RPG character design... sort of

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

Hi everybody!
This is a character sprite I've made. What do you think? Do you like it? What would you change/add?
NEW(01/12/07):



OLD:

[Sherman Gill]

Heehee. Might wanna tone those highlights down, looks kinda like he's had baby oil liberally applied to his whole body.
Other than that, all I can immediately see wrong is the weird highlights on his calves.

I must say, though, the way you did the mouth is really interesting, and it looks pretty good at 1x.


Keep it up

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

Heehee. Might wanna tone those highlights down, looks kinda like he's had baby oil liberally applied to his whole body.
Other than that, all I can immediately see wrong is the weird highlights on his calves.

I must say, though, the way you did the mouth is really interesting, and it looks pretty good at 1x.


Keep it up

yay, thanks
Ok, I'll dark a bit those highlights lol
I also though it was an oiled baby xD

But as he uses clothers always...

And yes, the normal zoom is 1x.

[ilkke]

Time to earn my bread.

Drawing a superdeformed muscle doll is not really the easiest thing to do, and you did a pretty good job at it, but there's a lot to squeeze into a very little space, and that's prolly the hardest thing there is to pixeling.

First, and you'll hear this from almost anyone here on Pixelation, think about the volumes. Imagine that whatever you are pixeling is made of simple and well defined shapes, then try to define those shapes well. Each of those should be clearly distinguishable.
Keep it simple, and dont get into any detail until you think the shapes are exactly what they should be. For example, you don't want the chest to look too round, like a woman's breast. They should look at least a bit angular and chiseled.

When you decide that your light is coming from, say, above, you should think about which surfaces catch that light, and which are in the shadow. Doing a 'glossy' shading with focused specular highlights is deceiving in this aspect. You may think that you got away cheap, but in the end you only fool yourself from seeing the mistakes. It's much better to do simple shading and define materials by adjusting the brightness and hue of their colors, instead of doing speculars, dither, etc.

Also, think about pixeling as painting, not as drawing. For instance, when defining abdomen, you did it by drawing darker lines and then placing almost-arbitrary highlights. Instead use light AND dark to get a much better result. Trust me, it's worth the sweat. If you get stuck, feel free to look how others solved similar problems. It's best to look at ppl with a very clear style, than those who work a lot on a sub-pixel level. For example it's easier to look at how kenneth solved something, than to look at how Helm solved the same thing. The latter style is more 'advanced' and much harder to read, so to speak.

Since a picture is worth more than a thousand words, here goes:


I didn't want to change your design too much, and it IS a rather half-assed attempt, but I tried to show you how much definition you can get out of those pixels. Pay attention to ears, hands, and other very small bits to see how they differ from your original work.

Also you will notice how much i exaggerated certain features. This is almost a must when working on tiny sprites and such.

Last but not least take a look at how I changed the colors. The changes are very subtle, but if you load your colors to my image, you'll see the big difference.

[Terley]

an army of these would scare the sht outta me, pure evil..

I like em tho, I just think they need a good polish. ilkke has explained it well.

For the walking animation its essential you have the key frames of lift off, mid-air and contact. if it doesn't look like the feet are lifting it wont be a convicing walk, more of a giggle. Arms work well though.

Keep it up Hyrule.

[Helm]

Good critique, Ikke. Hyrule, most of the issues of large value jumps and no buffering from your other piece remain here.

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

Hi there.
I've been editing this chara.
I've made also 4 types of face

By hyrule_swordsman at 2007-12-01

[Sherman Gill]

The new shading around the mouth and nose makes them blend together, which makes him look kinda like a mouse or a cat..
I also think the forehead highlight should be moved farther up.

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

The new shading around the mouth and nose makes them blend together, which makes him look kinda like a mouse or a cat..
I also think the forehead highlight should be moved farther up.

Sorry for the trouble but I've modified the image 

[Helm]

That looks like a single nostril. Also, I don't get cat mouths on humans. The human mouth doesn't curve that way.

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

That looks like a single nostril. Also, I don't get cat mouths on humans. The human mouth doesn't curve that way.

What? Cat mouth? I can't see a cat mouth...

[ndchristie]

only touched the face, but i also do want to say i have no idea what's going on from the chest down (arms excluded)

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

I'm not sure what you guys mean... But i've added some brights to his thorax arms and abdominals.

[Stefano]

Although you already have plenty of nice edits I've also did one myself.

Addressed some squashed anatomy issues by suggesting how I believe squashed muscles should look.
AAing was also addressed, since you did shade your outlines but no AA was applied to it.
The "cat" lips looked really weird and were addressed as well, along with the pointy nose that was almost inexistent.

I can't really draw anime (not really a fan) so the resulting sprite it's somewhat westernish looking. Sorry about that... Despite of that, I hope you can dig something useful out of it.

>>

Cheers,
-Stefano

[Jad]

I will post a post consisting of only subjective taste and no constructive criticism at all:

I do not think that these kind of stylized proportions go well together with a ripped muscle body at all.

At any rate, when making a template for an AVERAGE MAN, why would you make it body-builder-like super-ripped like that? That's not at all the average man.

If you simplify body proportions, why would you go hyper-realistic on the muscles? They're merely confusing the eye. Try to make the blotches of color actually define things as CLEARLY as possible.

Stefano's edit would've been ace if the proportions would've gone together but now he more than ever looks like a meat-sack of potatoes. (that is to say, the execution is fantastic, but it doesn't fit the piece)

What's more, if you try to put real thoughts behind design choices, there's a couple of points to address:

When you add something and take away something else, what will that emphasize?

Imagine we want to make a muscly guy, but we want the muscles to give a feeling of 'What the hell! Muscles!'. What'd we do? If we simplify body proportions, that'll take away focal points for the eyes, meaning that the guy's body more than being a compound of different pieces stuck together now really is a meat-canvas upon which we can project things. Which means that if we give him, say, colorful clothes, they'll show much more. Likewise, when we give him muscles, seeing as he's so simply executed in general, the muscles will stand out even more.

Sorry for the shitty explanation.

What I mean is, look at cute/moe-anime. The designs are supposed to appeal to guys (mostly guys, yes) who get hot over super-cute girls. So what to do? Emphasize smoothness of skin and cute eyes and petite facial attributes - and remove everything else. All facial detail, everything like that. Badam, you have cuteness alien overdose. Yay!

All the same, when you want to draw a MANLY MAN, you often take away eyelashes and pronounced lips because that's feminine. Add manly wrinkles and big chin and -man GET.

And in this case, the guy has almost no bodily proportions, which makes the fact that he has pronounced muscles stick out 200% more.

^ I've rephrased that exact sentence about a hundred times now, so I am confident that you get what I mean.

1. Muscles doesn't fit this template guy. He looks weird

2. Put some thought into the way you stylize. Why? How? What results will it bring?

<3

[Ben2theEdge]

Although you already have plenty of nice edits I've also did one myself.

Addressed some squashed anatomy issues by suggesting how I believe squashed muscles should look.
AAing was also addressed, since you did shade your outlines but no AA was applied to it.
The "cat" lips looked really weird and were addressed as well, along with the pointy nose that was almost inexistent.

I can't really draw anime (not really a fan) so the resulting sprite it's somewhat westernish looking. Sorry about that... Despite of that, I hope you can dig something useful out of it.

>>

Cheers,
-Stefano

Technically, that's nice but it's scaring the crap out of me. If a deformed style is being used it's better to keep it slightly abstract to avoid the Uncanny Valley effect. Otherwise your dreams will be haunted by terrifying pudgy midget people.