Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Pixel Art Feature Chest => Topic started by: EvilEye on July 31, 2009, 06:08:17 pm

Title: GR#007 Yeti Project - Sprite Development
Post by: EvilEye on July 31, 2009, 06:08:17 pm
AKA: Why I don't do this for a living.

For those who don't know there was a dispute between me and a few others on this forum as to how long it would take someone to pixel a particular piece of artwork. They said an hour, I say, not a chance.

Here is the sketch at about 400 x 500 resolution:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetisketch.jpg)

The goal was to pixel it at about 120 x 140 resolution.

Here it is shrunk down to 118 x 138 and cleaned a bit:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yeti.png)

The pixeled version would have to look better then that. Otherwise, why would you bother?

So I intend to demonstrate exactly why high-quality pixeling takes a long time and there really isn't much you can do about it.

And the first thing we start with is the lines........

In the beginning, there was the sketch:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetisketch.jpg)

Now the first thing you should know is this sketch has some flaws, and some of those flaws are postural. The creature ( based off a gorilla ) is slightly off balance and the posture is a bit unrealistic. This is because I didn't use much reference when making it ( because I couldn't find gorilla pictures with the right pose ). The flaws aren't very noticeable at first because the coloring and outlining draws your attention away from most of it. But when you do an outline of it all of the sudden they jump out at you, and you have to decide what to do about them. Leave them there or try and correct them ( potentially a HUGE time waster when doing this at the pixel level ).

Now how I usually start off is I shrink my sketch down and then outline it in red. I use red so I can see what I'm doing.

Also since this is a quality piece I don't just outline willy-nilly. Instead I look at the sketch and try to capture and bring out the strong points, and reduce or fix the weak points.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut1.png) (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut2.png)

Total pixel time about 3 minutes so far.

And I just remembered about mirroring the image. This is something you want to do every so often ( and you will hear this in art class also ). Sometimes you will miss flaws when looking at an image only from one angle, so mirroring the image helps your brain see what you missed before. Thats why the images above are reversed. I forgot to re-mirror them :lol:

But it's not all cut-and-dry when outlining. You get a lot of things like this here:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/linequestion1-1.png)

What looked to be a clear line with his bicep is really a mess of many different colored pixels. So where do you put the line? Well, that's a good question. There is room for interpretation here, but you must still keep in mind the overall picture. It's at this stage where we have our first chance to make the picture better.

Here is what I did:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/linequestion2.png)

I put a few pixels in key places where I thought I would definitely want a line, and left the rest open. It's not to say I won't fill the gaps in later, but for now I have the key parts mapped out, and later when the picture is more mature, I can connect the loose ends.

After about 12 minutes heres what I have:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut3.png) (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut4.png)

This is where I start noticing anatomy problems, especially with the feet, which are wrong but not hard to correct later.

You will also notice the result is starting to look different then the original sketch. This is unavoidable, and it's actually one of the reasons that if something looks good when I shrink and clean it, I don't bother pixeling it.

I am up to about 15 minutes pixeling so far.

Now at this point some of you may be asking "why outline at all?". Why not just throw shapes of color on the canvas and add the outlines later.

Well, because lines are a guide for your work. Without them its easy to go wildly off track. Even though my lines are not colored now, I still have a rough idea of what I want in the future. Thats their purpose, to hold down a flash of inspiration while you work to bring everything else up to speed. Eventually that flash of inspiration and your progress will meet somewhere. Besides, I have found from experience that its much easier to correct a few lines then a blob of color. The less pixels you have to rearrange, the better.

------

Took about 5 minutes to fix the feet. They were bugging the hell out of me.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut5.png)

20 mins.

Maybe I should take this chance to preach about why its important to start with good lines. Good lines will save you time when coloring. Bad lines will make you unsure of where to put color and you will waste lots of time reworking your original shape. I would say good lines are as thin and efficient as possible. Thicker lines are ok when used to emphasize shadow and draw the viewers attention.

---

This is around the best time to make any major changes that you think need to be made. Once we start coloring changes will be much more time intensive and frustrating.

Usually I start seeing improvements I could make just by looking at the lines.

For instance I saw a way I could make the posture a bit more believable and add bulk up the muscles:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut6.png)

This may be hard for other people to see since its so rough, but I made the hand on the left touch the ground and the hand on the right is open ( very rough I know ).

I lost track but I am guessing this took me about 10 minutes of playing around.

So I am up to 30 mins.

---

I decided to edit the rough parts a little more since it probably wasn't easy to see where I was headed with this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut7.png)

I say was because there is a little problem here.

The arm is now way too short compared with the leg. This means either we have to lengthen the arm or shorten the leg. So I am going to scrap that idea entirely since this post is mainly about the time it takes to pixel something and not about how long I take to screw around with the line art.

So lets shave those 10 minutes right off and pretend that never happened. But if I was doing this normally I probably would have kept the edit and shortened the legs.

So we are back to what we had, and lets mirror it just to make sure we haven't missed any major flaws:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut8.png)

Again, way off balance but we can cover most of that up later.

And were back to 20 minutes.

---

Now is the part where I start tightening everything up and adding "detail markers".

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut9.png)

Basically what I did was flesh out the detail and close the lines on the outside. Adding little marks for detail is an important part so later I remember what look I am going for and where / how to place color.

Of course they are just little lines and can mean anything to someone else, but for me when I see them I know exactly what I wanted to remind myself of later.

Note at this point I am no longer tracing the sketch, its all freehand.

That took at least 25 minutes. There is no way to make it faster, sorry. Not if you want quality.

Were up to 45 minutes.

--

Moved the feet and tightened the lining just a notch.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut10.png)

I could go a lot farther with the lines. I should probably better define the face, toes, fur and even thicken some of them. Again, to some people this may seem like overkill. And even though I will lose many of these lines later they are not wasted, they are being used to capture and solidify my ideas. This is an important part of any great work of art, since even the best artist cannot just throw his inspiration at his medium and have it turn out like he wanted. A great artist doesn't know exactly what he wants, he just has a rough idea. It's the process of making the art where the rough idea forms into something solid.

But that was the easy part. Now comes the real pain. If only you knew the sort of hell we're in for now!

I think Bill Murray said it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ZOKDmorj0&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ZOKDmorj0&feature=related)

----

Coloring!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut11.png)

There is my first step, pick a base color and fill. I picked a lighter color because I actually want the fur to be white. In the sketch it's blue-ish. I am going to make the face blue and the fur white, since I think that will look better. Actually now that I think of it that still may be too dark. However its easy to change since were working with a palette. Just don't change it too late.

Took me a minute.

Lets restart the clock from here, since some people seem to think lines don't count. 1 minute.

--

I almost forgot to add the blue for the skin.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut12.png)

You may notice I am ignoring the left foot in the background. That's one of those things where I am just not sure what I want to do, so I will put it off for a while.

And now I need a rough idea of the light source so I start adding some basic highlights.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut13.png)

However, its not just about where the light is hitting. It's also a matter of where I want the observers attention to go. I want the observers main focus to follow that arm down to the hand. In fact the hand should be the part that sticks out the most. Right now it is not, so I have to do something about that later.

The above took me about 15 minutes. So were up to 16 minutes now.

--

Added the some rough shadow:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut14.png)

Actually I got a little carried away and did some detail work, which I shouldn't have done because I will just have to pixel over it later :blind:

It would be very tempting at this stage to go with the current look and finish it. That's what a good artist would do. But a great artist would hold off and wait.

I would say an indication your lines are good is when you have trouble resisting the urge to color and detail them.

Oh, by the way, that took me 30 minutes.

So were already up to 46 minutes.

---

Right now I am mostly dinking around with things, trying to decide how I want to tackle that fur.

I could always do something like this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut15.png)

But that is not quite what I originally had in mind. In fact I may not be able to do what I originally had in mind. In which case, this would be a good fallback option.

But what I really wanted to do was to imitate that "sheen" look I got with the sketch.

---

This is probably going to piss off the anime enthusiasts out there. Tell you the truth, I hate to do it myself. But I believe in the long term its the right move.

I decided I need thicker lines and some ultra dark shadows:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut16.png)

Probably about time to mirror it too.

Still off balance, but its less noticeable now that the detail is catching your attention more.

Took about 15 minutes.

1 hour, 1 minute. And the picture is about half done. I said the picture is half done, but the time it takes will increase exponentially from here.

---

Are you ready for some pain?

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/realpain.jpg (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/realpain.jpg)

Well get ready, because your about to get your first taste of real pain.

Turns out we have 3 trouble spots:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut17.png)

The knuckles, the foot and the face. They are all poor looking and fixing them will cause many a headache. So grab a bottle of asparin and lets get started.

Might as well start with the face.

---

The problem with the face is simply, we're trying to fit this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/pain2.jpg)

Into this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/Pain1.jpg)

And it doesn't work very well as you can see.

This is the hard part of pixeling. Because this problem has no right answer, just a whole lot of wrong answers. Even for someone like me who has been pixeling on and off for 15 years, I still have no idea what to do here. Sad isn't it? >:(

Usually what I do is I say to myself "what here do I really want to keep and what could I live without".

Some of this detail must go, because it is hogging space that could be used to better define other detail.

---

Soooo... I want to keep the eyebrows, in fact I want to make them white eyebrows. I want to have a defined upper mouth. I want to keep the eye shadows. The cheekbones. The tongue. The teeth. And I kind of like the original angle, but that may not be possible.

Here is what I got after 6 minutes:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/grinch.jpg)

Cleaner, but now it looks like the Grinch. We will have to readjust it a bit so it looks more like an ape.

1 hour 7 minutes.

----

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/try1.png)

Too happy.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/try2.png)

Too weird

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/try3.png)

Yikes!

Well, I wasted a good 20 minutes to go through a bunch of arrangements that didn't work ( most of which I didn't show here ).

Lets go back to the old version and see if I can make that work somehow.

----

Closer:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/try4.png)

10 minutes.

That's a little better. So it seems we should stick with improving the old version.

---

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/try5.jpg)

Well now we're actually getting somewhere. 16 minutes give or take.

There's another problem though, this is really too detailed for the piece, it should be simpler and look better from a distance.

1 hour and 53 minutes.

---

And.... Voila!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut18.png)

10 minutes.

There it is. At least for now anyway. It's like putting together a puzzle, once you see the picture start to form, its a breeze from there.

Now I know some of you are going to think I just wasted nearly an hour.

But compare:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut18.png) (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut16.png)

That's the difference between ok and spectacular. And it's a big difference.

We're probably not totally done with this face yet since its one of the focal points of this piece. We might have some touch-ups when we are nearly finished. Also if you noticed we changed the slant of the head. This might need to be tweaked later because now the pose looks a little lifeless.

2 hours and 3 minutes.

And there is so much yet to come....

---

Well I fixed that face again, because I knew having it straight like that would come back to haunt me later.

So I readjusted it:

New

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut19.png)

Old

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut18.png)

Why does this matter right now? Because you are constantly ( or should be ) zooming in and out looking at the whole work to get an idea of what you need to do. And when you see that straight face it will throw you're current pixeling off, and that will again throw your later pixeling off. Eventually it avalanches to destroy your whole work.

Sounds anal but it's true. You want to fix major problems sooner then later, because seeing and getting used to something that's wrong will mess you up every time.

My fault for not paying attention so we won't add any minutes for that.

*Think I just reached my limit for today, I'll be back tomorrow*

---

I feel like some pain today howabout you?

Lets do something about those feet.

( please be easy to fix....... )

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/foot1.jpg)

NOPE! :yell: That's going to be a <female dog>.

A smart thing to do would be to look at some reference first. So I am thumbing through google images.

Seems a gorilla would probably never have his foots thumb like that, it would be spread open for balance. However that would look bad on this piece, so we will meet it halfway I think. I can get away with this because I am not making a gorilla, I am making a yeti ( a bigfoot type creature ).

I find a good way to rework stuff like this is to just erase all the detail and make a basic shape.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/foot2.png)

If that basic shape looks promising we can move in and add more detail. If not we try another basic shape.

Howabout something like this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/foot3.png)

Looks reasonable enough right?

Well, looks can be deceiving, this may not work at all, we just have to take it further to find out.

All this is taking around 7 minutes total btw.

---

But before I got any farther, I hit another snag.

Almost all the lines in the picture pull down toward the back ( as of yet unseen ) foot. This is an important effect that we don't want to ruin.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/ForceLines.png)

But having the foot like that will kill it for sure. So we can't do it that way.

