Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Tremulant on September 24, 2008, 06:07:33 pm
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My eyes hurt when I look at it now so I guess it's time for some outside opinions. This is kind of the first thing I've done in a while, so if you'd be so kind, I could use some help scraping off the rust.
Current:
(http://h1.ripway.com/tremulant/boyhelly11.png)
Older:
http://h1.ripway.com/tremulant/boyhelly7.png
http://h1.ripway.com/tremulant/boyhelly8.png
http://h1.ripway.com/tremulant/boyhelly10.png
Blam blam.
Thanks in advance.
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nice concept! i really like the face, hair and gun. i think you should move the head a bit on the right. his left arm looks very short, and the wrist very thin compared to his body. you should make the left hand bigger, too; i think it would be nice if he holded the gun, that would turn out pretty little, with 3 fingers.
legs remind me a goat, and that's cool, but i think they're way too short... i can't really take them as a matter of style, they'd allow a very problematic walking and this doesn't fit his strong anatomy.
uh, i also had some problems to get if those things on his head were random bumps or strange glasses or cut horns XD
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(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/trem-hellboy.png)
some scribblin's.
my main crits are:
-he's not really looking where he's shooting
-his silhouette is kind of straightforward, needs to be more chunky.
-tail messes with the line of action.
-too much midtone
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Hellboy, I take it?
Beyond what Tocky said, I'd suggest that you make the light from the gun reflect off of his skin. It could be nice as a secondary light source for his face.
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Indeed it is Hellboy, but Mignola totally stole my idea. :P
Reading chimico's crits, I came to dislike the original anatomy, so I took this in a more, um... proportionate direction. The anatomy/pose/everything is still all screwed up. This is just meant as a rough update to show where I'm heading with the thing.
I'm in a rush at the moment, so I'll give a proper response to the crits when I'm a little less pressed.
Thanks for the input, guys.
Edit:
Here's a more complete update. Just messing around with the palette, mostly. The lighting is all off, and I'm sure the anatomy is wrong as well.
Hopefully, the issues with the direction of gaze has been fixed (somewhat), I changed the direction of the tail, but it still doesn't flow great. The original problem with the legs is obviously not an issue anymore, but new ones now abound, I'm sure.
I can't decide if I like the blue tone or not.
Thanks again, guys. Please, don't stop the crits.
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I worked it over some more, tweaked some stuff. I'm thinking about taking out the muzzle flash, and the legs still bother me. I'm having a hard time taking it any further.
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Legs are way to short.
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I acctually prefered the original short dude version. It could not be faithful to the original version of hellboy but it was still a nice interpretation. by changing it to become closer to the original, it makes it a bit less interestin I would say. at least to me, of course.
Kaz
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I agree with Kaz. I thought this piece was much more interesting when it was a big-headed caricature. However if you are going to keep the realistic proportions, the head is still a bit too small, the legs are too short, and the gun is too big. Great work, though, in any case!
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The short legs were intentional. I was trying to emphasize the bulk of his upper body, and so diminished the legs but I may have over done it. It's happened before.
The reason I took this from Stumpy caricature to something more realistically proportioned has to do with the fact that I almost exclusively pixel stumpy caricatures. When I was reworking the original's anatomy, I decided I'd rather do something with, well... a smaller head, I guess. The head is tiny for the same reason as the legs, but again, I've been known to overcompensate. The gun must be shrunken, though, yes. :P
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The squat version is cuter, but I appreciate your reasoning for doing this more human-like. I did an edit for you, here it is:
(http://www.locustleaves.com/hboy.gif)
First of all the colors: I don't see Hellboy's skin becoming less saturated as he goes towards darker shades. He comes from... hell, and all. Of course it pays to not overdo it perhaps but anyway.
About the alphabetized points:
A : grip. You're missing a chunk of hand, I don't know its real name, but you can guess from the edit.
B : the whole arm, oh man, this is something that'll send you doing anatomy practise because it's a biggie. You are doing alright with marvelized anatomy in idle positions (the other arm for example is great) but when the arm is raised and generally the muscles need to be utilized, your form goes to hell. This ties in with C as well. The pec will rise to support the hugearm in the extended position, the bicep will bulge for such supermuscle type of arms, the armpit will be the place where the skin is thinnest on the body, and in turn in the back of the form (not shown) the back muscles will stress to support the weight. The actual shoulder will curl in, etc. This is something that you need to deal without outside of pixel art I think. Right now you've got this unfortunate effect going which I dub '3d model anatomy' which means that the anatomy is drawn to support an 'idle' pose and when the model has to do anything not idle, some muscles at trigger points contort in an ugly way whereas other points that you'd expect changing position remain stationary (like the chest muscles). I didn't finish this part, just drew the major groups for reference.
D : Just glare from the gun on the face
E : glare on the stoneabs by the gun, perhaps these are overdone for such a small lightsource but eh, you'll be the judge
F : Here's an example of taking away the black outlines and letting light and darkness and strategically placed lighted contours dictate the shape? Better? Worse?
G : don't forget those muscles! Also give the dude some clavicle bones!
H : dude needs knees! Especially Hellboy!
I : This whole leg was pretty strangely done, tell me if you think the form I suggest works better?
J : I added a bit of dithering just on the fabric to separate it from the smooth skin rendering
Also I added a lot more shine on the rock arm, perhaps this was a mistake thinking how the rocky texture isn't as oily as the body and therefore wouldn't get as much shine, but it looks cool? So it's an issue of priorities here. Also I straightened out the trajectory of the bullet inside the flamepuff.
Hope I helped.
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That's a great Hellboy!
My only crit on it is that his feet are too small. They look so dainty for a big burly man.
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Wow, Helm, that was... in-depth. Thank you.
It's only (very) recently that I've started to look at my understanding of anatomy a little more seriously. I have a basic grasp of how it all lays out; good enough that it's usually passable in idle poses, and in deformed, stylized characters, but poor enough that it all falls apart when I actually try to put it to work (as you can tell by the totally phoned in gun arm ,etc.), which I took as all the more reason to steer clear of over-deformation. I've been trying to avoid of pixelling in the interim, but my attention span is pretty deplorable.
I like mostly everything you did in this edit, and it'll most definitely be helpful to say the least. That said, I might neglect this piece for a bit and go back to working on the basics.
You're absolutely right, Ryona, his feet are tiny. I've been trying to strike a balance between balance between the super long hooves of, say, the animated version, and something a little more human (though at the moment, I think I'm a far cry from either). It is something I've been thinking about, though.