Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Indigo on July 11, 2006, 06:44:07 am
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okay, as i was working on Stout, I finally realized what was wrong with my green guy i started a waaAAAaay long time ago. I'm sure i'll get over this loin-cloth phase of mine that i'm going through....oh well. I think it's finished. Could be a bit more saturated maybe.
(http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Indigortfolio/PixelArt/fighter_fin.gif)
turns out that the original design was way off-balanced and weighted the picture heavily on one side. It wasn't pleasing to the eye. Once i flipped it horrizontally, it was easy to tell. Our brains automatically create imaginary lines when we look at something; most of the time, subconsciously. With the new posture, it creates a nice 's' curve that centralizes the weight and balance - as opposed to my old one with was just a straight line. Examples of what i mean below.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/calypson/Fighter_fix_show.png)(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/calypson/Fighter_fix_show_anim.gif)
C+C .... now time for a portrait
EDIT: Also wanted to mention i was trying to match the 'street fighter 3' style
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I'd agree with the SF3 Comment, looks fairly similair style. So great touch there. Wonderful palette/ idea / pose..I think this looks great so far.. I really love the detail on the hair.
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There's definitely a lot of improvement here since last time. There's still a few laws in the pose that could be fixed up to accommodate the nice shading.
I tested your characters proportions and made this little example:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Greenguy.gif)
Even though you've fixed him up quite a bit, he's still not quite in balance. As you can see in the fixed trace, his right foot should be more to the right to balance his weight. His knees are also too high compared to the pelvis and should be lowered. His right shoulder is missing somewhat when considering what huge neckmuscles he has. The right arm is also leaning toward the left and could be tilted to the right to get the same direction as the left arm, even though it isn't disproportional.
I find that the character has a somewhat mixed pose at the moment, so I added the two poses on the right just to test it. The way he is now, he could be 'strutting'/leaning back or he could be leaning forward. I'm just mentioning it though. The pose works fine once you get the balance back in order.
One final thing. Streetfighter 3 sprites are mostly characterized (IMO) by having the darkest shades in a blue tone.
OK. That's my view of things at least. Hope I didn't pick too much at it.
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First let me start off by thanking you, snake, for the time and effort you put into your C+C. The following isn't for the sake of bashing in any way, but instead are things that i believe are valid arguments. I've noticed, in some form or another, the things you have said while i was creating this peice, but chose to do otherwise for very specific reasons. let me explain...
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/calypson/fix_the_fix.png)
here is the skeleton you traced of mine plus your edited skeleton to the right of it.
lets start off with the legs:
there are two things you did wrong or didn't realise when tracing my image to get that skeleton. Firstly, you drew the hip line a bit low which then exaggerates the shortness of the upper legs, but this is only the minor issue. Secondly - when looking at your traced skeleton, one can easily say that the upper legs look too short, however, those lines are not taking into account fore-shortening. Since they are nothing but lines, the eye can't easily comprehend the foreshortening. I have drawn the two leg scenarios (from the traced skeleton + your 'fixed' one) you have presented from your skeleton in a side-view perspective. Now to support my case, we'll just be doing a little triangle mathematics. As you can see, with the upper leg being more horizontal in this scenario, the actual height that you'd be able to see from a front view is roughly 24 pixels, while the lower leg - being more verticle - we would see about 32. now in your edit, you changed the posture that the legs are in, which just about flips the amount of pixels seen respectively; the upper leg now has 32 visible pixels from a frontal view and the lower leg now has 24. The actual length of the leg segments remained roughly constant, but the visible amount of them does not. Your edit is not wrong by any means. It just shows a different possible pose the legs can be in. Either way is a right way, but saying that my upper legs are too short is not a very solid argument to give reason to change it. But given if i was to change the legs according to your edit - alot of your other balance and posture critiques/edits would make more sense. also notice (at the bottom left of the image) that when adding cylinder forms according to the skeleton you provided, it doesn't look half as bad as without them. This is because we could comprehend the foreshortening more easily. I will give you this, though: The actual design of the sprite may seem more appealing if the lower-legs were shortened. and also i'll have to play around with what you said about moving his left (our right) foot more to the right.
The arms:
As i agree with you about his left arm - like you said, it's not exactly wrong the way i have it. I dont find it important to change it since that arm is nicely designed as its currently placed.
