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Ildu's point about the camera is good.

You might also want to consider playing with geometry more. A few interesting shaped buildings, arches, hand rails, etc. would go a long way. With a flat-shaded style, you won't be able to use lighting to spice things up and build atmosphere, so some neat base shapes and scenery will fill that void nicely.

I have a tendency to make boxy buildings myself. I swear, 90% of the rooms I draw are rectangular solids with holes drilled in them for doors and windows.

Thanks so much for the advice on the proportions. This edit is the result of a lot of proportion tweaks. Pretty much everything got adjusted at least a little. Overall he still doesn't look right. It seems like he could use another round of edits.



Increator's suggestion about the lips was very helpful. Though the lips have been reshaped, I think they still could use work. The lower lip was rounded out and the fold under it was deepened. The little depression in the middle of the upper lip got reshaped, and the the lip itself was pushed outward a bit, but it seems like it should be poutier still.

Tuomas- you're right, he looked too old. I think a lot of the shaping was over-exaggerated in the first edit. The target age is a bit older than the average age in the photos- something like the sepia toned photo or the extremely grainy shot with a lot of shadow. But I think I misinterpreted the grainy shot as showing deeper folds and wrinkles than it actually does. Regarding the cheeks, the area under his cheekbones is less sunken now. I also tried to round out the cheekbone itself, and move it down a bit. There's still something off about the line from cheekbone to chin, though. As for the forehead and jawline, the features have been moved down the face slightly, and the barrel of the mouth has been smoothed out and pushed back into the cheek. If anything still looks off, I'd be happy to adjust it more in the next edit.

The eyelashes are more or less done, but the eyebrows that are on him now have a lot of problems. I hate the eyebrows: they arc too much, they're way too crisp, and the hairs aren't clumpy and random enough. Modo doesn't really have a set of hair tools, but it's flexible enough that you can mass-create and comb small numbers of short hairs without specialized tools. I'm a little daunted by the head hair, though. The technique I'm using won't really work for long strands.

Stupot- I like the idea of giving him a more expressive face, instead of just modeling him unposed. I'll try to give him a sort of distant, "I'm creative and tragically misunderstood" sort of look.

For the sake of fleshing out my underwhelming portfolio, I'm working on another model. I'm more or less done with the basic mesh, but I'm not at all happy with the proportions. I've posted a few reference pictures for comparison. I'm relatively new to modeling, so if anyone has any general advice that would be quite welcome as well.




To avoid any confusion, this is very much in progress: the eyebrows are missing, the eyelashes are too dark and badly shaped, the hair is just a placeholder, and the face hasn't been detailed yet.

This is a nice solid background. One small suggestion is that the doors could use trim around them, and you could also run a strip of wainscotting around the bottom of the walls. It seems like a small detail, but it can contribute a lot to a room. Keep up the good work!

I recently switched from a CRT to my friend's old LCD monitor. One thing I'd like to add is that your friend should choose a native resolution that suits his needs. For instance, if he buys a brand new monitor with a native resolution of 1280X1024 but has an older computer, he'll need to either play games at lower non-native resolutions or deal with low framerates. He should also make sure he's comfortable running Windows, Photoshop, or whatever applications he uses at the screen's native resolution.

Overall I'm happy with the new monitor, but I detest the way vintage games (Monkey Island II, Another world, Doom) look on it. I really miss being able to switch resolutions without quality loss.

I have a Sony Bravia 32" widescreen LCD just because I can use it for my PC and my 360, and my ps2. (And a PS3 eventually)

Maybe I've set it up wrong (Or not at all), but I can see a faint flicker on the text, like as if its the refresh rate or something. 

That's awesome, I'd love to have one monitor for consoles + PC! Regarding the text issue: I'm sure there are other possibilities, but it sounds as though it might be set in interlaced (versus progressive scan) mode. If this is the case you'll also see the same sort of flicker along polygon edges in 3D games.

The hand painted version has some of the detail the more "perfect" current version lacks. The little imperfections give the eye something to rest on.

That said I can see why a detail oriented person would prefer working in a style like the second. And with a little detail it could easily surpass the quality of the old sketch.

I was staring at the picture after I posted it (I do this to all things - the more I look at them the less I like them, it generally seems) and said to myself "This looks kinda flat".

I do that too. It's a weird feeling, isn't it?

You're right, this is a lot like Flatland. Flatland is fun. I think it was also inspired by the book Pezzettino by Leo Lionni. About the interface, I agree that keyboard movement would be the way to go. A cursor would look a little out of place in the more 'historic' areas. But I'm not really sure what the best approach would for dialog or inventory interfaces. I'm pained by the idea that low-res areas would have high resolution interfaces.

I love your idea of immitating actual graphic standards. The ASCII stage would be fun.

I agree with others here that record and TV companies have yet to come up with a good answer to the problems and opportunities presented by internet distribution. Here's food for thought- the companies that make 3D (and 2D) art programs have for years used a strategy that seems like a good fit for today's market:

Art programs are sold at a different price to each buyer. Students get extremely low prices, schools get reasonable but reduced pricing, and professionals pay full price. Most companies also offer a limited functionality version for free, but only for non-commercial use.

Obviously the same strategy wouldn't work for music or TV shows, but it's only a matter of time until a new sales model emerges. For instance the television network NBC puts all their programming online for free, supported by banner ads. Unfortunately the same can't be said for game distribution. All that seems to be happening in that arena is an arms race between anti-piracy measures and the cracks/warez community.

