AuthorTopic: Newbie trying to pixel elephants  (Read 12368 times)

Offline r1k

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #20 on: August 07, 2013, 12:53:44 pm
ya, try to make them look more like pokadots.  Heres a quick edit, with perhaps an excessive amount of spots:



after doing the edit, and then looking at your spots, I found the problem with yours.  Look at the spot on the back in yours.  See how the shading on the spot conforms to the shape of the spot, rather than having the same shading as the elephant's back?  This makes it look like the spot is actually a form on the elaphants back popping out.  Add to that the color and shape, and it reads as a blister.
Check how the shading on my spots differs.

edit: after looking at yours again, I can see that you didnt intentially try to shade the spots like theyre popping out.  But theyre unfortuniatly placed, such that they appear to be shaded that way.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2013, 12:56:23 pm by r1k »

Offline Sharm

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #21 on: August 07, 2013, 01:54:02 pm
Even with R1k's edit I find the spots distracting and neither looks very cute to me.  Cute things have large foreheads, large eyes, short pudgy extremities like arms, legs, fingers, and noses.  Right now he's pretty cute but facet's edit is cuter because it has a larger, more defined forehead and the lighting gives structure to the face that emphasizes his cute features and sad expression.  BTW, at the moment your elephant's hind legs are smaller than the forelegs.  It should be the other way around.

Offline Facet

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #22 on: August 07, 2013, 06:38:44 pm
Excellent, glad to help :)

For the markings: Indian elephants have freckles around the face which could be a nice way to add colour/draw attention facewards, either way I'd lower the contrast/shade contiguously as r1k (do check the rest of the blog for tons of excellent elephant drawings and reference)

I increased the forehead before instinctively, but bigger=cuter makes a lot of sense; first diagram on WP! I can't help seeing those two prominent folds in the ears as incisions still.

Offline Sophistique

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #23 on: August 10, 2013, 12:47:22 pm
Hmm... I see what you all mean by the white markings look like blisters, I'd prefer to keep the markings if I could, seems to be a vital "characteristic" about the character, that is if I can get them to look right. I think the issue might be that the white 'spots' are sitting where the light source is hitting them (on the back, the top of the legs etc), so that might be working against me. I'll work around it, as I said, would like to keep them if I could.

I did a few more sketches for 'concepts' again, trying to add in the cuteness factor a lot more - shorter legs, heads a little bigger than the body, the body a little more oval/squared etc. Feel free to critique them - I'm going to try pixelling one or two of them up & make a few small  changes to them (the scared guy looking behind him for example needs his body position changed as I LOVE the head expression, but his body looks like he is about to fall over lol)

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Offline Mr. Fahrenheit

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #24 on: August 10, 2013, 04:18:43 pm
Check this out if you havent seen it already:

Offline Sophistique

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #25 on: August 11, 2013, 03:49:52 pm
Thanks Mr Fahrenheit, that helps a lot, I'll try those in a few sketches - worked on a new "scared guy" a little more and pixelled him tonight - something seems a little off about him. Made a LOT of changes on him already which have made some great improvements so far, but really want to hammer home the "OMG WHAT THE F@#^ IS THAT?!?!?" terrified look (he'll be shaking/shivering in game because he's so scared).

He'll also be greyed out - the "not happy" state Effelants are grey, and they turn blue when they are happy, was colouring the other guys to get practice in.

Grey:



This was him coloured:



I think the 'lighter blue' spots look a lot better
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Offline r4c7

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #26 on: August 14, 2013, 02:43:03 am
This was him coloured:



I think the 'lighter blue' spots look a lot better
This is really a huge improvement! I'm really loving your progress.



In my edit one of the first things I did was to try and emphasize the 45 degree line on the trunk and hind leg. The second was mess with the shading specifically on the ear and body. Honestly, the body should probably have a bit of a highlight, but I cheesed it and got rid of it altogether. Third I did some major changes to the trunk and hair. I added more wrinkles to the trunk, looks kinda ok, would still need a lot of work though. The hair looked like it wasn't part of him because of the outline. other than that, I did a lot of minor things like tweaking the eyes, I think I took some weight off of him, made an elbow in the background front leg, a lot of anti-alias, etc.

I hope this helps, but really, your doing a great job and I hope you continue.

Offline Sophistique

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #27 on: August 18, 2013, 06:20:28 am
Thanks r4c7 - I see what you mean with the edits, I'll keep refining this guy as I really, really like him a lot. I also fixed up the jaggies on his trunk & ears in another edit I done recently which helped a lot.

Thank you!
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Offline Decroded

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Re: Newbie trying to pixel elephants

Reply #28 on: September 11, 2013, 03:11:07 pm
 :P

My fave bit on this edit was the feet.
Makes me wanna draw a mouse now but its way past bed time  :-[
Personally interested in how this could be rendered better without more light sources.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2013, 03:33:35 pm by Decroded »