The shoulder:
2 things i'd have to argue about with the shoulder. Firstly, I actually had the shoulder sticking more out, as you suggested, in an older version of this sprite. The reason I had changed it was pretty simple. I used the horrizontal-flip-test to see what was looking arong with the sprite and noticed that it was the shoulder that wasn't following the perspective of the rest of my sprite and was throwing it partially off-ballance. (see bottom right of image) I shrunk it a bit to fix this problem. Secondly - i imagine the ork sort of arching his back in a concave manner while roaring. That was my intention - but if i didn't portray that well enough, that might be one problem. But with that in mind, this would also cause the shoulder to be a bit more hidden given perspectives. See the top-view sketch i drew to demonstrait what i was aiming for with the back.
lastly - the two pose sketches you provided are good, but aren't exactly what i was going for. the first one is a bit too stiff, and the other is a bit too rag-doll. I was aiming for a sort of tense/roar type stance as mentioned earlier. I'll also keep in mind the thing you said about the blue shade in SF3 style.
now let me reiterate that i'm not trying to be a prick and just give a bunch of reasons why not to edit my sprite. I'm not trying to do the whole "i'm right, your wrong - no matter what you say" thing. But i do believe these are valid points that I have. If someone else (a well credited one, i might add) where to come here and second the things you say, i'll be glad to give em a try.
alrighty, i'm out for now
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Good one, but not enough contrast, does not pop and too straight ramps which does not help volume.
Small edit, same amount of colours, used the white of the teeth as highlights on the skin and merged the lightest cloth and hair colour and used the free slot for the highlight colour on the hair.
(http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Indigortfolio/PixelArt/fighter_fin.gif)(http://ptoing.net/ork_edit1.gif)
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really nice edit ptoing, but the contrast issue is always a matter of style for me!
unless he is planing to fit it with the kos background!
Just opinion! and good work indigo.
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Silver, I agree that low saturation can be a style choice, but low contrast should not be. And here it's more about contrast than anything else. Contrast is very important in games to make things easily discernible.
So here another edit. Same colourmerges and but the saturation on each color is the same or actually lower than in Indigos example, but has more contrast.
original --- edit 2 : more contrast --- edit 1 : more saturation and contrast
(http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Indigortfolio/PixelArt/fighter_fin.gif)(http://ptoing.net/ork_edit_1.gif)(http://ptoing.net/ork_edit1.gif)
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AHA!
thanks ptoing you made it clear for me!
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low saturation can be a style choice, but low contrast should not be
Unless you are Kon. =)
Indigo + snake -- thank you very much for the technical discussion. It is nice to read something more in-depth for a change (as opposed to, say, the sort of posts that I make)
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Well, I can't say that i think that all of kon's desaturated stuff works all that well.
Anyway, because i was bored after work i made these
All use colours from the c64 palette, so each is less that 16 colours out of a fixed 16 colour palette :D
Further proof that the c64 palette is awesome beyond comprehension.
(http://ptoing.net/c64orks2.gif)
The 5th one is a bit crazy but i still like him, he looks kinda magicy, like a jinn or something.
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EVERY time i see something c64 related, i automatically have to start some sort of c64 pixel*opens TImanthes*. thanks alot, ptoing.
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ptoing asked me if i wanted to give it a shot too, it's pretty tricky. i haven't really worked with the pallette before
(http://miascugh.ptoing.net/pixels/c64miasork.gif)
this is the only somewhat decent one that didn't look too much like one of the existing ones
nice orc indigo. i however do think that what snake pointed out is valid. i have yet to read your explanation why you supposedly made it the way it is, but i think it's weird to make it look 'off' on purpose. are proportions that much of a preference thing?
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i really like the design of the ork, but the colours seemed a little bland to me. I made an edit
(http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1772/indigoedit1hz.gif)
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Man.... how long are you all in this pixel art? cause i think you have to practice years before you can do this?
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Actually, if you're a good traditional artist, you'll pick up pixel art in a month or two... Digital artists, like CG artists tend to pick it up right away...
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Nice fighter sprite Indigo. Well, I would pick the one by ptoing with the blueish shades. It's hue variation is more capcomish/snes style than the other guys'.
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hey
Wow :D, some amazing artists here. You guys are way outa my league, some nice things to be learnt here :). Hope ya don't mind my little post? anyhows goodluck with the portrait!
edit
Hah, I must admit that I was a bit puzzled earlier after reading that your sprite has a SF3 style, as I always thought SF3 was 3D, but after some googling I found this wasn't so. I guess I got confused with SF EX :\. BTW, looksy what I just found http://www.zweifuss.com/ (been googling for a while now, with this edit sitting here almost done) :).