Don't let it scare you off. Overall it seems like a pretty stable application, that sort of thing is pretty rare in my experience.

NaNoWriMo looks like a lot of fun. I'm always tempted by it, but have yet to enter. Good luck to all the participants! Go team!

What a traumatic video- I had to stop watching after a minute or so, it was pretty graphic.

I've been a vegetarian myself for 15 years, but I find I have a strange cringing reaction to animal rights propaganda and organizations like PETA. There's definitely some truth underneath it all, but the cause tends to be championed in such a creepy way. It's almost as if some vegetarians lose sight of the actual issues, they're so excited about feeling like victims and displaying injustices to the world. I'll be the first in line to agree with critics who point out this sort of distorted thinking.

The De-Personalisation argument doesn't work for me; my grandparents used to have a small farm and I grew up eating meat I personally knew.

A lot of vegetarians would get pissy about that, but I see very little wrong with that sort of thing. That seems like a very healthy kind of meat eating.

I'd love to help myself, but I'm afraid I don't have much to offer in terms of writing ability. Best of wishes!

I'm already committed to a project and can't justify starting new game right now, but I like this idea and wanted to share it with the community. Consider it free for the taking. The idea is rather gimmicky, but I thought it was cute and engaging enough to be worthwhile. Maybe this would be a fun project for someone who enjoys writing or scripting, but is daunted by the task of drawing characters and backgrounds.


The main character starts out in a land with extremely low fidelity graphics. The pixels in the world are initially the size of haystacks, and the color depth is extremely low. The characters are all single oversized pixels.


As the story progresses the characters embark on a quest to increase the resolution of the world they live in and the number of colors.


The main character has all sorts of adventures along the way...


...and meets helpful characters in unlikely places.


Eventually, after many intermediate stages, the world arrives at 320x240, 256 colors, or whatever resolution the erstwhile developer of the game feels is sufficient. Little Blue Man (with Fingers and Three-Tone Shading) marries a rich heiress who loves him for his charming naivete and rugged good looks. Everyone lives happily ever after.

I hope this is helpful to someone looking for ideas. If not then I hope I've at least provided some enjoyment to my fellow AGS-ers. Cheers!

Well, there are a few things going on in each that I like and dislike. The colors, lack of outlines, and soft edges of version 1 work well with the content. There's a lot of nice funky style here. However, I dislike the warped geometry in version 1 because it lends little to the piece. Tastefully distorted buildings are wonderful, but tricky to pull off well. A lot of people here recommend not just distorting things for the sake of it. If you were to redo this drawing with less wonky geometry, I'd say it looks nicer hands down.

Version 2 is more detailed, which is nice. The sign and beaded curtain are fun. I also like the overall neatness of the drawing- I think this sort of tidiness would work well with a cartoony cute sort of game. That said version 2 has less interesting lighting than version 1, and the colors are less inviting. I agree with GarageGothic that the lack of antialiasing is iffy here. Not antialiasing can work in certain styles, for example when the characters can't be antialiased for technical reasons and the environment is painted to match them. But here it seems to be sort of arbitrary.

So my vote goes for style 1 with less wiggly geometry and the tidy feel from style 2.

Dear MT,
Today I am happy because my cat is living with me again. He was at my parents' house for a few months, and I missed him. Here's a photo of him as a kitten: http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/1599/squeaky1ze2.jpg

Damn you, now you've got me wanting to go draw space ships when I should be working on my homework!

I like the style of it, it's very dense and energetic. I like the arcing lines instead of straight for weapons fire- I hope that makes it into the final version somehow. Maybe they can be missile contrails instead of beams? I've never watched any of the Battlestar Galactica shows, but I'd say don't worry about copying the original designs accurately. Just draw spontaneously and it'll be much more interesting than a slavish immitation.

Composition-wise the top right seems the most interesting to me. The left battle station also works pretty well, I can really feel that it's closer to the camera than the right station, and the two feel like they're aligned along the same plane.

I like the top left cruiser and the accompanying smaller ships, but I think the small ships to its upper left could use more size and depth variation. They don't look as three dimensional as the small ships to the lower right of it.

Overall I'd say it'd be a great piece to finish, and I for one would love to see an edit.

the second strip looks slightly brighter in the yellows region.

Yeah that's what I was trying to communicate, sorry if my last post wasn't very clear. It's really just a fiddly detail, the picture was great even before the last edit.

Yeah, what a way to foster community!

Ooh! ooh! Or we could all pick random syllables as our nicknames, so if you read down the "author" column in a thread it would spell out random nonsense words.

I'd say you should go ahead and change it. Your new name will probably fit you better.

Unfortunately my neighborhood is a bit too inner city for trick-or-treating. I'll carve a couple of pumpkins with my best friend, and skip out on the whole sugar consumption bit. Maybe we'll watch a couple of fun horror movies.

Nice job with the lighting. It's very varied, and doesn't have the "same values everywhere" problem that a lot of paintings have. I really like the way you used colored shadows on the synthetic objects like the cloth on his left shoulder and the seat.

He looks great, you should be proud of him.

I guess my one gripe is that the white bits can look slightly chalky if you put them straight into the coloring. If you don't mind creating an extra layer, you can set the mode to "luminosity" and paint in the light... just a thought. I imagine there's also a brush mode that does the same thing, but it would probably be kind of fiddly to switch brush modes all the time.





White painted into the same layer (top). versus painted into a second layer set to luminosity (bottom).