Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: winged doom on September 16, 2018, 03:08:30 pm
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Hi Pixelation!
:hehe:
So here is the animation:
(https://i.imgur.com/pKfsbDL.gif)
And all the scene:
(https://i.imgur.com/q4vccfl.gif)
As you see everything on picture is in motion. So I thought that the girl should also make some movements. And I made this animation, as like she's breathing.
But now I'm not sure that it looks like this way. What you think, guys?
Maybe there are some other ideas for idle animation? What character like this (it's witch by the way) can do in front of a dangerous enemy (on top side, it's kind of demoness or something)?
Also, what do you say about the proportions of flying female?
(https://i.imgur.com/BvclxKL.gif)
Does she look fine?
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Looks fine to me, Most of the time any motion is better than no motion. try giving the hair more interaction with the wind. I'd also try giving the grass tiles some movement.
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more gold from WINGED DOOM :D
The animation of the tiny demon guys is great, the floating girl tho would gain a lot from being smoother like that. Looks like first pass (rough animation) so far. Sure this could be fixed.
IE, timing of ease-in and ease-out could be refined, hair, legs and breasts could follow the main movement of torso (follow-through), sneak some subpixels in there as well if you know that. I also wanna see the hair blowing around more but that depends on visual direction.
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Looks fine to me, Most of the time any motion is better than no motion. try giving the hair more interaction with the wind. I'd also try giving the grass tiles some movement.
Thanks for the idea! I definitely should try this. :)
Looks like first pass (rough animation) so far. Sure this could be fixed.
Not really. I didn't plan to improve animation, because supposed that it's okay. :) So this is the reason why I showed this work here, I just need an outside view (i'm not sure that it's right words, I mean your fresh look).
Well, okay, then I should improve it. Guess that such impression is due to the slow framerate (it's 0,2 second now). And because of what the animation looks a twitchy. So I think more frames with 0,1 sec framerate can improve it.
IE, timing of ease-in and ease-out could be refined, hair, legs and breasts could follow the main movement of torso (follow-through), sneak some subpixels in there as well if you know that. I also wanna see the hair blowing around more but that depends on visual direction.
Ok, I'll try it!
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Nitpicking comment (nothing else to say, you know it is great): there is a bit of overlap on the lower left particle effect of the hovering female, it is being rendered over the stone pedestal, while her shadow is projected on the floor tile behind, so the particle should probably go behind as well :)
This is awesome, I love the floor texture, and I am studying exactly that right now by chance. Edit: are the frame ornaments a Ys reference?
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Nitpicking comment (nothing else to say, you know it is great): there is a bit of overlap on the lower left particle effect of the hovering female, it is being rendered over the stone pedestal, while her shadow is projected on the floor tile behind, so the particle should probably go behind as well :)
Aw, now I see it too! Thanks!
Edit: are the frame ornaments a Ys reference?
Nope. Can you show it, please?
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(https://i.imgur.com/8Gn8Kp5.png)
Looking now it is not so similar, but that was what it brought to my memory, the old Ys have many of those frames
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Hi winged doom!
Just my two-cents.... Get ready!!
lol
First off, the girl looks like she's hurt and/or falling asleep animation-wise. She could just bounce back and forth like a typical "fighter" or streets of rage kind of animation (but more subtle of course) so that you can emphasize that she's a girl. With the back of a big-muscled brawler, you kind of need details like hair flowing in the wind or some subpixel animation to emphasize at least one or two traits that say "girl" -- and unfortunately the "dress" / "skirt" doesn't do that well enough since it reads more as a tail or something else than a skirt/dress thing to me.
As for the flying-female -- I was seriously convinced this was a Sephiroth-style male (since the breasts didn't really come across to me with the dark clothing). The silhouette was unfortunately what kills it completely for me though -- the waist isn't small enough to emphasize the "heart" shape of the hips from this angle.
Take a look at Ayla from Chrono Trigger.
(http://www.gdunlimited.net/forums/uploads/1206077576/gallery_3152_33_600.png)
She definitely comes across more as female (and in less pixels too!) than your boss character, so there is definitely something you can do if you study her a bit. She's at a similar angle to your character (albeit a little less stylized), so she's definitely a good study case.
You've got a great-looking setup with your environment there -- I like it a lot. It made me think of old games like YS too.
I also like the Imp and fire animations -- but, for some reason, they (when combined with the whole image there) make me want stylized human characters too (to match the "character" of the imps a bit more -- They seem really charming and lively compared to the two "main" characters, who are a bit less "colorful" comparatively-speaking.)
