Black Knight WIP

[wolfenoctis]

Hi guys, I'm trying to make a black knight from Dark Souls, but I'm having trouble making it look good. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.



reference: http://extragamebox.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Dark-Souls-The-Dark-Knight-And-Black-Background.jpg

[birkka]

i'm a novice but i think you must use more light  colors 
we can't see the details

[Crow]

Yay, Dark Souls! This is a pretty solid start. Still lots to improve, though. In your current rendition, he looks like he's about to fall over, so you need to straighten him up a little I'd say. Another issue is that a black knight's armor really is black. It only looks sort of dark red-ish in your reference because of the flames as a light source. Finally, both the armor and his sword should be shiny. Right now, both look rather dull. Don't be afraid of using very light highlight tones or adding more contrast in general.

[wolfenoctis]

Ok, I tried to straighten him up and lighten the colors, the more I tamper the worse he looks 

[Cyangmou]

I really like your idea - it's something I also wanted to try out some time ago (dark fantasy, evil and slightly noble - I really like the art direction of the game), because I wondered if it's possible to achieve a similar feeling with pixel art but it doesn't seem to be possible with that small resolution (in terms of pixel art it's already big) and isometry is usually great for this more realistic styles.

Because I had no time I never came around to try it, but you brought it up and I decided to do a little edit.
However I was carried away because of my own ambitions and ended up with a completely own piece of art.
After all I think it's not possible to reproduce the same feeling dark souls has with pixel-game-art.

to give you some critique:
-your shield faces in the wrong direction. if he'd raise it the peak would be at the top.
-your pose is rather static, the head is way back. Even if it's just standing a bit more dynamic livens up the whole thing.
-the sword looks really jagged. You should try to use pixel-perfect lines

here is my attempt:

11 colors (3 more than yours, dunno if the 8 were your personal limit), gray bg because the white of the standard skin here is a color-killer

I used this references:
http://abload.de/img/8cccdbcb155b2efb9bc513hrv8.jpg
http://abload.de/img/hzfkl9vgq5pxn.jpg

[Decroded]

omg Dark Souls! 

Wolf I love the sprite but see overhighlighting on your latest version.
Highlighting all your
And try working against a mid-grey background like Cyg.

I feel Cyg's edit looks awesome but the lovely gold trims and nice blue backlighting detracts from the feeling of the game.
Trims are great but a little less saturation would fit better IMO:

A browner different tint to the armor would be more fitting too.
Here's a rushed version with readability issues (armor TOO similar to trims) but I don't have time to improve it right now

[wolfenoctis]

Hi guys, here's an update:

spent all night trying to get this to work, this is what I came up with, what do you guys think?

@Cyangmou
Thank you for you nice edit, although as you say, not the same feeling as dark souls.
Your half right about the shield direction, the player does hold the shield like that, but black knight enemies hold it differently
here is a reference(so hard to find a screenshot of enemy black knights):
http://i.stack.imgur.com/kWZlm.png
Now that I look at it though, my shield is a little too small, I'm gonna work on the sword and shield a bit more

Also I have no limit on colors

@decored
Thank you for participating, however I can't see your second image, would you mind re-uploading it please?

[Crow]

(so hard to find a screenshot of enemy black knights)

Provide! http://crategam.es/ds_black_knight/
Static ones are difficult, so I just capped a screen every second during my fight. I tried getting some without the enemy lock-on during the first couple seconds, but it's not as easy as it looks. If you want, I can give it a spin again with motion blur turned off. Should provide some cleaner shots (didn't think about it before I shot this).

[wolfenoctis]

WOW Crow, thanks a lot for all your effort  , those screens really helped

Here's an update:

[Cyangmou]

Your last version nails the ingame color of the knight pretty much, although the sword seems to bright. It's by far more interesting to look at it then the red or silver version.


I never played the game (because it lacked an appropriate pc version - at least from what I read). Crow's screenshots were very interesting, because I only used the concept art and the character looks way different than the concept art and how I envisioned certain things.

The thing which gave me a hard time to imagine was how the knight holds his shield (I also researched some things throughout the web) - but it seems that the developers used a non-realistic approach (or a realistic approach I don't know) with a single anchor point to make the movements more impressive and stylish which is a rather cool observation nonetheless.

(this three ones show the movement flexibility pretty good)
http://crategam.es/ds_black_knight/DATA%202013-05-30%2008-55-51-29.jpg
http://crategam.es/ds_black_knight/DATA%202013-05-30%2008-55-55-29.jpg
http://crategam.es/ds_black_knight/DATA%202013-05-30%2008-56-08-29.jpg


Here are some pics of realistic shield handles and some links from my research, maybe it's interesting for someone:

classical shield handle


kite shield handle:


scutum handle:


overview:


article about shields:
http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_shield.html

Post #76
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?120683-Big-Shields/page3
(rather interesting read)