I suppose I should have caught this earlier but sometimes you just never know something is a mistake until you do it.

You see in many ways we've boxed ourselves into a corner. We need that foot to spread out so it offsets the bad posture of our original sketch. But at the same time if we do that we harm one of the major draws of our picture, which is the way the whole shape seems to pull down toward that back foot.

We will probably have to compromise with something like this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/ForceLines2.png)

You see how the toes gravitate toward the other lines? The outside toe lends a little more balance to the picture, while the other toes try and draw your attention back in.

---

As I said before this is not really about skill, its mostly about luck. Will I happen on the right solution?

It's like playing a slot machine. Minutes are quarters and the jackpot is the right look.

C'mon baby, Evil needs a new foot!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/FootRoulette.gif)

..
..
..
..

Jackpot?!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/jackpot.png)

*going to take a few hours for lunch. I can't believe it has taken this long and I still haven't really gotten anywhere*

---

Well I'm back and it turns out that wasn't the right one. The angle is pointing too far down. So we got some more of this hell.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/foot6.png)
no
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/foot7.png)
no

*A LOOONG TIME LATER, I won't even bother to post all the attempts*

I think I got it:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/foot8.png)

Ya, that will work.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut20.png)

Heres the old foot:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut19.png)

----

In case noone else can tell, he's walking on his knuckles. Or at least that is what it is supposed to look like. Then his ( foot ) thumb is propped on the ground like a stand. I hope that's what everyone else is seeing anyway.

I am going to leave that un-detailed for now and finish it up when I have the rest of the piece done.

It took longer, but lets say that whole ordeal took 30 minutes.

We're up to 2 hours and 33 minutes.

----

The good news is that there's only one more problem spot to go. The bad news is the real hard part is up next.

Lets fix those front knuckles. Here is what we have to work with:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles1.jpg)

This shouldn't be too bad actually. Knuckles are pretty simple. Nothing like toes :yell:

---

Did I say it was going to be easy? What I meant to say is it should be easy. Sometimes these seemingly simple parts can surprise you.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles2.png)

About 5 minutes so far.

---

ARGH!!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles3.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles4.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles5.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles6.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/knuckles7.png)

No, No, No, No, No*Feeling the pain yet?*

This is taking me way longer then it should, and that usually means I'm hitting burnout. I'll be back tomorrow evening if not sooner.

Wasted a good 20+ minutes right here.

2 hours and 58 minutes.

---

I'm Back. Sorry, had to do a lot of real life stuff today.

I see some people have posted opinions stating I am wasting a lot of time needlessly. Well we'll see about that when it's all finished.

There was something throwing my eye off about this whole knuckle thing. It's that the forearm is too long and too far to the right.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut21.png)

So I am going to move the arm to the left a few pixels and that should help.

---

Or, maybe not:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut22.png)

I think I just may be stuck with that bad look unless I were to rearrange that whole arm, which I am not going to do. Plus some people are jumping on my back now about needlessly wasting time editing things.

We'll say that whole thing just took the original 20 minutes, which means were still at 2 hours and 58 minutes.

---

So lets compare shall we?
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yeti-1.png) VS (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut23.png)

Not looking so tough now is he?

Except he has something we don't, a nice shiny coat of fur.

But we're about to change that.

----

“God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” - Voltaire

It's here.

This is it. The part I was dreading.

The entire reason I did not want to pixel this piece in the first place.

No doubt many a pixel artist has died trying what I am about to attempt.

Yes, that's right. The fur.

But without this part, we will never beat that resized version.

This is where I pull out all the stops and throw everything I have at this piece and hope something works.

----

It's not that I can't do fur, don't get me wrong. I can do great fur, hair, wood and pretty much any texture. But to beat that resized version I will have to do spectacular fur.

I have a few good ideas, but will they work at that size / angle is the real question.

---

But you don't go at something like this all scatter-shot and just try stuff randomly. We have to have a plan. Then we have to get a backup plan. Then we have to get a backup backup plan.

I sketched a few ideas to see how they would look:

The sleek look:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/idea3.jpg)

A yeti with a 1950's hair-grease job. Basically it's what we have in the original sketch. Not my favorite.

The rough look:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/idea2.jpg)

That may be impossible, but its kinda cool. Like the wind is going through his hair.

The fluffy look:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/idea1.jpg)

That's the look I would like to get, its a little calmer.

If all else fails we do this:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut15.png)

Actually that may not be a bad idea, but it would be too easy if we just did that wouldn't it?

*looks like I gotta continue this tomorrow guys, bed time*

---

I decided to start testing some techniques for feasibility.

Here we have the shiny look:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut24.png)

Actually I got a little farther but a STUPID *&%@ING LOCKUP in photshop forced me to hard boot my comp! I need to buy a new wacom so I can get a more recent version of photoshop. Still running elements 4.0.

Doesn't look too bad though huh?

Welcome to the world of hyper-pixeling folks. This ain't your grandmas pixel bingo. This is hardcore.

That took me about an hour right there, just for that.

When I finally settle on a style it will take me around 3-4 hours of straight pixeling to complete. And then after that there are always touchups.

*got some business today so I will have to come back later tonight*

---

Back a little late here. I have a lot to do this week so I am going to have to slim down a bit on my updates.

I might as well respond here to some misconceptions:

1. I am not saying all pixel art takes this long, just high quality pixel art with dynamic poses like this one.

2. I am not being indecisive with any of this, the medium just does not allow some things and you have to find a workaround. This is a difficult pose to do in pixels and there's going to be hangups.

3. my monitor is on default and I usually work on a bright pink background.


Now, I tried another look for the fur that almost worked... but not quite. Just not high enough resolution I think.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut25.png)

Still interesting. Hows that background? Better?

Oh ya and I expanded the palette a bit.

---

Update. I'm coloring now BTW.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut27.png)

I decided to go with a hybrid between the two test styles. We'll see how it turns out.

Oh ya, I messed with the arm again, sorry I had to do it.

I'll try to post my process later when I get the energy to type tons of stuff again.

---

Another update.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut28.png)

My guess is I'll finish sometime saturday. I'll post my process after I'm done. It's too distracting to do it while I'm trying to pixel.

--

Update. Slowly nibbling at it bit by bit ( or pixel by pixel ).

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut29.png)

--

Update. We're getting to that stage where a lot of these improvements will be based on personal style and might look better or worse for some people.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut30.png)

---

Ran into an extreme bout of lazyness over the weekend so I hardly worked on this at all until today.

I decided to just have a mane and leave the fur on the rest of the body undefined. I just like the way the muscles came out too much to ruin it.

Here are a couple of tries at remaking the "mane":

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut31.png)

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut32.png)

I think I will go with the second one.


----

DONE!

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)

Wow, that only took me about 3 weeks :yell:

Lets see if we beat the resized version:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yeti.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)

Yep, no contest, totally blew it away. But at what cost? Took me less then an hour to do the sketch, and maybe 1 minute to shrink it down and clean it up.

But oh well.

Like I said before I work slow. It probably takes me about twice the time it would for someone else to make something.

My estimate is a real pro with some fast pixeling skills might have been able to make this same piece in 5 hours of pure pixeling. That's not counting things like taking a break or anything like that.

---

Not done yet apparently, helm gave me a good edit, so I've got to mess with this some more:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut31-1.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetianim.gif)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut50.png)

---

I'm really done this time. Not because it's perfect, but because I just can't spend anymore time on it.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetifinal.png)

Did a portrait for it too:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetiportrait.png)

Not pixeled, but good enough.

Here's a screenshot:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/ss1452.jpg)

Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: bengo on July 31, 2009, 11:58:33 pm
Nice lineart, start coloring!
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Ryumaru on August 01, 2009, 03:35:42 am
All this lineart stuff I don't believe was intended in the whole " 1 hour" thing. You remarked how long it would take to get a fur texture like the one in the resized version and the larger sketch in general. I already showed you an example of what I did in an hour, yeah it was different than your sketch ( purposefully) but it still shows that a reasonably finished sprite with a nice fur texture can be achieved in an hour.
with that said the lineart is obviously good- it is time to color. I would say one of the reasons your original attempt didn't capture the look you were going for is because the correct values were not placed where they needed to be.
(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg310/Chriskhaos/2-1.png)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 01, 2009, 02:09:05 pm
All this lineart stuff I don't believe was intended in the whole " 1 hour" thing. You remarked how long it would take to get a fur texture like the one in the resized version and the larger sketch in general. I already showed you an example of what I did in an hour, yeah it was different than your sketch ( purposefully) but it still shows that a reasonably finished sprite with a nice fur texture can be achieved in an hour.
(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg310/Chriskhaos/2-1.png)

Like I told you before, its OK, but it doesn't beat the resized version. I will show you what that will take, and then you will wish you had never asked.

Quote
with that said the lineart is obviously good- it is time to color. I would say one of the reasons your original attempt didn't capture the look you were going for is because the correct values were not placed where they needed to be.

The reason my original attempt didn't capture the look I was going for was because I dipped my toes in the water with the first attempt and said "HELL NO!".
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Atnas on August 01, 2009, 02:28:49 pm
I was under the impression you would just be finishing up your current pixel wip when I stated it would take an hour to finish it. Not completely starting over. Anything you fix with the line art could have been fixed on top of the actual WIP, much faster because you are working with a level of rendering much closer to the final presentation.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 01, 2009, 06:43:24 pm
I was under the impression you would just be finishing up your current pixel wip when I stated it would take an hour to finish it. Not completely starting over.

I won't even count the line time.

Quote
Anything you fix with the line art could have been fixed on top of the actual WIP, much faster because you are working with a level of rendering much closer to the final presentation.

Experience has taught me otherwise. Try editing colored line art and then try editing just lines. Editing less pixels = faster. Don't worry, well be editing the colored lines plenty :lol:

*edit* I meant to add I started with new lines because the old ones were kind of half-arsed. I just did them to get an idea of how hard it would be. If I am going to do a perfect ( or near perfect ) work here I have to start with good lines.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Scribblette on August 02, 2009, 02:54:18 am
Regardless of how horribly long it takes me to get pixel art done too, I'm hoping you'll turn out to be wrong on this, Evileye. It'd be wonderful if the other good artists hopped on here and demonstrated how they'd do what you're trying to do in less time - even if it's a little less 'spectacular'. I think everyone would appreciate any tips on how to save time pixelling. :)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Souly on August 02, 2009, 11:28:03 pm
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut6.png)
I was really liking this hand, the arm hanging back just seems odd, I don't know why.

Anyways all is looking good.  :y:
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 03, 2009, 03:55:20 pm
Evileye you take longer than others (or I) would because you're undecided about things and your process is bogged down by this indecision and all the variable ways you're trying to achieve things (and anatomy problems, and a lack of comfort with abstraction). It's not a matter of pixelling being inherently slow(er), it's a matter of focus and a solid pipeline of getting things done. You don't need to relineart the lineart, you don't need to put cel-shading to something that will not eventually use cel-shading. It's enjoyable to watch you go through all this, but it doesn't mean your problems are inherent to the medium or insurmountable. You'll progress much faster if instead of trying to prove a weakness as a rule, you work against the indecisive parts of your process. I would say more and edit for clarification, but I don't have the time to do it.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: xhunterko on August 03, 2009, 04:17:17 pm
I may be only one poor opinion on here, but it's what we're supposed to do right? I have to say, that I liked your shrunk down one better. But then again, it's not pixel art is it? However, I think that you might also be suffering from lack of natural reference. Well, you probably looked at something when you drew the sketch, but, have probably forgot what it is by now. I also know that yeti's are hard to find so this is a second best.

(http://tarheelmania.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/ape.gif)

I also have to contrast with souly here and say I do not like either hands. They look messy and obviously not finished up. They seem a bit less structured then the back leg and maybe a bit out of proportion. It's kind of hard to tell what the hand is supposed to be doing, or if it's holding something. But maybe I don't know what I'm looking at here. I'm still a noob after all.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 03, 2009, 04:22:54 pm
(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut12.png) (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yeti.png)

I think a midstage would work more like this than the meticulous science you're doing.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 04, 2009, 05:24:35 pm
(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut12.png) (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yeti.png)

I think a midstage would work more like this than the meticulous science you're doing.

C'mon Helm, that doesn't cut it.

I just posted a trail version of one of the fur techniques I am considering:

Yours / Mine

(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut12.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut24.png)

Now you see what I mean?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 04, 2009, 06:04:08 pm
No I don't. What doesn't cut it? I'm trying to help you, man.

