Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Bit-Blade on November 12, 2007, 10:44:12 am
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam5.png)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam21.png)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam23.png)
This could use a bit of tweaking, but for the most part I'm almost finished. The perspective of the missing leg is giving me a little trouble, but I'm fairly satisfied with how everything else turned out.. except for maybe the shoe, but thats why it's still WIP. I've been staring at this damn thing for nearly 12 hours so I might be missing something quite important here. Any help/advice/CC is appreciated.
Also, I'm not a structured pixel artist or even artist in general. I've never really used frame sketches or outlines, and thats a huge weakness as far as compositions like this are concerned. It's easy to BS with pixels, and I've been doing that for years, but I could be a whole lot better.
Edit: for comparison.
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His left hand is too small. You should flip the legs horizontally since when your right leg is forward, your right arm is backward. Im assuming his right leg cant be fully seen because he is running.
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Don't be deceived by those big shoulders, Samus Aran is a woman.
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/064/c/0/Samus_Aran_by_transfuse.jpg (http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/064/c/0/Samus_Aran_by_transfuse.jpg)
http://darkdiamond.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/samus_aran_tn.jpg (http://darkdiamond.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/samus_aran_tn.jpg)
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the chest and the arms look like they belong to a body builder because they're loaded with muscles - not very female
but if it were to be a man in armor I'd say top notch! :)
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the chest and the arms look like they belong to a body builder because they're loaded with muscles - not very female
but if it were to be a man in armor I'd say top notch! :)
Remember that the suit is a thick body armour, ment to protect the user. It would be normal for it to be alot thicker then the regular body of the user.
Also, females are often seen as less threatening, since they are usually smaller, and less wide then men. Wouldn't this make enemies seem as if she is an easy pray to enemies?
The threatening posture of the armour could help scare of enemies.
As for the actual piece, I think het gun misses volume. I suggest looking up some references of a metal tube to get a good look at how to put volume in them.
Also, a few parts seem pillow shaded. In particular, the brown parts right (our view) of her chest.
Also, the lines look a bit jagged at some places, get rid of the selout.
Furthermore it's a pretty competent piece.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam7.png)
Thanks for the praise but I don't think I'm that skilled. Like I said, BSing pixels is easy if you do it enough. But it's fun so *shrugs*. Can you believe this stupid thing has taken me nearly 6 months to get it almost complete?
The only part I didn't get to is the other foot. Other than that, I added some blue-streaky things on the arm and the leg and used some slightly more desaturated colors around their edges. Also, the markings are asymmetric because the cannon arm kind of does that already.
At any rate, it went from 24 to 32 to 44 colors x.o
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Yes, I definatly see alot of un-needed colours.
Dither a bit, to blend colours. Try to knock it down to atleast 32 again. As I'm quite sure you could cut of quite some colours without detail loss.
A few of your colours are so close that it almost looks like a gradient. I think it would look better with less colours, in fact.
Even though the left leg is futher back, I think it's a bit to thin.
Especially at the hips.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam9.png)
The hips are still giving me some trouble, but I did thicken her right thigh and tried to make the feet look ok. I enlarged the hand, but not by much. The colors have been reduced to 30.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam10a.png)
Her arm seemed slightly too long in proportion to her legs, so I made them longer and tried to give her bigger hips. The gun has kind of a funky shape with the flame-like design, I might have to work on it.
Edit: The colors got a little scrambled somehow. This should fix it.
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(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/2518/samusishuv5.png)
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/2518/samusishuv5.png
Modified the waist (tad too roughly now I look at it) to what I think looks natural.
I like this piece but the gun looks too flat and the orb below the (viewer) left shoulder looks too sketchy~
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(http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/9585/edit64px2.gif)
I'm not to sure about this edit but meh. Some things I did were:
Reduced the colour count to 20, reduced the saturation, Added a dithering suggestion to the left (Our view) shoulder.
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(http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/6499/roblm9.gif)
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I think you guys who did the color edits are kind of missing the point. It looks like your main aim is to "desaturate, OMG!", when in reality the point is to get all of the colors to work in harmony together. I don't know, but to me your edits just look like the original viewed through some sepia filter.
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Desaturation is absolutely! unncessary for this one. You could start dithering all over the place (which I find also a style choice) to reduce colours, or you could just leave it like this. As modern technology doesn't limit us to colours at all.
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tha cannon is the only thing that doesn't goes with the rest of the suit.. mostly the blue as color.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam11.png)
Re-did the left shoulder, arm, and touched up the cannon.
