Messages

Personally... you avoid the forums.. haha
I've been on here every day since I started with AGS.  It's the only thing other than work, at the moment, that puts a halt on my production.  Especially those horribly tempting challenges.  I find I make more images for the AGS forums rather than for my game.

[Toon Boom Studio]

I've tried the demo versions of Toon Boom Studio and Anime Studio Pro.  I even downloaded Pencil (the freeware program), but never got around to testing it out. 

Toon Boom Studio seems more like Adobe Flash (not a big fan of drawing with Adobe Flash. but never did look around to figure out how to turn off the 'predictive' drawing shapes in Toon Boom, or whatever that function is called.  Like you try to draw a rounded square, and the program redraws it sometimes totally different from what you had first drawn.  Less rounded, more rounded, etc.  Just like Flash). 

Anime Studio Pro uses 'bones' for the characters animations.  You draw the limbs, body, and head, then assign bones to them.  Then when it comes to animating the character, you rotate the bones around, and they stay connected to the other bones (and you can assign limits, so the knee only bends so far, etc).  The program is designed for 2d only, but it is capable to import 3d characters with freeware program called Wings 3D (or other 3d software).  I haven't played around with the 3d aspect of it yet, but I'll give it a go sometime this week.

Photoshop for both.
Been playing around with animation programs (with onion skinning) for the character animations - nothing really concrete yet.

I was slapping my head on my way to work this morning when I had thought about what day it was.  I read this thread around 7pm last night on March 31, so the whole 'April 1st' did not even occur to me.  Knew something didn't seem right, just couldn't put my finger on it.  That's probably the first April fools joke that has ever fooled me.  Congratulations.

He isn't just going to walk/stand around with his mouth wide open all the time, is he?  I don't know the person at all, but it does seem odd to have his character with his mouth wide open the whole game.

It would all be a lot easier and faster for me if I could just take pen-to-paper instead of using a mouse.

*COUGH* Wacom pen tablet *COUGH*

Well I guess it's good that I haven't built any more than 3 backgrounds for my game.  I guess I'll just lay low until this XNA software is released.  The 1024x768 seems a little excessive... Meh  I guess I'll spend this time to just learn how to animate better than I already was.  HD tv's need smooth and clean animations

Well I'll be...  Shocked Thanks DanielH. Good [Bye] MSPaint!

Good! You look like you have talent at drawing, just Paint was holding you back.  (I have no idea how some people draw amazing backgrounds with Paint, they have my respect)

First adventure game I played was Monkey Island (of course I was so young when it came out, I thought it was Monkey Is-Land, haha gotta love english when you're young).

First AGS game was either Reactor 9, or possibly Apprentice.

Should've known ben with his crazy blue people fetish would come along and draw this totally exceptional character.  She's got sex appeal (with clothes and without), in a weird blue alien-like way.

But she doesn't look poor like Spike had kinda suggested by saying she was wearing torn at the knees pants.  But the boots help give a poor image.

Does Gimp have layers?  If so, learn how to use them!  Trust me on how much this will improve drawing time.  Use a layer for the bar stools.  Use a layer for a couch.  Use a layer for a table sitting in a room, or a painting on the wall.

I imagine you made the bar first, slapped the bar stools in the photo, then decided 'hey, a nice pole at the bottom for their feet would be great' and that is why it's drawn from corner to stool, stool to stool, and stool to edge. (with three separate lines rather then one straight line)  If you had layers for the stools, you could have just drawn a straight line on the bar (or background) layer without drawing over the stools.

Start playing around with them, they'll be like second nature.  I hated them at first, and was always bitter with Photoshop always making new layers, now I use them more than I use the toilet (a nice corner works too).  haha

It's not bad.  I try to avoid smudging completely, but since you say you are only using Paint and Gimp (I have no idea what Gimp is capable of), I can't really offer any suggestions.

The foot pole on the bottom of the bar isn't straight between the two stools.

Is that supposed to be stuffing hanging out of the stool? 
I really have no idea what those black oval things on the corner of the bar are, unless you're not finished yet.

Since you upped the size of the character, make her pants wavy instead of being straight lines.  Some knees might be nice too.

Wow, those zombies remind me of the vampires in that poorly made xbox 360 game, Vampire Rain.  For the 360 they were poorly animated as they ran to attack you, but for AGS, good work!

I loved the coughing.

Do you not use layers with paint shop?  I find it will help you considerably.  I try to make just about everything on it's own separate layer.  Especially the front bushes and the palm trees.  That way you can make the palm trees layer invisible, draw the ground and trail without having the ground on either side of the tree Noticeably different. It also helps for instances like right now, where you are correcting the leaves on the tree, you don't have to worry about redrawing the mountain every time you erase a leaf.

http://www.bryvis.com/images/ClichePirate.png

For instance look at the image above.  On this particular image I didn't go to the extreme of having most of the stuff on their own layers because it was for the background challenge.  For example, the anchor.  In the backgrounds for my game, I would make a layer for the anchor's black outline.  A seperate layer for the one tone of gray--underneath the black line layer.  That way if I decided I didn't like where the anchor was, I can move it around a few pixels.  I also have the yellow lighting from the lantern on it's own layer.  The shadows are on their own layer.  The blue light from outside is on it's own layer.  I find there is Much more control this way.  I could if I want add detail to the bones, anytime even though the lighting is there.  I can add cracks or scratches, mold, whatever, and the lighting and shading will not be affected.  It's very efficient.  Just use the brush on a low opacity when you are adding lighting or shading.


The front bush outline on the dirt mound, has too much light green like the bush was copied poorly with the lasso tool and pasted in there.

Also I have no idea if that left tree is leaning over the path or not.  A shadow would be nice.

And dragontoad was probably referring to how the lower wing on the spaceship is hard to even notice.  Darken the shadow underneath the wing or something.

I like the style of your clouds and the pink sky.  From my take on this single background, I'm assuming the ship landed on a prehistoric/cretaceous world?  Should be interesting, I enjoy this type of scenario.

EDIT: I forgot one thing.  Keep your shadows consistent.  The shadow on the top wing (also very hard to even see, but don't go changing it and making it too dark) is aiming off to the left a little, suggesting that the sun is at the right (about 2 o'clock).  But the dark shadow under the ship is suggesting that the sun is at the left (about 11ish o'clock).  And the left tree shows the light is off to the left, and maybe behind the camera a little.  And the right tree shows that the sun is very low and off to the left.

EDIT AGAIN:  I may as well show you what you could do to help show where the sun is.  It's a quick edit, and I am obviously not a professional, but here it is.



That tree is a perfect example of light direction (since I'm assuming it's leaning towards the path).
Assuming the sun is off to the left and behind the camera.  The left tree is an example of how the lighting would look if the sun was a little lower, and the right tree is if the sun is high.  Little differences like this will help you a lot with the over all look of your backgrounds.

I don't see YOU making anything... ever!

This is true.
But I don't upload anything I make.

"ghost in the sheet for free"
For a moment there, Ghost I thought you were soliciting yourself for free.

Great stuff.  Just keep practicing and you'll get better.  I know this isn't the critiques lounge, but there were a few scenes that were a little lengthy, like after the bee leaves the blanket.  Some hard to follow camera shots, when it rotates over the chimney.
Keep working on animating, it'll start getting easier and easier.  And you'll learn new things every time.

Found this looking for animating programs.
Cartoon music video with George Michael (never heard of him).
But the video was great and funny shit!  They pretty much make Bush look like a 4 year old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PLW0nQMxKY