Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: PsylentKnight on January 30, 2014, 12:13:49 am
Title: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on January 30, 2014, 12:13:49 am
Well I haven't done much on my game in about a month... I've been super busy. Anyway, I've completely redone the main character for my game: Butt Pie. I may have gone a little overboard on his chest... those were intended to be moobs but look more like full-on female breasts.
(http://i.imgur.com/GArXMBy.png?1?2695)
Also, here's the shop in the hub world... I posted it in my last thread but got no response. Note that the girl will be animated. This is just a mockup.
(http://i.imgur.com/rpWZj1e.png)
Thanks in advance, everyone!
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on February 04, 2014, 02:21:45 am
(http://i.imgur.com/FcWOvjU.png?1?7233)
I did the running animation... that was a pain. I almost bit off more than I could chew for my first running animation. It look me about 6 hours. Its pretty sloppy in places, but I'm tired of working on it for now. I plan on buying graphics gale soon but for now all I have is the sheet.
Let me know what you guys think. :D
PS: If someone could make a gif from this or tell me how to make a gif from a sprite sheet with buying graphics gale, that would make me really happy. :P
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: Probo on February 04, 2014, 02:59:24 am
(http://i.imgur.com/KQEhoU4.gif)
there ya go! I like it!! loads of character, very silly. i like the shadow of the arm coming across the stomach. the tongue seems to have to stretch a lot to come round his head like that though
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on February 04, 2014, 03:10:15 am
Thank you! I've been working on it for hours and now I can finally see it in action haha.
I agree about the tongue. Maybe I should make it longer in the frames leading up it wrapping around his head.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on February 05, 2014, 09:58:39 pm
You're right dude. It does look very much like female breasts lol.
I'd suggest making them appear stringy or more like cones that point forward in some fashion.
Also, the shading on the frontmost shoulder needs a highlight of some kind to indicate it's there in the foreground. I would also include some sort of large buttcheek on the character silhouette to make it true to his name. At the moment, he seems too generic-looking without at least some distinguishing feature like that.
Finally, I think the reason you didn't receive any crits on your booth is that it was actually pretty spot on. I couldn't find anything wrong with it without being really nitpicky and introducing personal preference into the critique.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on February 06, 2014, 12:10:44 am
Your suggestions for the boobs are dually noted (see what I did there?) ;)
I tried making the frontmost shoulder stand out with the sharp black shading under it, but I'll try the highlights you suggested too.
I'm not so sure about the butt... Butt Pie will actually probably only be a working title for him. But I do agree about him being too generic. His belly is pretty blank, so I may add a symbol or something or another to make him more memorable/recognizable.
Also on the to do list: making his tongue more readable when it wraps around his head, doing some general cleanup, and fixing his belly so it doesn't look like he's pregnant with a child having a seizure.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on June 23, 2014, 03:06:02 am
Hey guys, progress has been non-existent (except for some planning and concept drawings) but I caught a second wind and I've done quite a few things over the past few days. The main thing I want critique on is the jump animation.
Update 1: Made a few improvements, none too noticable
(http://i.imgur.com/iN2HTtt.gif)
For reference, this is how I plan to utilize it: 1st frame - idle to jump transition 2nd frame - jump anticipation 3rd frame - displays as long as character is going up 4th frame - up to down transition 5th frame - displays as long as character is going down 6th frame - jump recovery
Any tips? It seems a little jerky to me, but I'm not sure how to fix that.
Feel free to point out anything else you see thats wrong.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: YellowLime on June 24, 2014, 11:35:14 am
Well, adding a couple more frames would make it smoother. ::) Since you already have the keyframes down, just add some inbetweens, since I think that you're trying to capture a long, complex motion in too few frames
Also, there's a frame where the character looks at us (the 'idle' frame?). That helps add to the jerkiness, since the character suddenly and quickly looks to the side and then forward for the rest of the animation.
Nice character, keep at it ;)
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on June 24, 2014, 06:26:31 pm
Aw man, tweens are a pain. XD But I suppose you're right about it being necessary for an animation with this much motion. The head and arms in particular are very jerky, and you're right about the eyes. I'm pretty satisfied with the legs and the flop of the boobs (boob physics ftw), but I guess being even smoother won't hurt it.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on June 24, 2014, 06:56:24 pm
It isn't enough to simply add frames to make an animation look 'smoother' -- If your animation is broken at 4 frames, 100 frames of transition won't help it look any better -- it'll just be slower, and speeding its display rate will lead to the exact same broken animation you had at 4 frames.
