave it some more volume. The bottom I placed behind her arm to also add to the depth.





Edit: The hips in my edit angle the opposit way because she has a hand on her hip, but here's an example of how the hips shift when in a contrapposto pose. I guess I would consider it a NSFW image, but it's only a 3D model.

I think this would be more interesting if the terrorists weren't resilient as hell. You drop a bomb on a group of them and none of them die, but someone who's not even close by dies.

Plus, if they're all end up being terrorists we can kill them all...  :

I don't think I'll ever understand everyone's inclination to draw nudes as super ripped, but on a tiny body. If the frame is small, they won't be that muscular. If you're going for super muscley, they're going to have the frame of a body builder, which is much different from that of a normal person.

Though yours does have more "volume," making them look like a cylinder isn't what gives them the depth they need. Shoulders, legs and head should present enough depth to make the character look real. Their stance in a reality (IE: placing them in a room) will also give them some appearance of depth.

I didn't work hard on the body, just mostly on the legs and feet. The face is terrible, and for that I'm sorry.




Again, a slight contrapposto and asymmetrical shading can really improve a characters stance.

Well, I got to busy with classes, but I did some basic design stuff. The concept was a panda and koala in space. Just thought I'd share.

Hah! I love how Layabout's Billy the Fiddler is positioned in SpacePirateCaine's group photo. Makes my character ten times better! ^_^

Looks great! The shoes look a little misplaced, and too similar to the other character. The rest matches perfectly.

I really enjoyed this activity. I felt really invested in my character, but it could be because I just watched Ghost World.



June Summers
Hates Everyone

June comes from a wealthy family, but loathes her parents. She was thrilled when she learned that her parents could be skiing in Switzerland for the next 8 weeks. Unfortunately for her, they dumped her off at camp on their way to the airport. Angry and sarcastic, people find it hard to be friendly with June. But that doesn't bother her! She's perfectly happy with everyone leaving her alone. Lucky for her, her cynical attitude gets her out of most of the required camp activities.

Perhaps a poorly drawn John Kruk?



A reference to an episode of ATHF, featuring John Kruk.

Well, he seems much shorter than the other characters. Not sure if he's similar to the conductor (?), and he's supposed to be much shorter.




I made him slightly taller and adjusted his pose. He turned out much more-..."fabulous" than I intended. Probably just the stance...

First off, the designs are really solid. You've got a great variety of characters, unique but comparable in style, and all are very visually stimulating. Backgrounds can really make these characters, but they could also really hurt them if not done right.

The blob character is a really creative idea, but I think he's not well thought out. I love the idea of a transparent "liquid" character, but the organs feel displaced. It's hard to understand their functionality when they aren't attached. A floating, beating heart is easy to identify right away, but the stomach and intestine seem like a graphic. Perhaps fading the ends so the appear to attach to the mouth and bottom. Having him open is mouth and suck in some air that flows through his organs, like Tom and Jerry water hose style, would help identify the function of these things. Lungs would be a good alternative to intestine.

I think there are some other things you could do to the character to accentuate the fact that he's a blob. Floating organs and a transparent body help, but set aside from animations and backgrounds, it's uncertain. A terrible movie and bad example, but the main character from the movie Osmosis Jones has this white, glowing outline that really sets of the idea that he's liquid. This is a terrible image, but there aren't any better images online (surprise, surprise).



I'm not sure if an outline is the way to go, but a white tint around his body might make him look better.

And I LOVE that character in the first sketch. I can't help but think I've seen that before. It's really lovely.

They look pretty good, IMO. I did some for fun, looking at some examples of crystals and crystal balls on google. Not great, but I tried to include some transparent, glowing qualities.

Yeah, the left shoulder leaning thing bothers me a lot. Her right arm, though awkwardly placed, looks alright. It looks like you used a reference photo and I'm somehow visually convinced that this is correct. Her left arm looks like it's digging into her side. Perhaps pointing it out more so we can see it will better balance her stance.

I like the loose grip of the sword, but the weight isn't balanced. Her right hand needs to be "pushing" down more to keep the balance of the sword. Now it looks like it's going to fall out of her hands. Another option would be to move the right hand down and adjust the angle of the sword. The way that it's positioned right now is cropping the image weird.

The background isn't terrible. I do think, however, that if you lowered the "camera angle" of the background the pose might look less-... shriveled? Moving the stream lower in the image would push the figure more upright and make the castle look higher up, which might be more interesting.

Her face is very pretty. Something about her mouth doesn't look right, though. I think it's just the contrast between the skin and lips. Blending the edges a bit would make them look more like natural lips than covered in lipstick.

Did anyone else immediately think it was G4's Morgan Webb?