Anyhows I just wanted to say... that in my dumb opinion, I think your sprites figure looks like SF3 style, but the shading and detailing looks more like KOF style, am I just stupid?
cyas
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Ok, I dont know how seriously you meant it when you said it was SF3 style, but I'll try to point out my critiques to your attempt of SF3 simply by comparison, if I see that after seeing this you dont get what I mean, then I will actually tell you how to do it, but in the meantime I'd like to trust your perception =)
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/gill002.png) (http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Indigortfolio/PixelArt/fighter_fin.gif) (http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/image003.png)
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/Leo-STcO.gif) (http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Indigortfolio/PixelArt/fighter_fin.gif) (http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/image089.png)
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/hugo042.png) (http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d38/Indigortfolio/PixelArt/fighter_fin.gif) (http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/Twelve_chipdeath.png)
Need I say more?
Other than the diference muscle rendering methods I intend to show with these gifs, there's also a completly unique technique used in SF3 to create shadowed areas, best visualized in this Ibuki jumping anim, keep good track of the area around her knees as she goes into her falling pose right before throwing the knife, pay attention to both of what is in display and the way her pallete is built.
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/ibukiknifethrow.gif)
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hey
LOL :D, I just saved my edit and now see Conceit has made a post, who expresses very nicely of my thoughts :). I was taking ages to find sprite rips of SF3, as I wanted to confirm for myself of my thoughts before saving my edit!
cyas
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I have to say that I much prefer the shading style on Indigo's sprite than the style on the actual SF3 sprites. I think Indigo's is way more detailed and nice to look at. Also, the way the shadow is handled on the Ibuki sprite really weirds me out. The jump in hue between the highlights and shadows is so extreme, it just looks like a two-tone suit to me... so when it starts to move, it's a really trippy effect.
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just so you guys know - i'm not ignoring your guys' c+c. I'm in the middle of a 72 hour compo. After it's done, i'll come back to this sprite. no worries
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your point about the Ibuki sprite couldnt be truer Wayuki.
I dont mean that Indigo should imitate what is done in Ibuki's sprite, only that he should analyze it to understand the very defining technique of SF3 style.
but I do have to disagree about SF3 vs Indigo's Ogre, I do like SF3 a lot better, specially Leo (although he is from Warzards so he is only partially SF3 style)
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Leo looks nice, but I strongly dislike the shading and those fading outlines on Alex. The stance on all SF3 sprites is great, though.
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hey
I must say... these are just my thoughts of the SF3 style.
I think the SF3 style has very visible defining lines (I think this varies a bit on different sprites), which I think is a very hard task to make look great, and it also makes their sprites look very clean/cartoony, which I think may have some people beleive (maybe just non pixelers???) they aren't so advanced??? i dunno :-\. I thinks they pull this off as their lines and lighting are so precise and well thought, I thinks it's like one of the hardest styles to pulloff and make look great.
Anyhows sorry that I can't offer you some proper advise on accomplishing the SF3 style :-\, but hopefully my thoughts have something to them???.
cyas
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Without wanting to draw this thread out of focus, whereas the design in sfIII ( which I've never studied before ) is 'interesting' anime-style capcom stuff, the actual pixelling isn't anything to write home about. Lots of frames, though.
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why is it that you think you dont have to back up your thoughts with arguments? if you're gonna touch up on a subject dont just make a opinionated statement because the subject is offtopic, if you're gonna make it an offtopic comment atleast make it something more than a biased view.
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Camus let's all just get back on topic.
The Orc is great, but could do with alittle more hue changing and blending between the tones (Especially in the chest region.)
Even though it doesn't make much difference to the eyes, it's kind of strange to have the fists facing like that, it makes the left arm which is supposed to be in the background appear much longer than it is.
Oh, and the left eye needs to be lighter, it just looks odd with how it is.
Pretty good work overall.
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why is it that you think you dont have to back up your thoughts with arguments?
It is because I don't have to. I may want to. And I don't want to go into detail in this case, because this isn't a commercial critique over sfIII, but about Indigo's sprite. In light of that I knew I was posting oot, I decided to make my comment brief. Actual meritable critique of the sprite in question has been handled by the awesome Snake post and ptoing and the other people talking about colors. The reason my comment existed in the first place - and I don't have to explain myself but since you were rude about it here it is - is that regardless of whether Indigo failed or succeeded in matching the style, your explanation seemed to imply that these SFIII sprites have specific sekret pixelling techniques about them that Indigo should look out for, which is in my opinion a wild-goose chase, as these sprites, as well animated as they are, do not have any special tech attached to them. A secondary lightsource from below now is a 'technique'? You have - in my opinion - a long history of inventing techniques where there is just capable design and pixel art skill in application, therefore I thought it worthwhile to mention that in this case there isn't even much of capable pixelling to talk of. As I said, good design, lots of frames. Average (for pro, of course) pixel skill. Am I the only one who prefers the pixelling tech in Indigo's sprite over those Capcom ones? Even if so, this is my opinion and I stand by it.