The problem with 'jerkiness' is actually in the spacing 'between' frames.
Notice that I said "between frames" -- this is important because most of your animation isn't even drawn -- it is simply implied.
When treating your low-frame animation as separate and disjointed images, you will almost certainly experience "jerkiness" in your animation, even when using onion skinning to help you with spacing because you're probably not taking into account mass/weight, silhouette, 3d-arcs, or, most importantly, basic physics.
These things are scientific variables that can be calculated and predicted, and our eyes/brain can do that calculation without us even being aware of it consciously. Even people who don't know anything about physics or animation can still see there's something wrong.
In a way, you have to backtrack that mental calculation (between frames) when animating and ensure stuff lines up with the physics you're trying to convey. This ensures the jerkiness will vanish since everything is following a natural rhythm and locomotion which makes sense to the viewer's brain and eyes, leading to a smoother-looking animation because the brain is not simply discarding the useless and incomprehensible portions of the animation frames which lead to the 'jerkyness' you're experiencing when viewing the animation.
Also keep in mind the silhouette of keyframes.
Each frame that has some sense of visual 'impact' should be considered a keyframe, and the 'key' to the keyframe is a strong iconic shape that is clearly recognizable through shape alone.
As you're intending in your animation's usage in-game, each frame has a purpose, and should have some sense of dynamic impact in the silhouettes since they will all be held at some point for longer than a frame (or so I would assume.)
A good point of reference for strong silhouettes and a low animation frame-count is Anime. Your stuff is more Warner Bros. / Looney-Tunes style, but the principles of physics and strong dynamic keyframe poses still apply.
Frame 3 was your strongest offender here since his hands crossed his face in this pose. If the frame were completely black, you'd have a hard time telling what was going on vs. the pose in my new edit.
In this version of my edit, I tweaked the Frame 4 silhouette a little and added an outline to the hand to make it appear more visually clear that it is on a completely separate 3d plane than the face (the style of spriting you're using isn't very common due to problems like these that require outlines to be used in some circumstances such as the one here -- and although usually a number of colors with high contrasts can solve this issue as well, in cases where a skin tone on a hand must go over a face with the same tones, or in other cases where there's no brighter colors on the palette, an outline of some kind is essential for clarity.)
Anyway, that should give you a good start on your animation stuff.
I modified the belly a little for anticipation/recovery/3dform to emphasize the blobby-ness of your guy, and kept the moobs female-looking. xD
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on June 24, 2014, 09:08:53 pm
Ok, I've been watching your edits over and over to see what the difference is and I see what you mean now. In mine, the head moves an equal distance from frame to frame. In your's, the head moves smoothly during the trajectory and then jerks down at the recovery frame, giving a lot more impact. It looks much better. I can't see a huge difference in the arms, but I suppose readability has been improved.
The round highlight on the belly definitely looks better and adds to the bounce of it. I also notice how the belly rebounds up slightly after he lands.
I think I'm still going to add a few tweens to smooth the arms out a little, they still look pretty bad.
Thanks a lot for all your help man.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on June 25, 2014, 01:37:03 am
I don't mind helping out man -- I'm a huge fan of your characterization skills. :)
One suggestion though -- assuming you are, instead of trying to view these from the browser, I would suggest viewing these from inside something like Graphics Gale and rolling the mouse back/forth to look at the frames individually. If you've got the program, set a keyboard shortcut for "Frame -- Forward Frame" and "Frame -- Back Frame" to Alt+F11 and Alt+F12 respectively so that you can use your mouse wheel to roll between the frames like a flipbook.
When looking at these through my browser (Firefox), the frames seem to be skipped randomly when the screen is refreshed causing 'tearing' on slightly weaker computers like my own, leading to some jerky/inconsistent-looking animations.
I would definitely suggest viewing in Gale because I didn't edit the head position at all -- only the arms and the gut on this guy. I expected you to scroll through these a frame at a time when I edited them, even overlaying them on your own animation on different layers, to see the differences. They may be subtle, but they're all important.
Just food for thought. Great stuff as always though dude. :)
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on July 04, 2014, 12:20:55 am
Alright, I've analyzed at your edit frame-by-frame and made necessary adjustments. I really should add some tweens, but oh well. I'm pretty satisfied with it, so unless you really want to see it I'm not going to bother uploading it.