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(http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e199/sharprm/Untitled-2.gif)(http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e199/sharprm/Untitled-3.gif)
Thats what i meant about the running. I like your standing pose, but leg could still use some work. Maybe draw an outline of a woman standing in the same position to get a
better position for the leg in case the armour is distracting you.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam12.png)
I detailed the gun again, and tried to make the leg indicate that the gun was a light source. It was tricky, and I think I might have been sloppy with it.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSamall1.png)
Edit: You guys might be interested in this. In part I got the inspiration to do this from an enemy in Phantasy Star IV (Sega Genesis). It's a centaur, but still looks normal if you chop off the centaur-butt. Originally I only did a cheap edit for amusement "hey this armor kind of reminds me of Samus...", but eventually I took the edit for inspiration. For challenge I decided to do something roughly 3x taller than the original (although I didn't expect to be doing this for 6 months). There are still some untidy spots. (Original centaur sprite is here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/centaur.gif (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/centaur.gif)).
I'm thinking of adding an Omega Metroid in the background.
Edit: Once again this stupid thing skewed the colors... This should fix it.
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Don't be afraid to make the blue lighting more prominent. It's barely noticeable now, but it would make it more dramatic if you boosted it a bit. In the piece, mixing blue into the darker parts of the colour-ramps is a good idea.
Also, there are a few parts in the main shading which I'm not sure about. The head and shoulders' highlights give an indication of the main light source but there are parts on the body which don't correspond with that, like the highlight on the red bit on the upper-leg furthest from the gun. I would move the highlight upwards because I don't think the part it's on now would catch the light. Same thing goes on a lot of other places.
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NOW you've mentioned the centaur that fully explains what's going on with the hips on this piece...
I've been putting off posting on here cos I'm busy, but it's doing my head in that the upper body and the lower body are incongruous. If you drew a spine in where would it be? If you drew a pelvis in, where would it be?
You've got the pelvic mass tilted up and forward toward the viewer and it looks just wrong. The thorax area isn't right neither it's like twisted akwardly.
I hate to say this but I serioiusly think you should do some major reworking if you want this to anatomically conform to some semblance of reality...?
I'll post and edit soon to illustrate my point.
Look at these areas? >>>(http://pete.ptoing.net/samus%20wrong%20bits.gif) (http://pete.ptoing.net/samus%20edit.gif)<<<<My overlaid (sort of anatomical) scribble.
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My first impression when I saw this thread was like " holy shit, is that really Bit-Blade?". Haven't really talked to you in like 5 years or so, since TEK. So I entered this thread and instantly recognized your style from back in the days.
I'm usually just lurking around these forums for inspiration, but when I saw your name I just thought I had to say: Hi! :P
By the way recognize this?
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v158/DxEdge/mmvx.png)
Yes, it's me, DxEdge. :)
Anyway I thought I'd help you with some critisism while I'm here so I made an edit to illustrate my crits:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v158/DxEdge/BBsamus.png)
It's a rough edit. But I thought it wasnt that important to finish it since it's just to show you what I mean.
So what I did was lower the color count to around 20 ( I could only count to 17 but graphicsgale kept telling me it was 20) and fixed the leg placement, now Im no expert on foreshortening, but I felt she was more stable this way. I also changed some of the colors like that pure black you had as outline to just a tad more purpleish color. I "fixed" the waist area aswell. What I mean is it wasnt looking very natural anatomy wise like baccaman mentioned. I also moved the torso a bit towards the viewer and did some edits on that armgun. Though now when I look at it, mine seem to have lost that illumination yours had.
With that said, I hope you finish it! its comming out great so far, but there are some flaws that could be worked on as said :P
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I wasn't aware my style could be pinned down so easily.
Thank you both for the friendly advice. I'll try to edit the legs/hips and torso to agree with each other. Hopefully this doesn't have to be more than some minor negotiation but if that isn't to be then *shrugs* guess I'll be needing to work hard again.
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Well I guess it was wrong to use the word "instantly". I was just refering to some of your old works which I compared to this one and saw some likeness in style.
Anyway I await your update. :)
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That might be a little while... I'm having a hard time redrawing so much but I'll get it done in due time.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam16.png)
Edit: Still suffering from the same anatomical issues as before, but it's not a bad try I guess...
