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This isn't a great paintover.

When you're working this small, the head kind of needs to be out of proportion in order to look comfortable. I don't care for working with nudes first, but I did them anyway. The smaller one keeps the same head size and the larger one has a larger body and headsize for the height. I tried to give them a slight contrapposto, but it looks bad on the smaller one.

Then I did a basic sprite over the nude. I didn't do the suit because it's a hard design to work with and never looks quite right. Colors aren't great, but this was really quick. For some reason I kept the pink background.




Hands still don't look perfect, but meh.

I think I hear Progz coming...

- collect photos/drawings as "reference material"- this sounds pretty obscure but is an old trick. Many a great fantasy/horror creature has its roots in an artists' collection of photos of lettuce, rust, or even exploded marshmallow.

As an student getting their Bachelors, I must say that this is super important. My harddrive recently failed and I lost most of what I had, but before that I had TONS of photos just for inspiration. I had my photos folder sorted into all sorts of topics, like cool designs or logos, textures I liked, color pallets, awesome conceptual work by other artists, and several folders for projects that I planned on working on in the future. Then when you start work on a project, you'll have a bunch of points of "reference" for what you want to do. Not something to copy from, but something to mimic.

Rust is a great example. Depending on your project, rust could look many different ways and will depend on not only the material and location of the object, but the shape and contours of the object too. So placing this texture directly on this object won't work because of the objects unique qualities. But if you notice that rust pulls up in some specific places, or tends to form in a certain way, it'll give you a better idea of how to apply it to what you're working on.

Architecture and landscapes work the same way. Don't necessarily copy directly from them, but notice attributes that you like about the reference and what makes them "work" visually. Basic structure and perspective are the most important, like Andail said, but plan you're designs around what features you think would make this work visually interesting.

As for your image, I think you're on the right track. I had a few issues with the lighting in the shadow of the building, but I had just come from outside and after looking at the image for a while it cleared up. I think the design is well done and the would work great as a background. Something about the lower left corner bothers me. Something about the hill. Cloud positioning looks good with the layout of the building so I wouldnt change that. Maybe a sign or a tree or something to fill that space?

You need to have a video card on your harddrive that's capable of a video input, which most laptops don't have. Most new laptops have a video out, and you could probably run your laptop to your desktop monitor, but not the other way around.

I had a friend in highschool who's band name was "Brutus and the Angry Senators." I think if the Person and the People match then people are more likely to remember it. Or if the names are contrasting. Though their music isn't that great, Echo and the Bunnymen have an awesome band name.

I love how the hyperlinks are to the pages of the new site. This website might be worse than AGS on MSDOS.

I used to have Windows 95 on floppy. It took something ridiculous like 26 of them. Windows 7 now takes up most of a DVD. Progress!

I've got Windows 3.0 on floppy, unopened in it's original box with the original shrinkwrap still on it. I have no idea why I'm keeping it.

This board is only for approved threads, and isn't really open to these types of contests. But enjoy this design I did anyway because I am bored.

The original tree looks great, but something about the outlines or the dithering make it look like it has JPG artifacts or something. The outlines don't really work with the character. I did a little edit to show you how to keep some depth to the tree, but without making it look bulbousy. I didn't change any dithering, but it's the shape of the tree that will really change how the dithering looks.

+1 for Dumpster Diving

My two favorite places to go dumpster diving are music stores and electronics stores. RatShack has a ton of little shit that they throw away, but some places are pretty particular about their trash to keep people from rummaging. There was a West Music store in my town, and they threw away so much cool stuff. I've got old band instruments, huge speakers that just need new $5 cones, old amps, etc. You won't find too much Steampunk stuff in dumpsters, but there's a lot of other stuff to find.

Another place to look is habitat stores. I'm not what they're really called. Habitat for Humanity is a group that builds houses for poor families. A lot of the materials they use are taken from houses and buildings that are condemned and are going to be torn down. They have a building where they store a lot of these materials, but is open to the public to come and buy things. All of the money goes to the organization (a good cause, and a tax write-off), and because a lot of the buildings where the materials are coming from are old, there's usually a lot of fancy Victorian style junk.

There are also a few websites that sell old cogs and other items used in making Steampunk stuff. I'm not sure what it's called, but there's one that Jake von Slatt has mentioned a few times on his website... I sincerely hope you've seen Jake's website.  

Forget the filters! That colored pencil looks awesome! The road looks kind of strange with the bold contrast of the redish areas. Same with the tree.

You should totally make a game in this style. I'd be interested to see your approach at making characters or a GUI.

I drew the ninjas for a previous Sprite Jam, and I thought I'd make some zombies for them to fight. Then I ended up making a bunch of other enemies too. 



1,2 - Ninjas
3,4 - Punks
  5  - Skeleton
  6  - Zombie
  7  - Crappy Frankenstein
  8  - Samurai / TMNT Shredder
  9  - Pirate
10 - Chainsaw Serial Killer
11 - Alien
12 - Mad Scientist
13 - Robot
14 - Super Space Robot
15 - Crocodile
16 - Manbearpig
17 - Big Daddy
18 - Gorilla / D.K.