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if you think I'm making the whole secon lightrource thing a bigger deal than what it is then say it right away, it's insulting that you just come in here and disregard what I'm saying whitout actually exposing your arguments to be countered, as if you were too important to discuss such things with me.
You may not use profane words or other usual means of being "an ass" but I think you have developed a pretty complex way of being an ass whitout using any of the usual channels.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/Marshy/fighteredit.gif)
i had fun
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I like that palette alot alex.
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One thing to keep in mind about capcom stuff (all games on any CPS system) is that the colours are 12bit, 4bits per channel, that's why some of the ramps are spaced as they are.
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if what youre trying to accomplish is sf3 style, then you have to lose some of the volume youve created with the shadows, and put more into making nice defining lines that taper well.
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Well this topic has certainly grown.
Indigo: I'm surprised how in depth you went with your answer, very glad you could explain your choices. There are points you mentioned about the leg that I don't find correct considering pose, angle and forshortening, but I don't think it's necessary to bring it up. I actually didn't think that the shoulders could be bending back when I was writing. Now that you've mentioned it, the pose would make more sense.
Instead of discussing the pose and anatomy, I think I'll rather bring up the shading as it's been mentioned a lot. In my first post I pointed out that the shadows on SFIII sprites are usually blue in tone, taking into the account what the others have mentioned, I tried a little edit to make it fit with the style:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/SF3Ork.png)
(It just accrued to me that the little edit has taken all day...)
I've here taken away most of the volume to create that somewhat cell-shaded look. The original sprites have little or no highlights on the skin. I've toned the greens to make them more yellow and then shaded blue shades in the shadows. There are sometimes dark lines separating the blue and yellow areas as seen in the Alex sprite (the guy in green pants), but it varies where they appear, so I didn't use it much. The hair for the characters are mostly very basic, but it can look a bit strange at times, so I just toned down the details on the top. While I was doing this, I noticed that the forarm somewhat lacks muscles compared to the bulgy upper arms. Don't know, just hit me. Once I shifted the colours, I've noticed that he looks a lot like Blanka from SFII in terms of colours and design *shrug*
I would say that your sprite compared to the SFIII ones is a lot more complex figurewise. I really love the SFIII shading, so I guess I'm kind of biased in that sense, but you've got a great feeling of volume here. Would be a shame to drop it.
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MORE FUN
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/Marshy/FighterCollage.gif)
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third on top is my favorite alex
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What's the point of all these color edits? After Ptoing's initial edit they haven't really contributed much to Dan. Remember him?
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all good. *lights a smoke on the flames*
lol@helm It is because I don't have to. I may want to
sfIII has no "sekret techniques". the most impressive thing about the capcom sprites is the size and quantity. i certainly do not have the patience for such a task.
snake: good edit.
why does the loin cloth have shading on one half? the lighting doesn't match any other part of the character, and the shadow certainly doesn't seem to be cast by any other parts of the ork. If it is to be the shadow cast by the arm then it needs to take into account the fact that the forearm is raised, which would bring the bottom of the shadow across the full width of the loincloth (and retract the top of the shadow closer to the right edge).
The slightest hint of a muscle has volume shading yet the head casts no shadow to the chest from elevated lighting.
I think one of the points that could be taken from sfIII chars posted was the area just above knee, it shouldn't be shaded as deeply or at all.
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hey
why does the loin cloth have shading on one half?
@lief: As soon as I read this and looked at the sprite closer, I almost imediatly thought it was intentional... as I often notice this kinda thing in capcom sprites, as I think to simulate depth.
(http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6185/hulknewface1fpostxq2.gif)
See it here (most noticable on his chest) on one of my favourite capcom sprites, The Hulk :).
edit
@Indigo: I also wanted to quickly add that I do very much like the current style of your sprite :).
the lighting doesn't match any other part of the character
@lief: Ahh sorry, I do see your point now :).
cyas
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i really like the design of the ork, but the colours seemed a little bland to me. I made an edit
(http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1772/indigoedit1hz.gif)
The right arm looks better in that one.
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Im waiting for an update. Looks good.
And on the style; I like this style better than SF3 anyway.