Sorry if my critique was too heavy-handed -- To me, it's more valuable to hear what others really see in my hard work than for them to just give me praise for it. I'd rather be shot down early (rather than later, after the game is released) since I can fix it better now than I can later... ;P
Overall though, I like it a lot! -- I'd really like to see an improved version of the characters!
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I dunno if Ayla's the best example, a lot of her coming across female is because of the pose, floofy hair, and animal-fur bikini than anything particularly notable about the art itself.
For a more concrete tip, I'd say reducing how wide her shoulders are (right now they're kinda square/masculine) and making the chin a bit less flat will do wonders for fixing the female aspect though.
Something I picked up during my skull-drawing sessions was that women have more slim, pointed chins and jawlines. There's obviously exceptions to that, but on average girls are gonna have less of a "base" going on.
I'd also remove a pixel on both sides from the outer-top-edge of the hips to create a more natural curve there, right now it's a bit staircasey.
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Looking now it is not so similar
Well, I think it is look similar :D Maybe I nevertheless used this as reference? But I don't remember anything like that. The only reason why I added this border to make picture look more oldschool.
I'd really like to see an improved version of the characters!
Hi! Thanks for so detailed feedback! And MysteryMeat too!
Okay, I made some fixes to sprite of demoness. I fixed her shoulders and waist, and added movement for the breast.
(https://i.imgur.com/fiDHSwY.gif)
I didn't add additional frames with a higher framerate to make movements softer, as I promised to pistachio, because there will be more edits. So I will have to do it on final stage.
And I tried to fix the girl, but it didn't come off this time. Too small space for me (even if it's not so for "Chrono Trigger" artists) or maybe I'm too stupid now because of the course of tranquilizers. So I'll postpone it until the day my brains think better.
And no need to apologize, it's very valuable to me. Even if I can't make all the fixes now, I'll come back to this later.
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I dunno if Ayla's the best example, a lot of her coming across female is because of the pose, floofy hair, and animal-fur bikini than anything particularly notable about the art itself.
Fair enough -- The pose definitely helps with that "feminine" look. But that actually validates the reason I said to study Ayla and used her as an example: There are way less pixels to work with in her case, and yet the artist managed to convey the "girl" look by offering more curves (by making her pose more "curvy") -- and since pixels dont do "curvy" very well (because, you know, they're square...), the artist used lighting and the pose itself to avoid the "boxy" nature of the pixels, lending to an overall "less-square" pose.
Sure, the anatomy of the original boss sprite there was definitely more manly, but the pose itself was too blocky as well. This emphasized the "square" nature of the male body over the "curvy" nature of the female one, which only emphasized the "male" appearance in the boss's anatomy.
That being said -- great job on the boss sprite edit, winged doom!
I like how you curved the hips more to align with the curvature of the legs in the animation. You overall made the "curvy" work. The addition of something going on in the breast area keeps the eye from assuming it is looking at a very muscular male torso -- especially when combined with the more curvy hips. It works great.
Regarding the smaller sprites -- I totally understand the trouble. It takes some "getting used to" when working that small.
The biggest thing to keep in mind on smaller sprites is that pixels can be "compressed" sometimes, which means you can use a pixel from another part of the palette to represent the "inbetween" state of the pixel as it is being "compressed" and then transition to the more prominent solid color. I don't see you doing much of this, nor do see too many colors you can use as an inbetween (for example, if you made the dress maroon, you could use the dress color to substitute for a darker overlapping shade that isn't quite as dark as the outline -- this is all assuming you want to keep the palette small of course.) This subpixel animation is almost mandatory for sprites as small as these, but for more simple sprites and animations with larger movements (such as moving the head and staff), this subpixel animation can be bypassed. However, in this particular case, you'll need some subpixel motion to make the character more believable if you want motion.
That being said, you can make the feet smaller and slimmer (and the hand holding the staff slimmer too) to emphasize she's still delicate underneath all the muscles. This can have the downside of making her come across as a transvestite. But if the bulky thing is intentional, this can't really be avoided.
On the other hand, if she is supposed to have a similar build as the boss (i.e. a bit more athletic), then you'll have to take a cue from Ayla above and use light and dark contrast along the length of her limbs to "pose" the thinner parts of her limbs in 3d space. This means you'll have to modify the "clear" direction of your light source to some extent in some areas where you need more contrast to represent the major planes of the body. The key point on this aspect is to try to represent "thinness" wherever you can.
Have you ever tried to render a gently-curving spider web or white hanging thread in pixels? -- This is a great practice for rendering "thin" stuff with "fat" pixels.