Here's my newest character:
(http://i.imgur.com/OH8hXwj.gif)
A fearful daredevil. He won't do this in a constant loop. Mostly he'll just hide behind his pillows and shiver. Maybe this animation will display when you talk to him, or maybe he'll do occasionally instead of the idle. I don't know. He'll also have a motorcycle with training wheels.
And thus the four emotional themes of the game are fully represented by the carnival staff. Each emotion will also be represented by a themed area (sort of like Majora's Mask), each also having a theme of a related element.
Meaninglessness
Element - Earth
Locale - Wild West
Carnival staffer - The emo girl
Despair
Element - Water
Locale - Fountain
Carnival staffer - The clown
Anger
Element - Fire
Locale - Volcano
Carnival staffer - The ring leader
Fear
Element - Wind
Locale - Haunted ??
Carnival staffer - Daredevil
Anyway, of course that has nothing to do with pixel art but I just wanted to share. Any critiques on the daredevil are appreciated. :)[/list]
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on July 05, 2014, 03:29:14 am
Great looking character as always man. :)
Not sure what the dark thing is that's moving on his head when it begins to move upwards though, so I can't offer any critique on it yet. Everything else, form-wise, looks great.
The only other issue is that you're using actual greys -- I suggest giving them some sort of color hue because they really suck the life and vibrancy out of an otherwise great-looking character -- and this is especially true due to the quantity of that grey in the image. Grey is usually used in very low-color palettes to blend multiple colors of varying hues, so using it as its own color is somewhat of a no-no due to the fact that it dulls the overall image the more you use it.
Pixel-art aside for the moment --
Why not make your 'emotional' themes a bit more bizarre to go with the look of the characters a bit more? For example, if you need an element for meaninglessness, try 'space' or 'void' or something not so cliche? Maybe space could be the moon or the void could be imagination-stuff like kids' drawings as enemies or other oddities. Your game just screams bizarre worlds, but not Earthworm Jim bizarre -- bizarre with substance. Maybe some underlying and relatable wisdom beneath the bizarre appearance. Majora's mask is a slightly similar feeling in terms of the sort of 'weird' I get from your stuff, which is why I suggest this. It's more of the kind of unsettling feeling that comes with knowing/learning something inevitable.
Is your goal to help these characters overcome their negative emotional states somehow? If so, I really like that concept. It's just the sort of vibe I get off of your characters up to this point and the world outline you mentioned above. I'd love to see something like this in a game.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on July 05, 2014, 04:15:04 am
Why not make your 'emotional' themes a bit more bizarre to go with the look of the characters a bit more? [...]
Good ideas, but without going into too much detail on here, cliche fire, water, earth, and wind elements are pretty much set in stone for core gameplay reasons. If you want to know more, let me know and I'll shoot you a PM. The locales, however, are not so rigid. The emotions are similarly non-rigid, but I want them to be general and identifiable enough that people can catch onto these themes without them being explicitly stated.
Is your goal to help these characters overcome their negative emotional states somehow? If so, I really like that concept. It's just the sort of vibe I get off of your characters up to this point and the world outline you mentioned above. I'd love to see something like this in a game.
Yeah, thats more or less what I'm going for. Completing each locale will somehow help resolve the associated character's problems. I really haven't gotten that far yet lol.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on July 05, 2014, 05:30:20 am
You know the blue stripe going across his helmet toward the back of his head? That dark spot just to the right of that stripe is what I'm talking about. Just beside that dark spot looks like a shine or something that seems to move oddly when his head goes up. Maybe the going-up head is an older version of the character's head with the helmet shine/shadow misplaced? Just guessing here.
Aside from that and the aforementioned stuff in my previous post, everything with this character is top-notch so far. Have you got any environments for this game yet? That, or visual design concepts / mockups or anything like that? I ask because I'm concerned about the characters blending into the backgrounds. Not sure how you plan to deal with that particular aspect with your current sprite style, so I was just curious if you had a plan.
Also, yeah, I would like to know more about the game, so definitely shoot me a PM about it if you would. This is just the kind of thing I would like to play with in my spare time. It would really help to loosen me up a bit if I could help you flesh out some of this stuff in the event that you're up to it. It's a really fun and interesting concept so far -- I'd really like to see where it goes. :)
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on July 05, 2014, 05:38:13 am
Ah yes, that's a shine. I didn't notice that it moved oddly until right after I posted, but I didn't fix it until I went back just now to play with the pillow colors. Here's my update (roughly fixed shine, tinted lightest grays yellow, added motion blur)
(http://i.imgur.com/ANMAqXz.gif)
And nope, no environments. Working with such big pieces is a bit daunting for me and I'm also concerned about characters blending in... but thats next on the agenda.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on July 05, 2014, 06:15:11 am
Pillows look a lot better now with colors, but I would probably lighten the brightest color to near-white or hueshift toward blue because the pillows look more like sandbags now unfortunately, and blend in a lot with the rope (perhaps too much.)