Have you noticed all your art is overbright/lacking in lower range? Why do you work on a white background? Is your monitor calibrated?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Elk on August 04, 2009, 07:00:56 pm
Both of you are right!
It should be a mixture of both styles as it needs a slight second lightsource which would happen to be the purple one, Helm's is too Marvel'ish

You're heading in the right way EvilEye, and this would turn out to be a good tutorial I think...

To your first post, and to discuss a little...
A piece like this would take 2-3 hours for me because of some reasons

I don't bother with lineart as I draw with areas, you somewhat did the same by starting with black but that was it
and you're already bothering with having the lineart clean, which should be only touchups in the end result (saves work)
also, don't always concentrate on parts of the reference, think by yourself!

Anatomy skills help LOADS if you do something like this

as Helm said, you're indecided about the actual process!

Now a comment to the actual image:

Looks nice!  :y:

As for backgrounds to pixel on, I prefer magenta :)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Chris2balls on August 04, 2009, 10:00:18 pm
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut24.png)(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2739/yeticonted.png)
Tried to fix contrast issue. The white was destroying my eyes so I put background green.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: bengo on August 04, 2009, 10:27:07 pm
I don't see why EvilEye wouldn't follow Helm's edit, defines the muscles, interesting colors, contrast, etc.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Dr D on August 04, 2009, 10:35:17 pm
I don't see why EvilEye wouldn't follow Helm's edit, defines the muscles, interesting colors, contrast, etc.

While it might be rendered pretty nicely, and add a lot of visual interest, I don't prefer it.

To me personally, Helm's edit makes the Yeti surface look a bit too much like smooth, shiny metal. I think it's too reflective, and not very indicative of the unruly hair I'd expect a Yeti to have. I'd prefer seeing a little less contrast, actually, and more a more untamed, hairy, wild side. Although, perhaps it was due to it being a quick edit, and not being all around, I'd have to see more.

And then again, since a Yeti isn't a real creature (as far as we know), it's interpretation could vary wildly, so it really depends on the artists view, I think. For instance, I imagine a Yeti walking on 2 legs, instead of using both hands and feet to travel.

But on another note, I have to agree with pretty much everything being said.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 04, 2009, 11:11:00 pm
Personally I wouldn't shade a yeti like I did in my edit either but I'm trying to abstract from the digital painted version, keep that in mind. And yeah even if I had the time to finalize the edit, I'd add more whisps of hair, but I genuinely think that dithering would help add even a hairy texture, not just metallic as per usual. I wouldn't do a secondary lightsource like that personally, but it was in the cg original!
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 06, 2009, 12:57:04 pm
No I don't. What doesn't cut it? I'm trying to help you, man.

Have you noticed all your art is overbright/lacking in lower range? Why do you work on a white background? Is your monitor calibrated?

Not sure what you mean by "overbright".

Maybe it's your monitor not mine. Mine's at default. The white background was because the sprite will be on snow. Or at least I think that was why... I usually work on 255r 0g 255b because thats my transparency color.

Both of you are right!
It should be a mixture of both styles as it needs a slight second lightsource which would happen to be the purple one, Helm's is too Marvel'ish

The slight second lightsource comes at the very end.

Quote
To your first post, and to discuss a little...
A piece like this would take 2-3 hours for me because of some reasons

Well, at least that's a bit more realistic. It's still low.

Quote
I don't bother with lineart as I draw with areas, you somewhat did the same by starting with black but that was it
and you're already bothering with having the lineart clean, which should be only touchups in the end result (saves work)

It's debatable but this particular piece might have been better started as forms instead of lines. So I'll give you that. It tends to make for a different look though.

Quote
also, don't always concentrate on parts of the reference, think by yourself!

Have no idea what this means...

Quote
Anatomy skills help LOADS if you do something like this

You can't even do something like this if you don't have anatomy skills...

Quote
as Helm said, you're indecided about the actual process!

You didn't bother to read the text. Not a matter of indecision, if you want to do something and the medium doesn't let you then you have to find a workaround.

I'm not saying I didn't make mistakes on this piece. I made quite a few. But that's life.

Quote
Looks nice!  :y:

Thanks :)

Quote
As for backgrounds to pixel on, I prefer magenta :)

Now that's just crazy talk :blind:
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 06, 2009, 03:36:57 pm
It's interesting that you think you're doing something the medium doesn't let you do, or to be more precise, that you think this is something novel. Whenever you try to pixel something with more detail than the res allows, you're trying to trick your way through the medium. This is a very common thing, and common practices work well in getting through the problems that this concept presents. You're reinventing the wheel a little, but hey, that's a good way to learn! Just listen to what other people are telling you (instead of just replying to them) and be mindful of the attitude that you're doing something other people haven't had to deal with years before you decided to get brave and pixel instead of faking it with resized cgi... that's not a good way to learn.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 07, 2009, 03:06:30 am
Heh, Helm I can see I got under your skin somewhere here buddy :lol:

You shouldn't take my post up there too seriously. A lot of it is tongue-in-cheek.

Whenever you try to pixel something with more detail than the res allows, you're trying to trick your way through the medium. This is a very common thing, and common practices work well in getting through the problems that this concept presents. You're reinventing the wheel a little, but hey, that's a good way to learn!

Well darn Helm, obviously you had the solutions to my problems up there all along! You should have posted them and saved me some time bro! Why'd you hold back? :P

Quote
Just listen to what other people are telling you (instead of just replying to them)

I usually am really, except when I think other people are saying something just to brag and don't really know what they are talking about ::)

Quote
and be mindful of the attitude that you're doing something other people haven't had to deal with years before you decided to get brave and pixel instead of faking it with resized cgi... that's not a good way to learn.

You know pixeling is not an ancient art...

Who knows, one of us old guys really could have been the first ones to do some of this stuff :o

Probably not me, but still, makes you think...
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Scribblette on August 07, 2009, 03:28:39 am
*puzzled* I was under the impression several of the best artists here were those 'old guys', and that pixelling was an ancient art - insofar as computer graphics go, being the cave paintings that predate post-postmodernistic art (look, my blank red canvas has a soul, only several quillion quid each!).

It sounds like several people here are saying that if a technique has been refined already and you know which one you want to (and which one functions per size) use on a work, you can save time. And that these techniques are not forgotten - unfortunately, they're just not shared.

I am also under the impression that Fool over on PixelJoint is particularly capable at churning out his pieces quickly.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Joel on August 07, 2009, 09:48:07 am
I might just add that I think the chest is too puffed out. Does the yeti bench 2 tonnes? The ref. posted by xhunterko looks realistic because you can see the chest and the belly hangs out, it's not like the lower chest/sternum is puffed out like a gigantor muscle. Try to imagine the latest sprite posted by the OP and imagine the yeti is standing up. His chest would come out unproportionally like a large pair of breasts, not like a big beast's muscly chest. Does anyone else see this??
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 07, 2009, 10:36:12 am

Well darn Helm, obviously you had the solutions to my problems up there all along! You should have posted them and saved me some time bro! Why'd you hold back? :P

Quote
I usually am really, except when I think other people are saying something just to brag and don't really know what they are talking about ::)

Oh wow.

Good luck inventing pixel art on your own.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Dusty on August 07, 2009, 05:38:21 pm
Was a bit bored, and this sort of thing is not my forté but I thought I'd give it a try.
(http://i30.tinypic.com/2ivziub.png)
Gonna be honest and say I didn't read everything in this thread, but this was about 10 minutes of effort. I've seen amazing things pulled off by amazing artists in pixel art that most people would think before that, it was impossible.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Froli on August 07, 2009, 05:45:05 pm
This is like a challenge who can finish this one hour just using pixel art. But its a bit unfair specially the size, anatomy knowlege + fur needed for the sprite...

Can anyone break this in one hour? I really hate furs :P
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 08, 2009, 03:18:34 am
I might just add that I think the chest is too puffed out. Does the yeti bench 2 tonnes? The ref. posted by xhunterko looks realistic because you can see the chest and the belly hangs out, it's not like the lower chest/sternum is puffed out like a gigantor muscle. Try to imagine the latest sprite posted by the OP and imagine the yeti is standing up. His chest would come out unproportionally like a large pair of breasts, not like a big beast's muscly chest. Does anyone else see this??

It's supposed to be the belly not the chest. If you see a picture of a gorilla they have a huge gut that hangs down when they walk. The pectorals are rather tiny so maybe its hard to see.

Was a bit bored, and this sort of thing is not my forté but I thought I'd give it a try.
(http://i30.tinypic.com/2ivziub.png)
Gonna be honest and say I didn't read everything in this thread, but this was about 10 minutes of effort. I've seen amazing things pulled off by amazing artists in pixel art that most people would think before that, it was impossible.

That's not a bad try, but it really doesn't work IMO. There's just not enough pixels to make it work. Especially on the arm where you have even less space.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: heyy13 on August 08, 2009, 04:41:04 am
I disagree with EvilEye, i think Dusty's quick try is amazing, and really has the texturing down. It may be difficult to show volumes that way but i think so far it has the best texturing of anything. :3
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: samw3 on August 08, 2009, 07:05:26 am
Just wanted to say that, being a novice, the idea of mirroring your work had never occurred to me.  That is a fantastic idea, and you're right, the mistakes just seem to pop out when you do that.  Thanks for the tip!
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: xhunterko on August 08, 2009, 05:48:12 pm
Well, okay.

(http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/oa_gallery/Yeti.jpg)

This is the closest image I found that matched your piece. Granted it's a bit wild looking, but it's better then that gorrilla picture.

(And this may not be helpful at all, I realize, because it is an interpetation like your drawing.)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Chris2balls on August 08, 2009, 10:41:16 pm
That's not a bad try, but it really doesn't work IMO. There's just not enough pixels to make it work. Especially on the arm where you have even less space.
AA, contrast.
When I mean AA, I mean an intermediate shade between two shades, rather like between a backbround and an outline.
I mean, come on. There aren't that many ways to cheat a resolution. Dusty's got the closest result.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Mathias on August 09, 2009, 02:17:32 am
Just wanted to say that, being a novice, the idea of mirroring your work had never occurred to me.  That is a fantastic idea, and you're right, the mistakes just seem to pop out when you do that.  Thanks for the tip!

It's as effective as it is simple. Growing up, I would always flip my drawings upside-down for this same purpose. It's not easy to mirror a pencil sketch hehe.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: miscdude on August 10, 2009, 10:23:18 am
The biggest flaw I see here when you're trying to add fur is simple. You're trying to take a form and turn it into fur, instead of imagining fur on top of the muscles. You carefully molded out various muscle structures, and shade things according to them, only to try to turn them into a fur texture. For this reason I disagree completely with Helm's edit, and all but one of your newest decisions.
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut24.png)-->(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut25.png)<--(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut27.png)
(used this because personally I believe it was superior to the later depictions of 'fur' which I would dub more as greaser-hair)
take the shoulder for example. This was definately a step forward, because it made it appear as if it had fur on top of it, rather than just a textured skin. While you can still see clearly defined anatomy, it doesn't look like the muscles are what you're trying to draw attention to. It still doesnt quite look like hair, to me. You also appear to be using your lineart as if it were a solid uneditable substance, which puts a huge limit on the hair texture.
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut25.png)-->(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/2571/editw.png)
as an example. if you realize shadows, and how hair acts, it will improve the general texture. Granted, mine could be largely improved with some more appropriate forms, but I didnt allow myself much time for the sake of your challenge, so I only spent a few minutes on it. The outline is one of the biggest issues when considering small resolutions. If you use your outline as anything more than a guideline, you lose proper shading, readability, and style (Outlines make things look cartoonlike, which is bad for fur textures and low resolutions.)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 11, 2009, 04:40:44 am
The biggest flaw I see here when you're trying to add fur is simple. You're trying to take a form and turn it into fur, instead of imagining fur on top of the muscles.

Ya well once you get a good look going it's hard to force yourself to change it. I like how the muscle detail turned out, so I probably won't do fur on anything but the head.

Quote
(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/2571/editw.png)
as an example. if you realize shadows, and how hair acts, it will improve the general texture. Granted, mine could be largely improved with some more appropriate forms, but I didnt allow myself much time for the sake of your challenge, so I only spent a few minutes on it. The outline is one of the biggest issues when considering small resolutions. If you use your outline as anything more than a guideline, you lose proper shading, readability, and style (Outlines make things look cartoonlike, which is bad for fur textures and low resolutions.)

Honestly it looks grainy to me and not fitting with the style I want.