I've had that problem a lot. I have /yabb set as my homepage and most of the time it keeps me logged in, but occasionally I'll open the internet and I wont be signed in. But as soon as I navigate to a different part of the forum, I log back in. Rather strange.

Legs look nice. I'd change the shading on the arms and hands a bit so that when they are back they are more in a shadow. It's hard to tell how far forward and backward his arms are moving.

I like the simplicity of it. The far arm looks pretty good, but the leg shape is distracting. I changed the head around a bit too, along with arm.

+1 reply

Though, I think a better question would be "Who is a Virgin?"

It's slightly less insulting.

Progz has the right idea. The shapes of the clothes were hard to distinguish, but I think Progz's edit looses a lot of the character from the original. She has a really nice pose and swanky quality, except she looks like she's wearing a French Maid outfit with oversized cowboy boots.

Some sort of combo of the two might look nice. I think the original has such a nice contrapposto for such a small sprite, the main issue was distinguishing the torso. This isn't great, but I couldn't help making an edit.

Something to help get the ball rolling.

This is from the last OROW which I started, got this far, became bored, and quit.



The idea was a simple platformer with lots of small animations. Basically a low res version of Eric's Automation, but not a complete ripoff.

I should have made an ice skating game instead. ^_^

Doesn't look bad, but there are some obvious disproportions.

The eyes are pretty far apart. Keep in mind you want about an eye's width between the eyes and from the edge of the eye to the side of the face.

Eyebrows are very displaced. Right eyebrow looks right, left not so much. Even if one eyebrow is raised, the bone structure of the face will keep the shadows of the socket in the same place.

Nose is a bit bulby but all noses are different. The bridge is very sharp. Try softening that line.

Mouth is narrow too, but that's partly because the eyes are off. Generally the edges of the mouth are in line with the center of the pupil.

Here's a quick (and kind of scary) image I pulled off google.



It's simplified things a bit too much and left some things out, but hopefully it will help. The best thing always is too look at an actual face. Don't make assumptions about where things are. Look and measure them with your eye.


Oh, and to post your image copy and paste the [ img ] code from Photobucket to your post.

I like the rocks between the dunes and the mountains, but they make the image maybe a little to busy. I prefer that color scheme over the more yellow. Having the darker areas more purple is more accurate.

I did a little edit of a few things. Changed the heights of the obelisks. Flipped the sun so the darker line was on the left side.

The right red circle was just me pointing out how two mountains came together at the same point as the clouds. I moved the clouds on the right and left up a bit to give some more depth. Doesn't look right still, but better IMO.

Yours then mine for comparison. Makes the obelisk height changes more obvious.

I like the look of the sand in SpacePaw's edit. Having the sand match the sun and background better gives the whole thing more atmosphere.

There are two things that really stand out to me; the sun and the horizon. The sun still looks really jagged. I wouldn't give it any AA because it'll look too fuzzy and more out of place, but maybe some clouds or sandy haze over part of it will break it up enough that it's not one big eyesore.

The horizon is having some compositional issues. There's a lot falling on the barrier between the upper sky and the lower/distant sky. Example, the tall obelisk to the right of the "behemoth" should be slightly taller, maybe 25-50%, just so it doesn't fall on that line. Another example is the solid tone obelisk on the furthest mountain, half way between the sun and the behemoth is too tall.

I did a quick thing to show you a few points.



The red circles are all points that fall on that horizon between the sky/clouds, and they all create a visual division of the top of the sky and the "background." A lot can be fixed by moving the objects up or down slightly. I like how the behemoth sits above the clouded part (it reminds me of Cloud City in Star Wars). It gives it a way cooler feel. But the positioning of the clouds run with the line of the top of the building. I'd try moving the whole thing up a few pixels, mainly to get the small sliver of clouds over the middle out of the way.

The furthest red circle is a big point of conjunction. Moving one of those pieces around a bit will make that go away. You could also play with giving the clouds some shape along the horizon and maybe get "closer" to the viewer by tapering them up slightly at the ends.

And while we're talking about the red line, the obelisk in front of the sun looks nice, but it's too centered. I'd move it to the left some. I think it'll help fix the gap between mountains on the left as well as allude more to the direction of the light.

The green circle is another little clump that stands out. It's not as bad, but the main thing is the hole int he darkest mound. It looks neat, but it's not as pronounced as it should be. Either make it larger and more clear what it is or reshape the mound. The other light colors on the darkest mount don't look too great, so I'd probably lose those (IE, under the behemoth).

The blue circle is a strange line that makes the two obelisks look on the same plane and doesn't help give the image depth. Shortening the right one or lengthening the left one should help that.

The last thing is the darker blue circle on the dune. There's nothing really going on here, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Visually, I think it balances out with the sun and the sand, but as a background, the right portion of the foreground it sort of lost. This background isn't really that "functional", but it loses something there.

Perhaps adding a tall dune that rides up into the frame of the image, or one small middle shade dune? Maybe even adding a taller dune shadow to the left of the image will help with the balance. I'm not quite sure yet, but it maybe needs something.


Sorry about all of the nonsense. I really dig this image, so I guess I wrote a lot.