I tried to cheat a little since I wasn't looking forward to doing the legs again. I also touched up the helmet design, made the glow of the legs more pronounced. I touched up the hand to look clearner. I think I need to work on the glow a bit on the body and shoulder. Is the light sourcing improved? Also, the hips look a bit crappy right now. I can't figure out what shape the piece of armor should be. At this stage, I'm not worried about my palette. If this has any application, I won't be constrained by any color limitations. I don't know, though, maybe it's just me and my way of doing things.
Also, does the cross pattern dithering I've been using work for this piece? I don't think I'm very good at it yet.
For comparison is a sprite I did a while back. This is the general size I'm aiming for to make a set of (initially) rough animations. The palettes for both of these are somewhat similiar, although the small one is more akin to Symphony of the Night.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam17.png)
Modified the glow, added an outline but I'm not sure if it should be thicker or completely gone.
Is my posture here more plausible?
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The rendering and texturing are competent. You're masking anatomical deficiency through glitz and detail, but you're not conveying human information needed for such a piece to succeed: Body language, good balance, interesting articulation of form. You need to not worry so much about 'sprites' and 'pixel art' as you should about 'volumes', 'lights' and the 'human form'. Break out the drawing pad and draw humans. Just fast economical sketches that show you how a body operates under its own weight and with the other various forces that pull it here and there. Buy an art book that explains human form from the beginning. Don't learn the human form from videogames.
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I'd just like to state that I've got nothing to hide. I've been up front about my deficiencies and I've presented no illusions to how skilled I am (or am not). I'm not trying to 'mask' anything.
As I've said, I suffer from a lack of discipline. I've never bothered to cultivate my ability. I've tried to learn what I could from this experience (or at least I hope so).
At the very least, this image does very well to convey something of the idea I have in mind. If it were up to me I'd develop this into full fledged Metroid project but I don't have the resources, skill, or the patience to do it all myself.
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You don't have to explain yourself and I'm not trying to 'out' you. I am trying to help you. Instead of telling me you suffer from lack of discipline, do something about it. Art camp. Strict regiment. 2 hours of drawing a day. Make something of your talents :)
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam21.png)
Touched up the left shoulder to match the (viewers) right one. I touched up the left leg and changed its colors to accommodate the glow. There are other small touches here and there to make the glow more evident. I changed the design of the arm to look a little more sci-fi and a little less arbitrary. I keep trying to adjust the torso so it looks more or less right. I don't know if I would have gotten it like this without being criticized.
I appreciate the advice, and I'm not trying to disdain it, but... I guess I enjoy working on this still. Pixel art is a bit like painting when you get right down to it.
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Excellent thread, well worth the read for the insight into your creative process, but one thing I noticed is that out of the average post on this forum, there isn't much, in my opinion, difference between your first image and the last...just a thought, not that you need to change your image but for me, the waist still seems awkward, like the sketch below on the right, on the left I tried a more straight pixel painting...
(http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c37/deetech/post.gif)
one thing a life drawing instructor told me that stuck, is that you need to draw what you see not what you think you see, as an example, draw a smile not as a wide letter"U" but draw what shapes you observe.
peace!
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I BROKE HER INTO PIECES and then I fixed her leg.
I'm not at all fond of the gun but I'm too lazy to edit it, plus mtr has already worked his magic with that, so look at that.
If you want her legs to be straight, you really ought to make her balanced for real.
Which I attempted with this edit. Tell me if I succeeded!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/jadmadeyes/DSam21.png)
Ouch, it's ugly. I simply tried to make her legs correspond with the pose of her upper body. It's not very dynamic, as you can see, which led my leg edit to be very undynamic as well.
Oh dangit, I hope it helps anyway. ): This is by far my worst edit for a long time.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Bit-Blade/DSam23.png)
Part of what you're seeing here is my technique. I use blobs of pixels and bring out definition as it comes along. Not the smartest way to go about it, probably. Although I guess you could say its a bit like carving, since blocks of unworked material are without much definition either until you work them. Either way, this project is turning out to be a much bigger challenge than I expected. Hopefully once the definition kicks in I can make adjustments as needed (one of my favorite things about pixel art/painting).
I'm redoing the gun, legs, and parts of the torso. The length of the arms still seems faulty to me somehow. Do the legs need to be longer or would that make her spidery? I'm not sure what position the gun should face.
Edit: Hmm... it took a while for me to realize it, but the legs are (and always have been) not long enough. Her hand is only supposed to reach mid-thigh, but currently goes down to her knee! I could have balanced this picture out much better if I actually sketched a frame beforehand. I don't want to throw in the towel on this project yet, whether I fail at drawing in an anatomically correct fashion or not. Corrections can always be made.