But here are my latest attempts:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut31.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut32.png)

Better?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Scribblette on August 11, 2009, 05:27:27 am
I thought this was all about recreating the fur in as close to one hour, or something. To ignore fur everywhere but the head after all that seems a bit of a shame - a little less than spectacular. Surely the same style could work elsewhere on the body?

Love the fur edits by miscdude and dusty, btw :)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: miscdude on August 11, 2009, 06:29:20 am
it still seems to me as if youre constructing fur by using sections of colors and shapes instead of...hair. I'm not going to say it doesn't look nice, but it doesn't capture fur to me.
the second progression you just posted seems more of a step back, with the heavily clashing shades on the head.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Opacus on August 11, 2009, 08:36:28 am
I have to agree with Scribblette here. The edits by Dusty and miscdude (Especially liking miscdude's myself] are very potent, and I think you're being too quick to dismiss them.
You say they are not what you're going for, but does what you're going for work?
Currently, I like both Miscude and Dusty's edits better than yours.
Especially miscdude's really conveys a feeling of fur. And it looks really good.
On your version you can barely see any fur at all. A little bit on the head, but that's about it.
I really do ask that you reconsider their edits.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Dr D on August 11, 2009, 09:24:19 am
Aside from actual critique, I'm still wondering more so why you refuse to say this can't be done in 1 hour.

I don't know myself, but if another member says they can, and if they really can, then who are you to say they can't? Maybe you can not do it because you haven't yet practiced enough, don't know/have the rights tools and shortcuts to make things that much quicker, and thus are slower than more experienced users, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, or anything.

I don't think there's really much of an argument to be had here.

Different people work at different speeds, you undoubtedly work slower than some of the people saying they can't make it faster.

If I'm misunderstanding something, let me know. Sorry for beating a dead horse.


Now, I'll go ahead, and once again, agree with everyone else, and say you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss their edits, I really like miscdudes version, probably due largely to personal taste, but it seems to appease me more than any other piece yet done.

You seem to be refuting practically everything everyone said or shared in this thread, from my observations.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 13, 2009, 05:25:23 am
Well here it is, the final version:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)

If someone thinks they can do a piece comparable to this in an hour feel free to make a thread and show me how you did it.

My estimate is about 5 hours for a REALLY skilled pixeler, and that's with a lot of luck and a better reference.


I've got to go nurse a major pixel hangover :blind:
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Scribblette on August 13, 2009, 06:36:26 am
I'm a bit confused over why on something meant to be incredibly hairy we'd see the muscles as well defined as they are here, most notably on the arm. To be honest, to my unprofessional eye, the shoulder volumes look better defined in Helm's version, the hair better in the three relevant edits provided - and I also see what look like stray white pixels towards the left, making it look grainier than miscdude's attempt. Maybe there is more to be learnt from them?

Not to insult your work, though - it's great, aside from the strays. Maybe the experts can state whether if the muscles were less detailed with sharp shadows it could look more like shaggy hair in your original illustration, and less like thin layer of hair? Also, with less focus on defining the muscles in detail, perhaps a little time would be saved.

(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg310/Chriskhaos/2-1.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/2571/editw.png)(http://i30.tinypic.com/2ivziub.png)(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut12.png)

...regarding time - for me, at least, this would still take the better part of a day until I'd done a few dozen. Heh. :)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: ndchristie on August 13, 2009, 08:14:52 am
I've come out of lurking just for this one topic!  Feel spesh?

I don't really have the time to talk much about this yeti, but after reading this, i can say a few things with absolute certainty that were apparent from the first post and not disproved by the latest:

speed and workflow are more dependent on the artist's confidence in his form than the media itself, and quality is highly dependent on the way a work is shown.

As for your estimate, I actually think there's a dozen people here that could do a nice sketch in 1 hour, especially those who own tablets but not necessarily.  I don't want to call them out, I don't think dick-waving contests further artistic expression, but all of the mods plus fool, st0ven, snake, etc could no doubt lay out a figure with some rough planes and texture sketches.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15981.htm# i use Helm as a reference because I remember being impressed with the speed he notes here when he posted it.
Where does that speed come from?  Is it from years working with a mouse?  Is it from years of traditional drawing?  Is it from not really caring about how long he spends on something?  Is it from enjoying what he does?  I can only guess, but I would assume all of those are factors.

The original sketch you posted, the shrunken and cleaned version, it might be good for some places, but it's not good on a very clear or very large screen and because it was not done though by hand, it would take a much longer effort to be made say, handheld-ready than it would take to clean a pixelled image.

In the end my main question though is - why are you so desperate to prove this point?  Are you trying to prove that an ability to place more than a single pixel at a time covers ground more quickly?  We don't need research to show that, it's apparent from its own framing.  Pixel art is about having a quality and attention all its own, not about being quick and dirty (and that posted sketch is REALLY dirty).

If you want to improve your speed and skill with pixels, don't waste your time tying to prove that it's slow, believe in yourself for more than 30 minutes and make things happen.  ignore the clock, ignore other means, find yourself in the media and draw.  If all you're after is becoming a better low-res photoshop artist, there are other forums.  Just making a topic about what you don't want to do and don't think others can if they tried (despite evidence ALL OVER THIS SITE) is confusing to me.

I get the feeling that you're taking things to seriously and from an angle that does nobody benefit.  Turn off the stopwatch.  Paint a tree in your yard.  paint a caterpillar on the tree.  paint your face with jam.  tickle a baby.  REVEL IN SOMETHING.  I don't love the manarilla because helm did it in an hour, i love it because it's so little and freaky and the red is just so rewarding to look at!!The rest of us are almost universally here because we love what we do.  To seek dismissal, to label things impossible (or unworthy)-- these pursuits are fruitless and depressing.  I hope something in here clicks :).
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: vedsten on August 13, 2009, 10:25:53 am
Nice post  :y:

The pink back lightning doesn't blend well for me, but that might be my screen :o
Other than that, i got no issues, good job!
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 13, 2009, 11:58:02 am
I've come out of lurking just for this one topic!  Feel spesh?

Gee, I'm honored ::)

Quote
I don't really have the time to talk much about this yeti, but after reading this, i can say a few things with absolute certainty that were apparent from the first post and not disproved by the latest:

speed and workflow are more dependent on the artist's confidence in his form than the media itself, and quality is highly dependent on the way a work is shown.

As for your estimate, I actually think there's a dozen people here that could do a nice sketch in 1 hour, especially those who own tablets but not necessarily.  I don't want to call them out, I don't think dick-waving contests further artistic expression, but all of the mods plus fool, st0ven, snake, etc could no doubt lay out a figure with some rough planes and texture sketches.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15981.htm# i use Helm as a reference because I remember being impressed with the speed he notes here when he posted it.
Where does that speed come from?  Is it from years working with a mouse?  Is it from years of traditional drawing?  Is it from not really caring about how long he spends on something?  Is it from enjoying what he does?  I can only guess, but I would assume all of those are factors.

The original sketch you posted, the shrunken and cleaned version, it might be good for some places, but it's not good on a very clear or very large screen and because it was not done though by hand, it would take a much longer effort to be made say, handheld-ready than it would take to clean a pixelled image.

In the end my main question though is - why are you so desperate to prove this point?  Are you trying to prove that an ability to place more than a single pixel at a time covers ground more quickly?  We don't need research to show that, it's apparent from its own framing.  Pixel art is about having a quality and attention all its own, not about being quick and dirty (and that posted sketch is REALLY dirty).

If you want to improve your speed and skill with pixels, don't waste your time tying to prove that it's slow, believe in yourself for more than 30 minutes and make things happen.  ignore the clock, ignore other means, find yourself in the media and draw.  If all you're after is becoming a better low-res photoshop artist, there are other forums.  Just making a topic about what you don't want to do and don't think others can if they tried (despite evidence ALL OVER THIS SITE) is confusing to me.

I get the feeling that you're taking things to seriously and from an angle that does nobody benefit.  Turn off the stopwatch.  Paint a tree in your yard.  paint a caterpillar on the tree.  paint your face with jam.  tickle a baby.  REVEL IN SOMETHING.  I don't love the manarilla because helm did it in an hour, i love it because it's so little and freaky and the red is just so rewarding to look at!!The rest of us are almost universally here because we love what we do.  To seek dismissal, to label things impossible (or unworthy)-- these pursuits are fruitless and depressing.  I hope something in here clicks :).

I was going to do a thorough response to this but then I though why bother, I'll just reiterate my original point:

Talk is cheap, show me something of similar quality done in an hour. So far all I've heard is talk and statements like "you just aren't good enough", and "you gotta have the right workflow" :lol:.


I'm a bit confused over why on something meant to be incredibly hairy we'd see the muscles as well defined as they are here, most notably on the arm. To be honest, to my unprofessional eye, the shoulder volumes look better defined in Helm's version, the hair better in the three relevant edits provided - and I also see what look like stray white pixels towards the left, making it look grainier than miscdude's attempt. Maybe there is more to be learnt from them?

As for the stray pixels, those were intentional and were meant to add to the backlighting / reflective effect.

To me it looks good, but its one of those things that some people won't like and some will. It's also possible that I overdid it in some parts, but I'm pretty much done with this piece, so I'll live with it.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Opacus on August 13, 2009, 02:37:53 pm
I've come out of lurking just for this one topic!  Feel spesh?

Gee, I'm honored ::)

Quote
I don't really have the time to talk much about this yeti, but after reading this, i can say a few things with absolute certainty that were apparent from the first post and not disproved by the latest:

speed and workflow are more dependent on the artist's confidence in his form than the media itself, and quality is highly dependent on the way a work is shown.

As for your estimate, I actually think there's a dozen people here that could do a nice sketch in 1 hour, especially those who own tablets but not necessarily.  I don't want to call them out, I don't think dick-waving contests further artistic expression, but all of the mods plus fool, st0ven, snake, etc could no doubt lay out a figure with some rough planes and texture sketches.

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15981.htm# i use Helm as a reference because I remember being impressed with the speed he notes here when he posted it.
Where does that speed come from?  Is it from years working with a mouse?  Is it from years of traditional drawing?  Is it from not really caring about how long he spends on something?  Is it from enjoying what he does?  I can only guess, but I would assume all of those are factors.

The original sketch you posted, the shrunken and cleaned version, it might be good for some places, but it's not good on a very clear or very large screen and because it was not done though by hand, it would take a much longer effort to be made say, handheld-ready than it would take to clean a pixelled image.

In the end my main question though is - why are you so desperate to prove this point?  Are you trying to prove that an ability to place more than a single pixel at a time covers ground more quickly?  We don't need research to show that, it's apparent from its own framing.  Pixel art is about having a quality and attention all its own, not about being quick and dirty (and that posted sketch is REALLY dirty).

If you want to improve your speed and skill with pixels, don't waste your time tying to prove that it's slow, believe in yourself for more than 30 minutes and make things happen.  ignore the clock, ignore other means, find yourself in the media and draw.  If all you're after is becoming a better low-res photoshop artist, there are other forums.  Just making a topic about what you don't want to do and don't think others can if they tried (despite evidence ALL OVER THIS SITE) is confusing to me.

I get the feeling that you're taking things to seriously and from an angle that does nobody benefit.  Turn off the stopwatch.  Paint a tree in your yard.  paint a caterpillar on the tree.  paint your face with jam.  tickle a baby.  REVEL IN SOMETHING.  I don't love the manarilla because helm did it in an hour, i love it because it's so little and freaky and the red is just so rewarding to look at!!The rest of us are almost universally here because we love what we do.  To seek dismissal, to label things impossible (or unworthy)-- these pursuits are fruitless and depressing.  I hope something in here clicks :).

I was going to do a thorough response to this but then I though why bother, I'll just reiterate my original point:

Talk is cheap, show me something of similar quality done in an hour. So far all I've heard is talk and statements like "you just aren't good enough", and "you gotta have the right workflow" :lol:.


I'm a bit confused over why on something meant to be incredibly hairy we'd see the muscles as well defined as they are here, most notably on the arm. To be honest, to my unprofessional eye, the shoulder volumes look better defined in Helm's version, the hair better in the three relevant edits provided - and I also see what look like stray white pixels towards the left, making it look grainier than miscdude's attempt. Maybe there is more to be learnt from them?

As for the stray pixels, those were intentional and were meant to add to the backlighting / reflective effect.

To me it looks good, but its one of those things that some people won't like and some will. It's also possible that I overdid it in some parts, but I'm pretty much done with this piece, so I'll live with it.

Okay. Show you something of similair or better quality of something done within an hour.
Did you even read Nd's post?

