Tutorials for drawing still frame of characters?

[Tetiro]

This may be difficult to explain but here goes. There are a range of games whenever two humans talk between one another, two images appear on the screen to illustrate they are talking. A great example of these images are the characters from the Professor Layton series

Link a Professor Layton page on Spriters Resource. Look at the characters

You also found in some cases, their headshots are used to illustrate them. A good example of this is Final Fantasy 4,5 and 6.



I think the concept of what I wish to learn has been explained. So anyway, I don't suppose anyone has any useful tutorials for being able to sprite still frames of characters?

I'd really appreciate some help with this as I have a game idea which would need these type of sprites.

I definitely claim no credit to the images used in this topic. Kind of a given that I'm requesting for tutorials to be able to sprite them lol

[Ryumaru]

These are called text boxes and " portraits" works just fine in this context, too. There's not really any special technique to doing them, the same pixel art tech applies. I can say thought that those final fantasy ones were done after hand drawn art. Perhaps even by resizing and cleaning up.

[yaomon17]

Watch some of this guy's videos, he draws a lot of portraits.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SqRtOfPi

[yrizoud]

First there is the character design, invent something unique that makes the character recognizable and different from the others.
Then there is the pose (tricky but still important in portraits shots) : Is the character seen from slightly above (he's short) or slightly below (he's tall), standing straight like a I, or slumped, looking forward or away. This is part of character traits.

Specifically for pixel technique, take great care in the eyes: You should pixel them early, in order to align the face according to them. Look at the 3rd portrait in your FF V Advance protraits : The eyes are 4px wide each and define the entire geometry of the face.

[Tetiro]

Hey guys again, a few months later from this and I'm still having problems drawing decent characters.

Does anyone have any other tutorials? Preferably for beginners?