Aside from that, I really don't think a motion with this many frames needs a motion-blur -- it looked great without it.
If you really want to get that blur in there for a 'pop' sort of action, you'd be better off using a bit more lag before the downward motion, and that downward motion would be maybe 2 frames, tops -- one frame with the blur of the entire motion, and the next with the head settled where it ends up. You might also want to convey that blur with more of an actual 'blur' look than the spiky look you have now (spiky generally conveys rough, 'textured', movement through the air like when swinging a broom or hair to attack, whereas straight/rounded blur edges convey a switft/blunt motion through the air.)
You could get that same 'pop' in your motion by reducing the frames in certain places however, so aim for that first -- and if you're still missing something after that, feel free to use that set of frames as your starting point for a blunt blur of around 2 frames or so before the head shakes.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on July 28, 2014, 06:02:13 am
An embarrassingly rough mockup. Just trying to get ideas down and figure out the overall composition and color scheme. I think I like the simple silhouette backgrounds... they look good, add to the dark vibe I'm going for, are easy to make, and help make the character pop since he doesn't have outlines. I'm going to make the foreground a little more detailed... add some texture or bricks or something to the yellow road, make the area below the road rocky...
Any crits on composition, color, and resolution are welcome.
(note the hearts aren't mine and are just placeholders, though what I make will basically be the same)
(http://i.imgur.com/eNVtJd8.png)
EDIT: Oops, disregard the red lines. I meant to take that layer out. Those are just for reference.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: astraldata on July 28, 2014, 11:04:26 pm
I like the direction you're going with the graphical design.
That aside though -- if you're going to tell any kind of a story with this visually, you characters either need to be larger or your screen and hearts need to be smaller. With your character so small, players aren't given any sort of emotional vibe except through your environments (which will eventually need to be more detailed because your chars are so small relative to the environment and screen).
In film, zooming in toward a character's face/eyes or even just their upper-body tends to lead to more emotional impact than seeing them as tiny figures against a great background. Your strength is your characterization, so you might want to play that up more by making the character-to-screen ratio a lot less distant. If this were an action game with a lot of high-speed shooting/movement, I could say this could work a little bit, but it's not, and even then, it still doesn't work that well unless your characters were of a much higher pixel resolution than they are currently being drawn at.
All in all, when a single blip on your health meter is that much larger relative to the screen than your player character himself, you've got big problems -- but those problems mainly come in the form of a potentially memorable character being easily forgotten since he's so difficult to relate to from that far away.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on July 28, 2014, 11:34:17 pm
All good points, and something I've thought about. I realize that being closer to the character creates more emotional attachment, but I find that I tend to enjoy 2D platformers more which have a camera that backs off just a little. I feel suffocated when the camera is right up in my face and I can't see for longer distances. Right now my resolution is 960 x 540, which renders the zoom to be 2x. The next step up would be 640x360, or 3x zoom. I find that to be a bit much. That was actually the first thing I tried... here's my first mockup:
(http://i.imgur.com/dMkWy66.png)
I will continue to consider the smaller resolution... I do like certain things about it, such as what you mentioned about being able to read the emotions of the characters more clearly, and how much more manageable this would be.
I definitely agree about the heart icons. I will make those smaller for sure... I just threw those in there as an afterthought. Like I said, its just copy pasted clip art. I'm working on my own version as we speak.
EDIT:
Here's the heart. Its a little under 64x64, so its slightly smaller than the character. Might make it smaller. Not sure if I like the shine spots.
Title: Re: Introducing Butt Pie
Post by: PsylentKnight on February 27, 2015, 02:49:28 am
I know its been a while but I didn't see any sense in starting a new thread.
I've grown to really dislike my palette lately so I decided to try out Dawnbringer's palette on my main character
I also kind of fixed his belly, which I've been meaning to do for a while. Might a bit much jiggle though so I may just nix the belly physics.
Original New (http://i.imgur.com/KQEhoU4.gif) (http://i.imgur.com/qLzcovG.gif) DB's palette is actually shockingly similar to my own in many regards, at least for this particular piece.