I'll post the link again:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15981.htm#

That. It's quality wise superior to yours, and done within an hour.

Why are you dismissing every help that's being handed to you?

Are you so incredibly convinced that you are right and everyone else is wrong?
Why is is so important for you to show everyone that it's impossible for you to make something excellent in an hour?

It IS possible to make something of quality in an hour. Something that Mantrilla by Helm proves.
Just because you can't pull it off because of a lack of experience, doesn't mean there isn't a single pixel artist who can.

You seem hellbent on proving to everyone that pixel art is terrible, tedious, time consuming work.
But if you hate pixel art as much as you seem to: Why do you even bother making pixel art?
You've always seemed like a very reasonable person to me, but your attitude in this topic isn't doing that assumption much justice.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: #36005A on August 13, 2009, 03:29:37 pm
I was going to do a thorough response to this but then I though why bother, I'll just reiterate my original point:

Talk is cheap, show me something of similar quality done in an hour. So far all I've heard is talk and statements like "you just aren't good enough", and "you gotta have the right workflow" :lol:.

EvilEye, please at least read the last three paragraphs of ndchristie's post before outright dismissing it. I've been curious about some of those questions too - why are you so intent on "proving" that "good" pixel art can't be done within an hour? Why should it matter?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: dekutree64 on August 13, 2009, 05:53:20 pm
I decided to give this a shot. That's a pretty cool looking yeti, and I was curious how good I could do in an hour/how long it would take me to beat the resize, and I could use the practice anyway. Ended up spending 2.5 hours on it total, but I think the result is pretty good. Not as good as Evil's, but then I am still a semi-noob :)
Probably could do with a couple more shades for anti-aliasing, but meh, it was just for fun (although I would appreciate any C&C on it).

Anyway, here's my progression to one hour (5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 50 min, 60 min)
(http://i28.tinypic.com/357ewm1.gif)(http://i32.tinypic.com/2v8iow7.gif)(http://i30.tinypic.com/igcmj9.gif)(http://i25.tinypic.com/m92amw.gif)(http://i28.tinypic.com/2073x34.gif)

Still looking incomplete, and I forgot to color the eyes black :p
This was done just referencing the original sketch, I didn't bother resizing it. At first I was going to make mine more brown but with blueish highlights, but I ended up just working in a few shades and adjusted the palette to be similar to the reference.

Next progression (90 min, 120 min)
(http://i32.tinypic.com/sgtt7k.gif)(http://i26.tinypic.com/2ryr3m0.gif)

Looking much better now, but haven't done the back lighting yet.
Then the finished version, with 2 versions of the palette because I couldn't decide which I like better:
(http://i30.tinypic.com/2h7flms.gif)(http://i29.tinypic.com/j90s49.gif)

So in the end, I agree it would be hard to beat the resize in an hour, but 2 hours is plenty, and 2.5 hours you can do some real refinement.

EDIT: Haha, I just now realized there are only supposed to be 4 knuckles on that hand :P Well, one more finger to crush your skull with.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 13, 2009, 05:57:19 pm
I personally like Evileye's final version a lot and as far as pixel placement goes, the skill on display is more than equal to that which I had back in 2006 when I made my own piece. In fact the deliberation that is on display on this thread certainly leads to artistic growth. The problem with it is that it doesn't have any fur texture to it at all and instead looks like it's made from sharp, angularly cut diamonds (and this isn't only a problem of pixel placement, but much more an issue of color selection... again, overbright, no low colors, saturation issues). So as a texture study of fur it hasn't achieved what Evileye set out to do. It's a great piece on its own and I'm sure he's learned a lot from attempting this, but, there's problems of communication.

This 'put up or shut up' theme is really grating and counterintuitive for a learning environment, which Pixelation is. When someone shows you something and you say "that doesn't cut it (+dismissive emoticon)" it seems to me like you expect other people need to be better than you before they can help you, and that's not how critique works at all, as far as I've seen in my years here. Nobody's going to make your art better than you can make your art, man, because they're not in your head and have different standards. I don't care to show you what I can do in an hour, for example, because art is not a contest, and what looks better is very subjective, and the point isn't to humble you with my mad skillz, it is to help you. Do you need to be humiliated to be helped? Should your ego be broken down before you start approaching things more openly? If so, I'm sure there's people that would step up for the challenge, if you keep asking.

But is that an atmosphere worth cultivating here?

Here's what I've noticed:

1. You like your art more than other people like your art
2. You feel you're a better lowlevel CG artist than a pixel artist, you feel your CG art is better than most people's pixel art at achieving the same goals.
3. Other people don't seem to agree
4. You set out to show that pixel art is more cumbersome and difficult to achieve the same goals your CG art achieves effortlessly

1 Is usually healthy, I mean, if you don't love yourself, who will love you?
2 You *are* currently a better CG artist than a pixel artist. The problem is that these two methodologies do not achieve the same goals. 'Something that looks good in 150x150 pixels' is not the end goal of pixel art. The end goal of pixel art is balance, clarity, intentionality, control.
3 When people don't agree with you, antagonizing them as if they're lying to you and should own up to the truth isn't a very nice thing to do. Sometimes they have a point to not agree with you and what you should do - I suggest - is prod them for explanations on why they feel as they feel, not emoticons and irony.
4 This is completely ass-backwards. What is this external locus for making art? Do it for yourself, man. Do it because you love it. Don't do it to prove a point to an internet forum, they won't love you for it. Make pixel art if you love pixel art, make CG art if you love CG art.


So, in the end, you made pixel art. It took you whatever amount of time. Did you enjoy yourself? Did you see the benefits of a more controlled medium like pixel art? Do you think that you'll do more? Or will you go back to working faster in CG like before? That's more interesting for me to know than all this bullshit about 'do it better yourself'. I'll never make your art better than you, man, because it's your art and that's the point of Pixelation: to help people to get where they need to go, not to show them up with superior skill.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 13, 2009, 06:32:22 pm
Okay. Show you something of similair or better quality of something done within an hour.
Did you even read Nd's post?

Yep.

Quote
I'll post the link again:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15981.htm#

Yes I saw it when helm posted it in the creativity thread.

And as I told helm, that is a fairly simple piece and certainly doable within an hour.

Maybe I should have explained it a bit more?

*Note I am not trying to rag on helm here, and I am not saying its a bad piece*

But:

1. The pose is very simple. No wild perspective, Nothing that pushes the limits of pixel art in any way.

2. Mostly 90 or 45 degree angles on the body, which are easy to do.

3. The creature is not based on anything that we are too familiar with, so none of the features have to be very correct. I.e. He can have upper arms that are bigger then the foream and noone will really notice. Same with the head and other parts.

4. Very little muscle definition on the fur, makes for much easier work.

5. No fingers or toes, helm cheated a bit IMO and just wrapped them up and hid them.

6. Lighting is actually pretty sparse, there are some parts that should have a lot better lighting but don't. Again, probably because it was done in an hour.

actually helm agreed with me that it was simpler then the piece I was attempting.

Quote
That. It's quality wise superior to yours, and done within an hour.

Say hello to your seeing-eye dog for me.

Quote
Why are you dismissing every help that's being handed to you?

Very few people have offered any real advice ( except for the edits at the top of this thread ). A lot of the "advice" offered is just arm-chair pixeling and thinly veiled insults.

If you are truly interested Opacus, and if helm doesn't mind, I can point out the flaws in his piece and explain why I don't think its at a similar level to the one I did. I'm sure that would stoke the fires of hell some more, but hey :lol: That is, if your really curious and not just saying this to argue.


I personally like Evileye's final version a lot and as far as pixel placement goes, the skill on display is more than equal to that which I had back in 2006 when I made my own piece.

Thanks, glad you like it.

Quote
The problem with it is that it doesn't have any fur texture to it at all and instead looks like it's made from sharp, angularly cut diamonds (and this isn't only a problem of pixel placement, but much more an issue of color selection... again, overbright, no low colors, saturation issues). So as a texture study of fur it hasn't achieved what Evileye set out to do. It's a great piece on its own and I'm sure he's learned a lot from attempting this, but, there's problems of communication.

Well that's kind of a style preference, to me that angular cut diamond look is great. Overbright... well again a style preference, I think the colors are nearly perfect. At least they look that way on my computer. The fur more or less achieved what I wanted, I was trying for something close to the sketch and not super-realistic fur.

Quote
This 'put up or shut up' theme is really grating and counterintuitive for a learning environment, which Pixelation is. When someone shows you something and you say "that doesn't cut it (+dismissive emoticon)" it seems to me like you expect other people need to be better than you before they can help you, and that's not how critique works at all, as far as I've seen in my years here.

I didn't mean it in that way actually, I was trying to show you the style I was going for was totally different. Bad wording on my part.

Quote
Should your ego be broken down before you start approaching things more openly? If so, I'm sure there's people that would step up for the challenge, if you keep asking.

Now now helm. I wasn't the one bragging I could do it in an hour.... :lol:

Quote
2. You feel you're a better lowlevel CG artist than a pixel artist, you feel your CG art is better than most people's pixel art at achieving the same goals.

I feel I'm a lowlevel CG artist? :P Well I'm about average usually.

Cmon, can't you make a post without trying to insult me here?

Quote
1 Is usually healthy, I mean, if you don't love yourself, who will love you?

Thanks Dr helm :)

Quote
So, in the end, you made pixel art. It took you whatever amount of time. Did you enjoy yourself?

I must admit it was somewhat enjoyable, if only to see some people get a little bent out of shape :y:
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 13, 2009, 06:33:34 pm
Oh, about colors and fur texture, perhaps this edit will help:

(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut41.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/fur.gif)

This took about 15 minutes, if that interests you.

edit: 'lowlevel' I mean as in dealing with 'low' CG, art that is meant to be displayed at small resolutions, few colors etc, I didn't mean low as in qualifer.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: ndchristie on August 13, 2009, 08:01:14 pm
Quote
So far all I've heard is talk and statements like "you just aren't good enough", and "you gotta have the right workflow" lol.

If you read that in my post, there's little use in me writing, since you've essentially presented a message that was not at all contained within my words.

I'm not going to draw something for an hour because while you're right, talk is cheap, there's no point (as I mentioned) with this wild-west dickwaving type method of learning and comparing techniques you've apparently learned from Bleach or DBZ.  It won't do either of us any benefit and I have better ways to spend my time than proving something to you because you're not confident enough in a given media.  If you think I suck, or anyone else here, that's not my problem.  I don't have to pixel a monkey just because you have a bad attitude.

Your arguments are cherry-picked when you want them to apply. If helm makes a chimera it's easier because there's no set guidelines, but when you make a yeti it's somehow more scrutable and more accomplished?  if we compare it to a gorilla, there are some real issues with the anatomy, some issues remain actually even without tying it to a natural creature - the chest is strange and invented in a way that dekutree's edit, that you failed even to recognize despite the fact that he's doing what you asked, actually solves.  the leg and arm muscles are just lumps brought together only by a general resemblance to the greater forms and even then the lighting is strangely described.  The colors are no aid to this and the huge jump from the darkest blue to black only serves to further expose the formal issues.

While the piece is ok and I'm sure you've learned something, you're on no ground to talk about being nearly perfect while throwing out or ignoring all sorts of valid advice and criticisms.  You're also just insulting everyone in a way that's baffling.  "Say hello to your seeing eye dog"??  Is there any reason for that?  What was gained?  Helm and the other mods deserve a round on the house for remaining on-point and respectful. 
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: 8bitty on August 13, 2009, 08:47:37 pm
very nice edit helm. evileye take some points from that edit, it is by far the most pleasing to the eyes. you need to work on colour values as the piece looks quite bland as it is. contrast. i also like helms pieces of fur that are coming off.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Opacus on August 13, 2009, 09:03:04 pm
Okay. Show you something of similair or better quality of something done within an hour.
Did you even read Nd's post?

Yep.

Quote
I'll post the link again:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15981.htm#

Yes I saw it when helm posted it in the creativity thread.

And as I told helm, that is a fairly simple piece and certainly doable within an hour.

Maybe I should have explained it a bit more?

*Note I am not trying to rag on helm here, and I am not saying its a bad piece*

But:

1. The pose is very simple. No wild perspective, Nothing that pushes the limits of pixel art in any way.

2. Mostly 90 or 45 degree angles on the body, which are easy to do.

3. The creature is not based on anything that we are too familiar with, so none of the features have to be very correct. I.e. He can have upper arms that are bigger then the foream and noone will really notice. Same with the head and other parts.