To be clear -- "infinite resolution" -- is what you're aiming for in this case.
In your mind, the thread should still be as thin as it really is, but as you place the pixels (and render the thinness), these pixels will follow where the super-thin thread would be in space, and in places where it curves, you gradually use a "subpixel" color that "compresses" the pixel with the nearest darker color to the degree in which that pixel has curved away from a straight line (which is the only time the basic "white" color of the thread is used, except in places where the curve needs that color to start curving back to another angle.)
This is definitely a skill that takes practice, but once you "get" the idea, it's pretty straightforward. You can string super "thin" pixels up like nobody's business. Being afraid of thinness with pixels is natural, but subpixels are your friend -- especially when you understand the concept of "infinite resolution" is just a fancy way of saying "use subpixels for rendering in places where it's necessary (i.e. where the pixels are "compressed" on the screen while rendering an object as if you, yourself, were the 3d GPU placing each pixel on the screen), and use regular pixels in places where it's not necessary for that kind of rendering."
I hope this makes enough sense to give you some direction on this process! :)
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IMO she looks a bit worse with such a skinny midsection now. However, I've done a quick edit here:
(https://imgur.com/I6VoHNm.png)
things I did: changes to the face, some tweaks to her Tracts of Land, slightly rounded-out the top edge of her hips/thighs
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IMO she looks a bit worse with such a skinny midsection now.
Hey, it all depends on taste. :)
Just 'cause some people like big butts and cannot lie, it's not always the same for any other guy!
To each his own I suppose! :D
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I'm going to strongly disagree with the advice given here to merely emphasize breasts and waist as indicators of femininity for this lady. That's a very limiting view. For this particular piece, this lady is a badass fighter from what I can see - she's hardly going to have a teensy waist, and large breasts are going to be bound to keep 'em from bouncing around. A better way to help indicate she's a woman would be to narrow her shoulders and perhaps give her a few feminine accents, such as jewelry. Here is a quick edit in which I made her shoulders more sloped and narrow, added some hair jewels, and actually de-emphasized her chest (for the sake of practicality).
(https://imgur.com/Vv1U1WE.png)
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I think the shoulders are the key thing here. Eriophora's edit is very effective, imho. The wasp waists above were making her look non-humanid to me.
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That being said, you can make the feet smaller and slimmer (and the hand holding the staff slimmer too) to emphasize she's still delicate underneath all the muscles.
Are you still talking about girl on bottom side? In this case I'll have to rework all the other animations too (where girl looks in other directions and does other movements, like spell casting)! It's too wasteful, I don't have much time for this project! I'm not just drawing pictures, but doing leveldesign too. And also I have 5734L3R! No way! ;D
Anyway, thanks for such constructive thoughts, I still will make some changes following your ideas near days.
things I did: changes to the face, some tweaks to her Tracts of Land, slightly rounded-out the top edge of her hips/thighs
Haha, I created a completely the same face on early stage! :P It seemed too creepy and rough, so that's why I made it more round and more younger.
And I tryed larger breast size, but it's too much for me. I like to think that her breasts are in tight corset, so they are somewhat squizzed.
I'm going to strongly disagree with the advice given here to merely emphasize breasts and waist as indicators of femininity for this lady. That's a very limiting view.
I think it will be a good contrast. The main character (I mean girl on bottom) is thin, she is a fragile and young girl. Here is her portrait for dialogs:
(https://i.imgur.com/8s5L3Td.png)
And on the contrary, the demoness has curvy, voluptuous forms. She is a mature woman and has seen many things in her life, so it's kind of conflict of generations. I think it's a good way to create characters contrast.
And thanks for jewelry idea, I'll try it for next boss character!
I think the shoulders are the key thing here. Eriophora's edit is very effective, imho. The wasp waists above were making her look non-humanid to me.
Yeah, I tried to reduce the height of her shoulders by one pixel down as on Eriophora's edit and it helped! So thanks to Eriophora again! :)
So here is the new pictures:
(https://i.imgur.com/ZWehzPU.gif) (https://i.imgur.com/xZdvFwi.gif) (https://i.imgur.com/TiNGrlT.gif)
The first one (the left one) is old version, it's just for comparison. On next one (middle one) I changed the shadow under demoness and made small edits on girl's sprite. In particular I changed the movement of her hand.
On right picture the old shadow and I didn't change the movement of girl's hand.
Also another small fixes on body and hair of demoness. I fixed breasts and dress movement, and hands of demoness are different on both new pictures. What do you think guys, what better?
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I'm going to strongly disagree with the advice given here to merely emphasize breasts and waist as indicators of femininity for this lady. That's a very limiting view.
