Clown WIP

[hapiel]

Hi guys,
I am planning to make some sprites, see where this goes. Animations with this character, perhaps other characters, or a whole circus tileset, who knows?
Any comments or critique is welcome, it is some time ago since I last touched (pixel)art.

I create them for a 2x view. Is it therefor more useful to post them 2x, or 1x as anybody can zoom in on them? This time i'll do both
So far I like the character, but not so much the colors.
Who knows what I can think of to improve





Thanks in advance!
Hapiel

[Psiweapon]

Whoa, creepy.

[KhrisMUC]

You can zoom in by clicking on the image. So just post everything at 1x.
Those are two different images btw.

[Decroded]

...and shift-click to zoom out.
I think it looks good and scary.
If you have some other messed up ideas like that then keep em coming lol.

[hapiel]

That is some quick response!

I had a quick go at a simple animation. When I started to have it go up and down it still looked okay. Then I added the hands and it got worse, I had a go at bouncing the hair which was really really bad (I removed it), and then I did the mouth which is also crap...

Luckily I can say I have learned from it: It is not possible to do subtile animation on icons this small.. So I better make the next idle animation very expressive!

Oh, and speaking of the zoom: On Chrome this gives a very blurry effect... But if all other people view with FF and like to see it in 1x too, I will keep on posting 1x
--
Edit:
I think I improved it here, although it is still not as good as I want. Perhaps it should be less active, less general (like no breathing, shaking heads/hands but something more special), but that will be harder to animate, and in my mind I do not see ideas yet which can loop all the time..


--
And another edit  :



I am not sure about the entrance, but for the rest I like the tent. What else can it have to make it more interesting, or any other kind of entrance? Does the entrance really need to be big enough to fit the clown?
And last, but perhaps most important: How am I going to manage and optimize my palette if I am going to have lots of different images using the same palette? Perhaps I should paste them all in one big image every now and then and see what I can improve (and then manually edit all animations and such -_-)

EDIT

Which one do you like?

[hapiel]

Good keyframes or not good keyframes?
-* to be continued.. *-

[hapiel]

Finally I found some time to work on this again!

Here is the laughing, but it is not yet so natural.
Not that it should be natural, I mean this clown is not that realistic, but it should be better


Any tips? Where did I go wrong?

For the tent, I created another entrance, but I do not like it either. Any suggestions? The rest of the tent looks pretty good I think!

[Mathias]

Ok, so you're just kinda experimenting around eh? This clown thing isn't necessary for any one project; not as asset in a game, right? Because if it's part of a larger world, the context needs to considered of course, in tossing out crit.
I like the new tent opening better.



On the clown

-make his throw his head back more maniacally when laughing so there's more pixels moving around, the animation becomes more impressive when everything moves

-arm movement is quite odd/twitchy

-You got white strays by hands and top of head

-Try making eyes squint real small and open mouth bigger when laughing. Maximize the craziness.

[hapiel]

So far this world contains 1 tent and 1 clown, thats it .

Thanks for the comments about the clown! I do not understand where the stray pixels are coming from, they do not show in my image editor (GraphicsGale)

Of course, I should do the eyes the other way around... Big when the mouth is small, small when the eyes are big. I will turn that around and see if I can throw his head back, you are right that it should be maniacal!

[hapiel]

I ditched the animation for now, I could not get it how I wanted. Perhaps I will try later again

Do you like giraffes?

[schmohawk]

I would love to see the color and background be more sinister and 'dark carnival-esque'. Maybe under a purple dusk sky or a creepy forrest.

[Sigil]

I love the giraffe X3

I agree with having it be a little more creepy instead of bright happy blue sky and green green grass. It'll also make his bright colors stand out more.

[hapiel]

I am usually not so fond of a sinister theme, but I could always try out alternate palettes and see if I change my mind . Both clowns would fit in it, but would the giraffe?

The bright colors are already standing out right? I mean, the whole piece is kinda 'in-your-face' because of the colors...
I still do not know what I have to do with the wagon...

[hapiel]

HI guys,

Any comments yet on this impoved and extended version?

[hapiel]

When I started with the clown, I had never thought it would evolve into this. It won't get much larger I guess