4. Very little muscle definition on the fur, makes for much easier work.

5. No fingers or toes, helm cheated a bit IMO and just wrapped them up and hid them.

6. Lighting is actually pretty sparse, there are some parts that should have a lot better lighting but don't. Again, probably because it was done in an hour.

actually helm agreed with me that it was simpler then the piece I was attempting.

1: No, the pose is not very amazing, I'll give you that. But it serves it's purpose. I like the pose of your yeti more, though.

2: That's a common technique. Since 90 and 45 degree angles don't require AA, it can often make pixel art look better [You can't screw up on the AA after all] and also reduces the work load a bit.
You don't need complicated lines to make something look better. Why complicate things when it looks just as good with a simpler aproach?

3: It IS based on a real creature. It's simply a gorilla with the head of a manta ray. Unlike a Yeti, which is pretty much based on nothing. Though I'd say yours has something of a gorilla.

4: That's actually a big problem in your yeti: He shouldn't have so much muscle definition. The muscles obscure the fur texture, and make him look more like a shiny bodybuilder.

5: Your yeti's toes aren't very prominent either. In fact, especially those on the front arm don't work that well. The whole hand looks a bit seperated from the arm.

6: There isn't alot of lighting. So? That's just a matter of preference. Helm chose to do so so his glowing eyes would be more prominent, and he'd get and overall more menacing look. [That's my interpetation anyway]
The lighting on your yeti is a bit TOO prominent. Fur doesn't glow that much, unless he just got out of the water or something.

I made a colour edit here, maybe it's a bit too extreme, but bear with me here.
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1672/edit116.gif)(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut41.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)

I really toned down the contrast. I think it's nescassery here though.
Fur just doesn't glow like that. I also got rid of those strange stray pixels you had going on here.
[Yes, I also think Helm's colour edit is still too high contrast. Too shiny.]

Quote
Very few people have offered any real advice ( except for the edits at the top of this thread ). A lot of the "advice" offered is just arm-chair pixeling and thinly veiled insults.
If you are truly interested Opacus, and if helm doesn't mind, I can point out the flaws in his piece and explain why I don't think its at a similar level to the one I did. I'm sure that would stoke the fires of hell some more, but hey :lol: That is, if your really curious and not just saying this to argue.

No, I'm not here to argue.

Helm's has flaws. Sure it does. But yours also has flaws. It ain't any more perfect than Helm's is.
It's very nice, certainly, but it still has issues.

And I think you just did pretty much point out what you think is wrong with it, right above here, ey?

Quote
Say hello to your seeing-eye dog for me.

Let's keep it civil here please. That's uncalled for.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Froli on August 13, 2009, 09:09:03 pm
Evileye, you are becoming full of yourself. It's like everyone's post doesn't matter and your ego is getting ahead of you. You are like one of those posters in the past that has gotten banned because of the similar attitude.

And I agree with opacus that helms gorilla mantaray is better.

Btw, the texture of your last rendition of your yeti more like ice/icicles rather than fur.

maybe this artwork by  BigBrother could help.
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/41947.htm
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 13, 2009, 09:23:16 pm
That's a very pleasing color edit, Opacus. Looking at it I agree mine is too high contrast... there's something to be said about using a selection from the whole value range to an aesthetic result, sometimes i'm so preoccupied with 'covering my bases' I forget that. Stoven also does what you did in his pieces quite masterfully. I think it comes from SNES-type art initially? (I mean the impulse to shelft the values, not that it's not noticed in other art besides SNES stuff, heh)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: big brother on August 13, 2009, 10:36:55 pm
Froli: don't drag me into this! :)

I like Opacus' color edit, though I believe it unnecessarily flattens the sprite. A high-contrast character may look out of place when we critique it specifically, but stronger colors will help it read against a background (since I'm assuming this is intended to function on a game register and not just as "pixel art," right?). I would suggest darkening the hindquarters so the arm and head really pop out in front. Darkening the shadow beneath the leading arm and under the jaw would also be a good idea. With higher contrast on its face, it will be easier for a viewer to identify it, an issue inherent when drawing imaginary creatures. It will also help heighten the yeti's expression and inject more personality into the character.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 13, 2009, 11:35:01 pm
Oh, about colors and fur texture, perhaps this edit will help:

(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut41.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/fur.gif)

This took about 15 minutes, if that interests you.

See now that's what I was talking about. That is a good edit helm. The colors for sure, some of the body work is so-so, but it does give me some ideas. I'll try to put some fur on his other body parts.

That shadow under the chin shouldn't really be there, but it does bring out the face.

I guess I should have messed with the colors a little :blind:

Quote
edit: 'lowlevel' I mean as in dealing with 'low' CG, art that is meant to be displayed at small resolutions, few colors etc, I didn't mean low as in qualifer.

K. Fair enough.

I made a colour edit here, maybe it's a bit too extreme, but bear with me here.
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1672/edit116.gif)(http://www.locustleaves.com/YetiTut41.png)(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)

I think your version is a bit too desaturated. Maybe the correct values would be between yours and helms.

Froli: don't drag me into this! :)

I like Opacus' color edit, though I believe it unnecessarily flattens the sprite. A high-contrast character may look out of place when we critique it specifically, but stronger colors will help it read against a background (since I'm assuming this is intended to function on a game register and not just as "pixel art," right?). I would suggest darkening the hindquarters so the arm and head really pop out in front. Darkening the shadow beneath the leading arm and under the jaw would also be a good idea. With higher contrast on its face, it will be easier for a viewer to identify it, an issue inherent when drawing imaginary creatures. It will also help heighten the yeti's expression and inject more personality into the character.

Yes it is for a game. Thanks for the advice.

Well in light of getting some edits I will have to do some more work on this :yell: Thought I was done.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: D~Dawg on August 13, 2009, 11:45:11 pm
So...Are you done or what?

Actual Critique:
The shadow under the chin --however-- brings out that he has a neck. :-\
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Beoran on August 14, 2009, 07:35:20 am
Well, the only reason I decided to butt into this thread is because I really like Dekutree's effort. With a bit of refinements on the outline, so it also works against a dark background, his Yeti would be a great "boss sprite". :)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Chris2balls on August 14, 2009, 09:00:43 pm
I think the furriness could be brought out moreso in Helm's edit by adding some sort of AA like this (http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/43204.htm), but I don't think this'll work on a dark background.
And I agree that there should be a version between Opacus's and Helm's colour edit and with what bigbrother explained. I'm eager to see more.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: st0ven on August 15, 2009, 03:04:51 am
Ive read the thread thoroughly enough to follow what has been going on - i was really curious by the proposition of being able to make such a pixel piece rival that of the scaled down cg version.

(http://www.spriteart.com/edit/ape_stuff.png)
 - initial block in and shape stage, id say about 30 minutes at this point to get here

i got home and was able to continue

(http://www.spriteart.com/edit/evileye_ape.png)
 - adding more form and lighting details - fleshing out some fur texture in choice area. this took me out about another 25 minutes. Far from perfect - but i think from this stage, working on a deadline you could easily have this wrapped up in another 30 miinutes. it should be pretty near pixel perfect in 60 - arguably should rival the original piece in both form and detail as well.

I do think that there was a lot of frustration shown in this piece and i think this came mostly from an unsurety of form / anatomy - Ive read helms take on the situation and while i mildly do agree there seems to be a workflow issue here i think the main conflict is some insecurity over the form. for some reason this is less of an issue for your CG piece, but in the end i think that your pixel piece came out with more interesting shape and structure and i have to wonder if it is because there was more deliberate thought put into the piece in that medium.

I can say that i could generally relate to the frustrations shown in this piece because i will rightfully admit, i still go through this when drawing things particularly that ive had little exposure to in the past. One thing ive really found to help is sketching - all the time. different forms and subject matters. i cant lecture anyone on what they will discover but i can notice a very large difference in my understanding of form and shape in just a few short months of serious study.

I really enjoy this thread because it gives us things to talk about - some personal arguing aside (feels like the pixelation i used to know and love, heh) i think the subject matter is one of the more meaningful ones to be found around here in a while. I think these things should be questioned, in the end, many different people throw in their hand in the discussion and add their artistic pieces into the fold of discussion and it becomes a true community experience. Many people walk away from threads like these with a lot more to think about than the usual0 'help me' post (honestly, nothing against them at all, just want to see more of these types too).

I hope the discussion doesnt die out!

Oh i have almost forgot - i made a quick video of some timelapse progress from midpoint to end point (at least the hour long end point). uploaded the video for you lads to view if you find it curious.

www.spriteart.com/edit/ape_avi.avi
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Chris2balls on August 15, 2009, 12:38:43 pm
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/3272/goryetied.png)
Tried doing the fur, changed the pose slightly, to convey tension, which was already quite present with that heavy fist. I hope it helps, and I do apologise if it's quite sketchy (using graphics tab).
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Dex on August 15, 2009, 06:20:40 pm
While your edit conveys fur fairly well, Chris, I find that the edit st0ven did above works the best in my opinion. It keeps a general anatomical shape without losing the fur texture EvilEye is trying to achieve. It also uses colors in a more appropriate way, I'd say.

This thread is quite the interesting discussion though. Many wonderful insights and critiques that can help not just one, but many.

I do believe, however, that you, EvilEye, should have gone about this a different way and instead of trying to prove it's NOT possible to pixel something impressively in an hour- you should have tried to prove that it IS! It seems as if you're trying to set a rule that says 'you can't pixel something worthwhile in an hour.' I dunno. I've still enjoyed your progress and your steps- this thread could be archived for the discussion much less the actual progression of the art.

Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 15, 2009, 06:54:22 pm
(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut40.png)(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/3272/goryetied.png)
Tried doing the fur, changed the pose slightly, to convey tension, which was already quite present with that heavy fist. I hope it helps, and I do apologise if it's quite sketchy (using graphics tab).

That's pretty good Chris. Loses a lot of the form though. Nice letters too :y:

Ive read the thread thoroughly enough to follow what has been going on - i was really curious by the proposition of being able to make such a pixel piece rival that of the scaled down cg version.

(http://www.spriteart.com/edit/ape_stuff.png)
 - initial block in and shape stage, id say about 30 minutes at this point to get here

i got home and was able to continue

(http://www.spriteart.com/edit/evileye_ape.png)
 - adding more form and lighting details - fleshing out some fur texture in choice area. this took me out about another 25 minutes. Far from perfect - but i think from this stage, working on a deadline you could easily have this wrapped up in another 30 miinutes. it should be pretty near pixel perfect in 60 - arguably should rival the original piece in both form and detail as well.

I appreciate the edit.

I was intending to tackle it a much different way which could be the reason some people don't agree it would take so long.

Here is where I was intending to go with the fur ( and actually what I am working on now with my edit ):

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut31-1.png)

The colors probably still need some tweaking. Palette tweaking is one of my weak points :blind:

As you can see, I may have bit off a little more then I can chew here, its going to take a lot of reworking. But it can be done :y: I am pretty sure.

Helms edit actually surprised me a bit. I never thought of doing it quite that way. And it does look good. Too many 45 deg angles for my taste though.

Quote
I do think that there was a lot of frustration shown in this piece and i think this came mostly from an unsurety of form / anatomy - Ive read helms take on the situation and while i mildly do agree there seems to be a workflow issue here i think the main conflict is some insecurity over the form. for some reason this is less of an issue for your CG piece, but in the end i think that your pixel piece came out with more interesting shape and structure and i have to wonder if it is because there was more deliberate thought put into the piece in that medium.

If I had known beforehand I would be attempting something this precise I would have done a much better sketch and solidified my ideas a lot more.

The thing is, this was only supposed to be a common enemy. Now its the best looking sprite in the whole game :lol:

I made the lines and started to realize just how many flaws I was up against and fixing them was no easy task. Then I changed my mind quite a bit about how I wanted it to look. In the end I salvaged what I could and it came out a lot better.

Then of course the fact that I was trying to prove a point forced me to push the quality level up even higher, which demanded even more reworking. >:(

Quote
I really enjoy this thread because it gives us things to talk about - some personal arguing aside (feels like the pixelation i used to know and love, heh) i think the subject matter is one of the more meaningful ones to be found around here in a while. I think these things should be questioned, in the end, many different people throw in their hand in the discussion and add their artistic pieces into the fold of discussion and it becomes a true community experience. Many people walk away from threads like these with a lot more to think about than the usual0 'help me' post (honestly, nothing against them at all, just want to see more of these types too).