I want to clarify that I agree with you there. Although I wasn't as eloquent as I probably would have liked in my response to MysteryMeat's edit, I wanted to point out that I was actually trying to hint at what you said there (about the waist, etc.) with that response.
Also, I wanted to clarify that my original advice wasn't meant to suggest "big boobs, curves, and wide hips" == "feminine".
While, yes, I did give Ayla as an example (and she has all of these), I only meant to point out the fact that one of the major reasons she didn't appear very "masculine" was due to her "curvy" nature. Even her "curvy hair" was meant to emphasize this feature of "curves" -- and, as such, in no way did I mean curves == female.
I offered this advice almost entirely because of the smaller sprite (which also seemed to be suffering from the same "masculine" issue the larger sprite did) and as such, I didn't think it would be appropriate to offer "more details == good" as advice, especially when considering him working at such a small scale.
A sort of "kill two birds with one stone" was the approach I was going for with my advice (i.e. something that could apply to both sprites.)
If it came off as offensive, or simply too low-brow, I want to apologize for that. It definitely wasn't my intention to sound as if I was advocating the "super-curvy" barbie-doll approach to creating female bodies. I strongly agree that there are multiple ways to do "feminine" in a way that has nothing to do with body shape. You showed that very well in your edit with the jewelry.
@winged doom
Yes, I was talking about the little sprite! -- Sorry, I had no idea you had a whole slew of animations, etc. done with her! lol
Maybe you could actually make her breasts and shoulders smaller in the other sprites?
How about adding one or two Chun-li styled bun holders (following eriophora's line of thinking) to give her more of a "done-up" hair look. Something that wouldn't be hard to add into the character artwork and animations?
Regarding the subpixel animation -- I think the middle one is looking best, but do keep in mind that the (very!) dark pixels between her shoulders in the spine area are making her look like the Hulk. The shoulders should probably be a bit narrower too (to go with the "tiny" upper body of the hand-drawn artwork. Simply lighten the pixels there and favor one side over the other for the shadow being cast.
Also, if you HAVE to move the head, move it left/right instead of forward/back. Or better yet, don't move it at all (unless you use subpixel movement to make the hair appear to be moving -- but that can take some finessing if you're not familiar with that kind of animating.) You could also separate the strands of her hair a bit at the neckline to ensure that it doesn't look like she's a guy with a "bowl-cut" hairstyle. The shoulders, again, are key -- pull them in toward her body a bit more (to match the concept art.)
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@astraldata No problem, I probably came off a little overly adversarial there myself. I felt like we were starting to get into caricature territory with the most recent edits, so I maybe responded more strongly than I otherwise would have.
@winged doom The main character portrait has some wonderful art! It's very high quality. That said, have you thought about making her a little... older? I'm a bit weirded out by the whole "sexy child" look currently going on there. Other than the dress, she looks like she's around 10 years old. I don't say this to be mean or anything, and I can tell you're going for a sort of cute/chibi style, but it's good to be aware that she definitely comes off as pretty young to be turned into a "sexy" character... A little older or a little less sexy might be a good move.
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I agree with eriophora that the main character is a bit off-putting, I think she looks younger than intended due to the “cute/chibi” look of the face and the shortness of the torso/midsection, yet she has a thick curvy waist like a mature woman. I’m not sure your intention of a “thin, fragile and young girl” is coming across clearly (she looks quite strong, actually). Is she supposed to be petite? If she’s supposed to be the more innocent and frailer girl in comparison to the demoness having a mature and curvy appearance then these adjustments can help get that across, although this is the opinion of someone who hasn’t seen any of the other characters’ portraits, only what you’ve shown in this thread. To accomplish this, you could probably raise the eyeline, make the face a little longer and slimmer, extend the torso, and narrow her hips/slim her legs.
As for the sprite you’re working on, I think it looks pretty great overall, the only thing particularly standing out to me is that the arms don’t have as many inbetweens as the rest of her body. You could add one or two more frames there, but you might have to subpixel as mentioned earlier in the thread.
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It has probably been stated by others, but the stiff pose of the demoness takes much of her femininity away. I still don't know if this is intended, but based on your description I guess it isn't.
You could probably do this way better than I, but here is a quick suggestion:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/pembroke/Pixels/pixelation/Edits/wingeddoomflyingwoman_zpsfn0ubhg8.png)
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throwing in my 2 cents: in her sprite MC girl's back is too well defined, makes her look super ripped from behind. Try and smooth the shoulder area out a bit unless you're intending that, in which case you should beef up her character sprites more