Magician - NES shopkeeper girl

[Helm]

Hi. I like images of vendor and shopkeeper girls in videogames. There's this one that's my favorite from old NES game, Magician



I find it very charming, the girl looks youthful and innocent. But the pixel art is kinda rough (so much better than a lot of NES-era pixelling, still). I edited it a little, first to remove banding and then I thought what the hell let's do this properly and did quite a bit more.



I changed the colors but I didn't add more of them. I've been wondering what more to edit. Do you think, like a friend I showed it to that the hands foreshortening just doesn't work and the hands need to be completely redrawn? What about the bricks in the back? I don't want to steer too far from the original because as I said, I find it charming. But a few more tricks might help. Here's what I don't want to do:

1. Add more colors

2. 'Fix' the value range any more than I already have. Part of the charm of the image is that it's like it has a gamma fault to begin with.

3. Make the palette newschool, you know, tints and smart stuff. I like it monochromatic


I'm toying with the idea of making the candle throw off a light circle around it but actually in real life candles aren't like, torches, so the original might be a better thing. I could antialias the flame a bit.

Suggest changes or edit them yourself or fix my bad changes, whatever. Let's play around with this old piece of artwork a little.


EDIT: also here's a good chance to dump images of shopkeeper girls from videogames for me. There's just so many. Remember the AD&D arcade games? Those had some good ones. Forgotten Worlds had another of my favourites. If you find any, let me know.

[Cure]

the hands definitely need reworking, their awkwardness immediately caught my eye.
perhaps a shadow for the underside of the breasts?

[JJ Naas]

Good subject and a nice screenhot to work on. I also liked such images on rpgs , and the tavern/shop enviroment offers a chance to play around with varying light sources. Your edit added some detail but didn't change the character, so that's all good. The general light source is so unnatural, that incorporating a single natural light source to the picture would not work, unless you somehow manage to turn the general light source more realistic first, which might in turn destroy the original charm of the shopkeeper girl.

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Not an RPG in a strict sense, and not actually a portrait image either, but this is the one I'll always remember. I never got anywhere with her, allegedly it's possible. The character graphs are alright, the rest is choking on dither:

[HughSpectrum]

The hands in the original pic appear to be that they wanted to squeeze them into an 8x8 block then mirror them.  It almost looks like they mirrored the forearms too (which they did a better job of).

[Helm]

Oh I loved flirting with her in QFG2 as well. I think that's where I heard first that 'if you have to ask for it you probably don't deserve it'. Play as a thief, make the thief sign to her and you'll get... further.

Yeah the lightsource is unnatural and that's a good thing, makes the image kinda spectral.



hand edit, consideration for candle flame

[Tourist]

That girl looks horribly distorted.  Your edit very much refined the face, but it emphasized the distortion in the process.

Large head, long neck, ok.
Shoulders and upper torso are a little smaller, eh, ok.
Lower torso is crushed, and worse, flat.  Maybe she is wearing a high-waist peasant dress, but the lacing and belt are perfectly horizontal and flat, and the foreshortened arms don't help.

It looks like amateur work where the artist started at the top and ran out of room.
Recommend total rework of the lower torso and arms, possibly resizing the head and neck too.

Colors:
I know you said you didn't want to change the colors, but it deserves a comment.  You've got 3 lights, one medium, one medium dark and black.  Trading a light for another medium would help.  Maybe a slightly red, slightly darker than the current medium color.  This would give you a darker red to ramp with the pink and work as an AA color between the brown (medium dark) and gold (medium).

I almost posted this yesterday (twice).  Maybe I'm missing the point somewhere.  Helm, you're a much better artist than I am.  So why avoid fixing the colors?  Or the basic shape problems?  I don't see charming, I see mediocrity.  Please tell me if I'm completely wrong, but this could be made so much better with significant rework.

Anyway, here is an edit, using your colors:

• Redid the face with generic cute girl face #612.  Gave her plump cheeks to emphasize youth.
• The head is smaller by 2-3 pixels which lets it fit the body better, and the eyes line up with the horizontal brickwork line on the right.
• I went larger on the eyes.  I think this size is right at the border between one pixel larger and one pixel smaller for the size of the eyes.  Without any more colors to make a half-pixel difference, I went larger.
• Cleaned up a lot of the pointless dither on the chest, collar and neck.
• Partial rework on the dress.  Pulled the top of the dress up a pixel or two. Shaved the shoulders a bit.  Tried to keep the torso dithering like the original, but my dithering skills are poor.  Here is another spot for a second medium color, because if you squint at this, she looks topless.  Not what I was going for.  Also, lighting is inconsistent with the jaw/neck lighting.
• Arms still need a ton of work, they just look terrible.
• Still some banding and whatnot to cleanup.

Ok, tired of working on this.  Leaving it even with the arms so terrible.  Really needs one more medium shade.

Tourist

[Helm]

Your edit and concerns are legitimate, it's just that I can't explain why I find something charming. As an excercise it's a success for you to go through this process you went through on your edit, of assessing the different parts and troubleshooting the problems, and I hope the thread seems more of them.

Yes, the head is too big for the body in the original and in my edit. I think that's part of the charm somehow, I will agree it looks wonky if you don't find it charming and obviously if it was my own art I'd have strived for some more realistic proportions. The problem with fixing that is that I don't want to touch the face as that's a big part of why I like the image. I'd have to resize the body instead. I might do an edit anyway.

[JJ Naas]

• Redid the face with generic cute girl face #612.

I think you may have spotted the charm of the character just there. While the original character has many anatomical and related issues, not being generic looking she actually looks like a real person, someone with a name, someone you might have known IRL, someone with a hint of personality beyond "We don't often see handsome adventurers like you in our humble inn".

[Cow]

This is really quaint and lovely. Maybe do a little more with the highlights on the side of the head that would be lit by the candle? Also, it seems skewed to me, moving the entire head/cleavage/all to the right seems to do the trick:

[Tourist]

I considered this and I think you all are right.  Replacing the original face with a generic one obliterates any charm the character has, and it was a poor artistic choice.  

But I still call the original mediocre, and think Helm probably scribbles better art on his dinner napkins.  

Tourist