I am glad you enjoyed the thread, I was beginning to think all I did was start a flame war. Apparently I came off as bragging to some people, which I might have done a little of admittedly, but I thought some people would be interested to see how someone with my style does a sprite, along with all the potential pitfalls you can run into. Most the sprites I see here are cartoony / anime style, so I figured it might be a bit of a change to show how a more ( traditional? / realistic? ) style sprite is done. Plus I wanted to show some people why I didn't want to pixel that sketch I showed in the OT / Creativity thread.

Quote
I hope the discussion doesnt die out!

Well the flames might start flying again and we could get another few pages :lol:

Quote
Oh i have almost forgot - i made a quick video of some timelapse progress from midpoint to end point (at least the hour long end point). uploaded the video for you lads to view if you find it curious.

www.spriteart.com/edit/ape_avi.avi

Thanks, I'll have a look

*Just remembered, in case anyone is curious, here is the background this sprite will be on*

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/background11.jpg)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Dr D on August 15, 2009, 08:48:06 pm
Nice, but where does the Yeti's purple backlighting come in at? It doesn't seem to make any sense as far as I can tell. You'd probably be better off losing it completely or changing it to a blue tone.

I do enjoy the way you were intending to go with the fur, though.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: #36005A on August 15, 2009, 09:01:40 pm
Just a speculative observation here, but I think the purple backlighting may have come from the bright/fully-saturated pink that EvilEye has been using for his working background. Notice how Opacus' edit edges away from the purple side and more towards the green side of blue (working on dark green) and st0ven's edit gives the yeti a low-saturation yellow backlight (working on gray).

If his background isn't going to change much, I suggest you start working on a background color that's closer to the actual background he'll appear on, if that's possible.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Dr D on August 15, 2009, 10:30:18 pm
That's a very interesting observation, and I bet there is some truth to it.

It interests me to know about how our mind subconsciously works, especially whilst one is creating art.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Helm on August 15, 2009, 11:58:46 pm
I am glad you enjoyed the thread, I was beginning to think all I did was start a flame war. Apparently I came off as bragging to some people, which I might have done a little of admittedly, but I thought some people would be interested to see how someone with my style does a sprite, along with all the potential pitfalls you can run into.

Of course it is interesting, this thread is, as noted, full of interesting aspects of character creation, and I'd love to see you post more walkthroughs to how you make your art.

However if you've realized a few problems of communication you have induced what would be best in my opinion is if you also came with some apology. Besides insulting me personally with your flippancy and constant unfounded assumptions of braggery (even if I couldn't make a good piece at this size in an hour, that could be a miscalculation on my part and not an attempt to impress anyone... who do I have to impress? I've worked commercially on piece-completion estimation rates where these miscalculations on the side of extra speed actually would cost me money, heh) - while I was trying to help you, no less - you kinda uh, insulted the whole forum a few times with those remarks about how 'nobody has given me decent crits yet'. I mean, even if that's the case and critique you received wasn't usable/useful to you, and I agree this can happen, especially when someone is pixelling at a certain level and is very set in his mind about what he's trying to achieve, people went out of their way, spent their free time to help you, it's a really proactive thing, a wonderful thing in my opinion, and it always deserves respect. Even when help is not useful, it should be appreciated, don't just tell people 'nope, this doesn't help!'.

I don't mean to start more arguing with this, quite the opposite. Any of my hurt feelings have been mended by the inbetween time and also because the resulting art looks good and that reaffirms the positive use of Pixelation no matter the bickering, so I don't really need you to tell me anything, but the rest of the forum, man... Like that line about 'how it was worth it because it riled a few people up', that's straight up trolling.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Scribblette on August 16, 2009, 12:41:16 am
^
|

My ASCII sucks. That aside, new shagginess looks appropriately spectacular. Kudos.

Hoping to get some time this week to give it my own little shot. :)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Chris2balls on August 16, 2009, 08:52:10 am
I think there should be more contrast between the spikes of fur, especially on his head/hump. I'm not sure about that black outline...
In my edit I tried to draw the player's attention on mainly the torso and arms, and shading everything superfluous such as the legs and rump black (more or less), upping the contrast in this aspect. However, after seeing your background I can't see this working as the light seems pretty ambient. But with a white background like that, my idea for fur AAing can work (minus that black outline ;) )!
Waiting for more (and possibly a feature in the news box).
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Conzeit on August 17, 2009, 02:19:00 pm
Well O_O  couldnt resist and took my own stab at this...I kept the pallete pretty minimal...and focused mostly on integrating to the bg.
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/yeti200.png) I didnt clock it but it was atleast 2 hours and 15 mins..maybe half an hour more.That's without counting the time I took to sip up all the ref I could...on that note...here's some walking gorillas =) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZItE4FQU784&feature=related
 The reason for the small pallete is I wanted to make it reasonably animateable at first...but then I just went a litle too fur happy for that :p

EDIT: whoops...I had promissed a ref but I didnt post it :-[...bad form :p

Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: st0ven on August 17, 2009, 04:18:50 pm
conceit: (weird calling you that, heh) -right on! i think that even keeping it simple, you have the most 'fur like' appearance even in minimal form out of all the takes so far. it feels very natural, still pixeled but has that painted look to it. I think your relatively low contrast really helps to keep this illusion.

I think plopping a sprite on the background illustrates something kindof important - even though snow is 'white', it would appear there isnt enough fo a contrast between any slops or valleys or any distinguishing traits about the snow in the foreground - which makes the main focus of the eye the tree layer which is the midground, and it looks unsettlingly empty between the mid layer and the sprite layer with all that dead 'white'ness.

id have liked to have taken my stab at it again knowing the character better now on this background as well to see what i could come up with, but i suppose theres little point after conceit's attempt.

Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Conzeit on August 17, 2009, 04:40:35 pm
Steve...you never did get used to the new screename did ya? heh...I was kind of on a ego-destruction obsession at the time...sometimes I wish it was a lil more positive  :blind:

You really think my version is such a be all end all? well...I'm flattered
I obviously didnt because I kept working on it for a while :p...but the progress is so subjective even I dont know if it's any better at all. I tend to be on the slowpoke side like EvilEye here...and I think that may ruin things on many occasion...it's a matter of knowing when to let go..cause sometimes you want to achieve EVERY little idea that crosses your head and there's just no picture that can contain all that and still be cohesive....I know I've worked some pieces to utter fuglyness :P it's a matter of knowing when to let go, knowing when you're starting to lose your fresh and you're pouring more frustration than joy into the piece...
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 17, 2009, 10:26:14 pm
I am glad you enjoyed the thread, I was beginning to think all I did was start a flame war. Apparently I came off as bragging to some people, which I might have done a little of admittedly, but I thought some people would be interested to see how someone with my style does a sprite, along with all the potential pitfalls you can run into.

Of course it is interesting, this thread is, as noted, full of interesting aspects of character creation, and I'd love to see you post more walkthroughs to how you make your art.

However if you've realized a few problems of communication you have induced what would be best in my opinion is if you also came with some apology. Besides insulting me personally with your flippancy and constant unfounded assumptions of braggery (even if I couldn't make a good piece at this size in an hour, that could be a miscalculation on my part and not an attempt to impress anyone... who do I have to impress? I've worked commercially on piece-completion estimation rates where these miscalculations on the side of extra speed actually would cost me money, heh) - while I was trying to help you, no less - you kinda uh, insulted the whole forum a few times with those remarks about how 'nobody has given me decent crits yet'. I mean, even if that's the case and critique you received wasn't usable/useful to you, and I agree this can happen, especially when someone is pixelling at a certain level and is very set in his mind about what he's trying to achieve, people went out of their way, spent their free time to help you, it's a really proactive thing, a wonderful thing in my opinion, and it always deserves respect. Even when help is not useful, it should be appreciated, don't just tell people 'nope, this doesn't help!'.

I don't mean to start more arguing with this, quite the opposite. Any of my hurt feelings have been mended by the inbetween time and also because the resulting art looks good and that reaffirms the positive use of Pixelation no matter the bickering, so I don't really need you to tell me anything, but the rest of the forum, man... Like that line about 'how it was worth it because it riled a few people up', that's straight up trolling.

Wow, did I really insult the whole forum?

I know I meant to insult some of the forum...

Well regardless, I hereby issue an apology for the offending comments on my part. It seemed to me like some people were just posting flames or bragging, which is why I was saying they weren't helpful.

Well O_O  couldnt resist and took my own stab at this...I kept the pallete pretty minimal...and focused mostly on integrating to the bg.
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/yeti200.png) I didnt clock it but it was atleast 2 hours and 15 mins..maybe half an hour more.That's without counting the time I took to sip up all the ref I could...on that note...here's some walking gorillas =) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZItE4FQU784&feature=related
 The reason for the small pallete is I wanted to make it reasonably animateable at first...but then I just went a litle too fur happy for that :p

EDIT: whoops...I had promissed a ref but I didnt post it :-[...bad form :p



Interesting take conceit :y: Almost looks like a statue.

Still working on my own version.

Getting hard to judge the progress because of all the detail. I've done several makeovers only to throw them away. At this point it's hard to see what's a real improvement vs something that just makes it different.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetianim.gif)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Conzeit on August 17, 2009, 11:10:13 pm
Uhm O_o spent about twice as much time on it.

Again....I think the old one was good enough to go...for the goals I had for it...I just felt like tinkering for the hell of it.
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b340/baybaybom/yeti501.png)

Evileye: I think that's a sign that it's time to stop working on it. if you're just making and scrapping versions over and over for no practical reason you're probably overthinking it...remember it's just an enemy sprite that has to look sufficiently good to represent it's adequate level of menace to the player and fit the themes of the game...no more. No need to be so picky on a simple enemy sprite, be this picky on the main character's design or the main gameplay mechanic or whatever.Forget what you wanted this sprite to become, this sprite becomes what it has to become...if you keep idealizing your original intention you'll end up with a mangled mess of inconsistency and end up frustrated anyway because art just doesnt turn out exactly like you want...and it doesnt even really matter that much...I find when I look back on pieces that I was this anal about I find them extremely neurotic and sort of nonsensical. You yourself said there's something you want to communicate that's "beyond the medium" wether that is the case or not we cant tell you, only you know exactly what you want and you feel you cant make that happen.....so just take it pretty close, make it give a sense of what you wanted to happen and let it go.

PS:
I know I said you should stop...but that's because I see you working directionless...I, as usual have a completely different direction I think you should take your sprite in....so I'm posting it here for the sake of education :p totally dont expect you to swallow this whole just chew it over and play with it in your mouth before you spit it out  ??? :crazy: hopefully it hits you like a bunch of coca leaves and next time you work on something you subconsciously follow my logic  :-\  :huh: :D

I fear that your use of that black terminator shade was rather killing the depth because it's so ubiquitous...you did improve a bit by darkening his right arm BUT now that you've started using white on his legs you went one step forward and two step backwards cause it has gotten even flatter...I believe if you want to keep working on this you should forget about that idealized texture you have in your head, you should fix the posture and the depth...your posture looks quite unnatural.

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GEhRMALPNag/SSNSG41rpJI/AAAAAAAAAJk/9QuCUze6H9Q/s400/gorilla-kingdom5-2561.jpg) here's some ref....and check the YT video on the last post...look at how the gorillas handle themselves, specially their butt ;p
I think you lost A LOT of composition goodness on the translation to sprite and this is usually the case in Pxtion...he feels like he doesnt really know wether he's moving or resting or what, mostly I chalk it up to the back leg being so static...it just doesnt seem a pose a gorilla would assume when walking...also his stomach and just all of his torso looks like it's some weird impossible shape as if you're trying too hard to make his pecs and his belly look a certain whay while forgetting about making him a coherent 3d figure. Maybe you should make a little clay model of him and test out wether you can make a symetric belly and take a photograph that looks like what you have...I wouldnt bet for ya if you did.


it doesnt help that your lighting is making his butt seem as if it's on the same plane as the shoulder...you can look at my version for my idea of a good distribution of lighting in that ambient of ubiquitous  radiant light (maybe look at some polar bears which was what I had in mind).
(http://www.exzooberance.com/virtual%20zoo/they%20walk/polar%20bear/Polar%20Bear%20485024.jpg)
 Personally I believe in your first steps you should completely forget the sketch, first step is blocking out a sillouethe and pay attention to the basic shapes both negative and positive, just creating some interesting composition with a good dynamic feeling and fitting posture for the character. After that you block in with some 3-4 shades (I intented to post this step but I wrote over it) if everything is in it's own plane and it's got good volume stick to that general plan of lighting for the rest of your time on the piece. Otherwise you end up in lighting hell reworking each little knick knack in the sprite because you are indecisive about having a distinct lightness zone for each part OR making everything super clear and detailedv
(I noticed you are there because you just darkened that right arm even though that meant sacrificing some detail....you're not satisfied with your original lighting plan) it's like making a development hell out of a single sprite.

Once you have that blocked out add some buffer shades for the sake of texturing and proper coloring...but dont go batshit obsessive about it....just give a general sense of fur or whatever texture you have, the player doesnt really care wether you achieved the fluffy fur or the 50's fur and really when you're further into the project neither will you.

Aside from that I'd just tell you to integrate the guy into the game...I remember you have posted a few sprites before (I dont know if for the same project) and I think they each had a style that was fairly independent from the style of the last one...I believe you could get away with making this guy practically white by making him polar-ish(which is obviously what I would go for) just for the sake of integrating him with that pure white background...Ultimately it's your place to decide how much he should stick to the general atmosphere of the game and how much he should be tailored to this specifical BG but make sure you are thinking of him as a small part of the entire game and you are not overly focusing on some ideal quality you had in your head while drawing him.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: miscdude on August 20, 2009, 03:03:09 am
I'm very happy about your newest changes. It looks like you finally broke those nasty formed outlines to actually make it look like fur and it looks far better. I believe the clumps work better than individual hairs given his surroundings, because if you look carefully at the polar bear reference you can see that the hairs are less fizzy and open(?) which is likely caused by snow/water.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 20, 2009, 05:43:51 pm

Evileye: I think that's a sign that it's time to stop working on it. if you're just making and scrapping versions over and over for no practical reason you're probably overthinking it...

The same thought had crossed my mind... I am almost done though, not to worry :y:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/YetiTut50.png)

Well? What you think?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: snowsoft on August 20, 2009, 06:45:11 pm
This whole thread has been awesome.

EvilEye, the yeti looks great, but that fur on his chest looks strange to me. The placement of the black on the left side gives it an appearance of the fur coming out of a hole in his chest almost.

A quick edit to show what I mean.
(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f294/meetgavin/yeti.gif)

The black being moved to the left feels and looks more consistent with the lighting you have going on, in my opinion.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: big brother on August 20, 2009, 07:50:01 pm
Is this sprite going to be animated?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 20, 2009, 09:03:50 pm
This whole thread has been awesome.

EvilEye, the yeti looks great, but that fur on his chest looks strange to me. The placement of the black on the left side gives it an appearance of the fur coming out of a hole in his chest almost.

A quick edit to show what I mean.
(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f294/meetgavin/yeti.gif)

The black being moved to the left feels and looks more consistent with the lighting you have going on, in my opinion.

Its difficult to tell but I think you're right.

Is this sprite going to be animated?

:lol: :yell: :blind:

No, all the sprites are static in the battlemode.

What do you think big brother? Is that back leg too messy or does it look ok to you?
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: xhunterko on August 20, 2009, 10:22:55 pm
I'm not big brother, and certainly no where near this good. But! It does look a little messy to me. In fact, it even looks incomplete. Compare the lighting on the top (middle?) of the leg. Shading it a bit more like the center of the main arm perhaps might be a better choice. Right now it looks like he has a hole in his leg. Plus, it appears that there is two light sources for that section, which is a bit confusing. Otherwise, excellent improvement over the original I'd say.

Small off topic bit, highlight to see: Whenever I think of yeti or bigfoot, I always think back to that old movie, "Hairy and the Hendersons".
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: big brother on August 20, 2009, 10:41:51 pm
When I saw this latest version, I thought it looked fairly detailed and refined. Then I remembered you saying that this was for a game. I immediately imagined animating it, secondary motions on the tufts of fur, maybe even some sub-pixeling. I broke out in a cold sweat. Good to hear (for your sanity) that this is a static sprite!

The mauve-colored secondary lighting almost looks like radiosity due to the magenta. As far as defining the shapes are concerned, it looks odd when on the edge of an internal shadow (like on the shins). You have some dithering on the quad, but I don't see you use it anywhere else. This iteration is definitely a huge improvement over the original. It seems like you're more committed to a specific direction with this sprite.

The style of combining comic-book inking with AA and shading reminds me of these sprites:
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/Feb8/SBHU_Supes.png
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/Feb8/SBHU_Bats.png
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Indigo on August 20, 2009, 10:51:40 pm
hah, did you know those are st0ven's sprites, big brother?  I didn't know people ripped those already.  I saw him working on these at work
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 28, 2009, 03:14:21 am
When I saw this latest version, I thought it looked fairly detailed and refined. Then I remembered you saying that this was for a game. I immediately imagined animating it, secondary motions on the tufts of fur, maybe even some sub-pixeling. I broke out in a cold sweat. Good to hear (for your sanity) that this is a static sprite!

The mauve-colored secondary lighting almost looks like radiosity due to the magenta. As far as defining the shapes are concerned, it looks odd when on the edge of an internal shadow (like on the shins). You have some dithering on the quad, but I don't see you use it anywhere else. This iteration is definitely a huge improvement over the original. It seems like you're more committed to a specific direction with this sprite.

The style of combining comic-book inking with AA and shading reminds me of these sprites:
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/Feb8/SBHU_Supes.png
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/Feb8/SBHU_Bats.png

Nice superhero sprites :y: Those animations look great.

I guess all the heavy black shadows is what makes my sprite look comic-book style. Usually I don't do that ( I think ??? ) since I prefer a lighter look.

Personally I am not a big ditherer. I do it sometimes and it just bothers me so I add another color or something. Or use it in a way that makes it look like detail.


Well I think I am done with this, even though there is still something that bothers me about that back leg.

Here is my last edit:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetifinal.png)

I did a portrait but this time wasn't pixeled. I think it came out fine really, no need to put myself through hell again this time.

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetiportrait.png)

Found almost the perfect reference on google:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetiref.jpg (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/yetiref.jpg)

Here is the progression in case someone is interested:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/pprogress.jpg (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/pprogress.jpg)


And here is what it all looks like in-game:

(http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w104/chris_6713/ss1452.jpg)


Phew :blind:

In all seriousness if someone really can pump out something like that in an hour, I would be interested to see how you do it.



Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: st0ven on August 28, 2009, 04:23:06 am
Phew :blind:

In all seriousness if someone really can pump out something like that in an hour, I would be interested to see how you do it.

- I would have really liked to see you expand upon or explore the direction conceit was taking. It feels very natural in the painted environment that you did. He couldnt do it in an hour but he was able to do something really quite nice in a couple hours and i think that putting in that extra 90 minutes of spitshine or so in ones work can really make the difference between getting something done to make progress, and getting something finished to its full potential as a piece of art.

commenting on your game mockup (i know this might be a little off topic from the original intent of the post but it sort of ties back into it in some way in my head - i think). I think the background is nice enough, it gets its point across, and i think the sprite looks quite nice, and the knight sprite looks competent (i personally dont care for his shield by comparison, looks a good bit flatter than the metal in the armor), but the elements, thrown in with the style of HUD elements youve thrown in, none of them really seem to fit into place with one another, so the game screen looks rather disconnected as a result. The purples youve chosen for your yeti seem much more conducive to an icy cave or at night where the light reflects softly off the snow or something. If youre not up for redoing the yeti again which id completely understand, id at least consider studying the palette choices to have it more cohesively match its environment?


The style of combining comic-book inking with AA and shading reminds me of these sprites:
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/Feb8/SBHU_Supes.png
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/Feb8/SBHU_Bats.png

note to BB - i have higher resolution versions of those if youre ever interested in checking them out send me a PM or something. The style was very purposefully chosen to mimic an inked illustration youd expect to find in a comic - i do quite agree now that you brought it up, particularly in EvilEyes most recent rendition with the shadows punching so dark as they do so abruptly.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: r1k on August 28, 2009, 05:13:55 am
I have to agree with st0ven about the different elements in the mock up not matching stylistically.  Mainly because of the "heavy inking" on the sprites, yet the softness of the background.  Aso the cripness and sharpness of the sprites with the relitivly fuzziness of the background.  And while it could just be cause I dont know what the games actually like, but there seems to be alot of unused space in the screen.  The trees also just seem to big too me, compared to the sprites.  I mean I guess they could be very large pines but something about them makes me see them more as smaller pine trees, and the fact that theyre in the distance makes me feel they should be a bit smaller.  It could be because of the way the trees bend and tip over a bit.  I think taller trees tend to be more straight, as a very tall pine bending like that might tip over (? or the trunk is thicker so the weight of the snow/leaves doesnt bend the trunk), and the pines/leaves start higher off the ground, but then again Im not a tree expert in the least.  I like the yeti though.
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: EvilEye on August 28, 2009, 12:25:48 pm
Phew :blind:

In all seriousness if someone really can pump out something like that in an hour, I would be interested to see how you do it.

- I would have really liked to see you expand upon or explore the direction conceit was taking. It feels very natural in the painted environment that you did. He couldnt do it in an hour but he was able to do something really quite nice in a couple hours and i think that putting in that extra 90 minutes of spitshine or so in ones work can really make the difference between getting something done to make progress, and getting something finished to its full potential as a piece of art.

I agree conceits version works a lot better with the background, but I am totally out of steam on this piece, I couldn't redo it again if I had to. I'll save what I've learned for the next one.

Quote
commenting on your game mockup (i know this might be a little off topic from the original intent of the post but it sort of ties back into it in some way in my head - i think). I think the background is nice enough, it gets its point across, and i think the sprite looks quite nice, and the knight sprite looks competent (i personally dont care for his shield by comparison, looks a good bit flatter than the metal in the armor), but the elements, thrown in with the style of HUD elements youve thrown in, none of them really seem to fit into place with one another, so the game screen looks rather disconnected as a result. The purples youve chosen for your yeti seem much more conducive to an icy cave or at night where the light reflects softly off the snow or something. If youre not up for redoing the yeti again which id completely understand, id at least consider studying the palette choices to have it more cohesively match its environment?

That's no mockup, that's a screenshot from the real thing. The HUD is one of those semi-temp things just to get something there, but you're right it doesn't look that good.

The knight was done a while back when I was still learning to use a wacom. It's also not pixeled.

The purple highlights might not be right for this terrain but I will probably use this sprite for another terrain also. The old RPG palette-swap / reuse-sprite trick :y:

I have to agree with st0ven about the different elements in the mock up not matching stylistically.  Mainly because of the "heavy inking" on the sprites, yet the softness of the background.  Aso the cripness and sharpness of the sprites with the relitivly fuzziness of the background.  And while it could just be cause I dont know what the games actually like, but there seems to be alot of unused space in the screen.  The trees also just seem to big too me, compared to the sprites.  I mean I guess they could be very large pines but something about them makes me see them more as smaller pine trees, and the fact that theyre in the distance makes me feel they should be a bit smaller.  It could be because of the way the trees bend and tip over a bit.  I think taller trees tend to be more straight, as a very tall pine bending like that might tip over (? or the trunk is thicker so the weight of the snow/leaves doesnt bend the trunk), and the pines/leaves start higher off the ground, but then again Im not a tree expert in the least.  I like the yeti though.

The unused space is for the other enemies / allies, there are a total of 9 squares on each side. 9 enemies and 9 allies max. The bigfoot is on the front line in the middle. The AI puts him there.

The style differential is a problem, but there's not much I can do. Sometimes I pixel stuff, sometimes I don't. Sometimes it turns out good, sometimes it doesn't. I do the art more as a break from programming then anything. It's more entertainment then work, so a lot of times I'm experimenting. But in the interests of time I can't redo things to make them look consistent.

If you think the trees are too tall in on this background, you should see my swamp :lol: I've got bushes as big as both those sprites :blind:
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Mike on August 28, 2009, 09:08:16 pm
I would just like to say I enjoyed your tutorial style writing and how it used neat little things like the slot machine.  I loled heartily!  :lol:

One thing though...I feel like your sprite could be rotated to the right just a bit because it looks like it's off balance, its driving me nuts.

Here's an edit with the rotation I suggested

(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/yetirotated.gif)
Title: Re: [WIP] The Yeti project
Post by: Ryumaru on August 29, 2009, 05:30:41 am
That portrait could be better done in pixels in little less than an hour...

JK

In all seriousness, I believe the black outline is making the yeti ( who is well done imo btw) stand out a bit too much from the knight, and most likely any other sprites that weren't pixeled. Sel-outing ( the helm way, not the old tsu way) would help a lot. I'd be interested to see what this will look like with the  hud and other elements finalized.