GR#143 - Blacksmith - Sprite Process

[Mrwhitepantz]

Spent some time reworking his arm and hand.  I'm not entirely content with how it turned out yet.
Moved the anvil some, but again not sure how I feel about it yet.  I almost feel like I need to alter the angle of the anvil to pull it more level with his  stance and positioning.
I tried angling the bar a bit. Found that I didn't enjoy pulling it away from a straight edge to angle it.

Let me know what you think. Feel free to C&C some more on the stance and his build. I am beginning to feel more comfortable recomposing his stance as I improve with my ability to draw and color. 

That hand looks a lot better, nice job. I think the the anvil is working well, the angle could maybe be adjusted a little bit, but I think it would also be fine the way it is. The bar, even though it is still straight, looks pretty good. Pulling it over and changing his hand made it look a lot more natural. The only thing bugging me now is that his right arm feels stiff and like it's sticking straight out, elbow locked type of deal. I think if you put just a slight bend in that arm, maybe show the elbow a little or deepen the shadows on the inside of the bend, you'd be pretty happy with the result.

[Johasu]

  Those were my exact thoughts when I posted it. That I should probably find a way to pull that arm back so it doesn't look so straight. Give some depth shading to the elbow and pull it inward some so it looks bent more. Edit will be coming along at some point later today.


Attempted to bend the arm some. I keep fiddling with it more, but this was the closest I came to being satisfied with it at so far.  I'm switching over to something else for a few hours and hope that when I return to it that something clicks for me.
Any comments or assistance are, as always, greatly appreciated.   

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

The separation between his pecs and his lower torso has a bit too much contrast.  His bicep should be a bit smaller. Something like this is what I was imagining:


You've definitely come bounds since your start. Maybe try giving his lighting some color from the glowing metal and the candle.

[Johasu]

Thanks for the input. My progress has been at no small expense of time and effort. I have been using this particular piece to basically ram in dozens of hours of pixel/art study. I decided I wanted to learn so I'm giving it my all. The guidance of others has helped me to grow in ways I never could have managed on my own.
I will get an edit up shortly taking into consideration your pointers. I doubt I will play with the orange/red lighting from the bar too much at this point. I have previously, but everything I came up with felt far TOO orange and I couldn't seem to get it to work right. I'm just not good enough with the palette choices yet.
Thanks again for your help!  I really appreciate it.   

Played with the right and left arms some more.  Worked his waistline some and took that advice on dimming the contrast line in his midsection.
I'm feeling fairly good about it at this point. Although I have yet to find a way to create the light effect with offset colors. ~Still trying~
If anyone has some more feedback, I would love to hear it. I'm looking for new ways to challenge myself with this piece. I've started another major edit but haven't yet brought it to a level I feel comfortable showing as it is still heavy [WIP].

[PixelPiledriver]

I did some edits a few posts back but forgot about them.



Sorry no time for text.

[Mrwhitepantz]

I did some edits a few posts back but forgot about them.



Sorry no time for text.

I love the ones with super manly chest and armpit hair. Very manly.

[Johasu]

   That's sorta where I was taking this but I'm working on the individual components a bit first. I found an image of a smithy in an old castle and was trying to use it for reference. I'm not very quick, as I still take quite a bit of time selecting my colors and tweaking them back and forth. I will get a rudimentary update of my version of the scene up sometime soon.

These are super cool.  I hadn't even considered the idea of placing more body hair on him. I love the way different takes on his eyes and nose can completely change his face in a way that gives him an entirely different personality.  Pixel art is so fun. 


[[WIP WARNING]] This is what I have been working on now. I realize that I am going to have to alter the lighting angles on everything as I place a fire in. I'm posting an update to show where it's going and maybe get some critique on the overall layout. Making silly mistakes that just don't seem congruous after I look it over.
Questions:

1: Does the angle of the tiles on the floor (they aren't finished at all) look odd when lined up with the furnace/wall.

2: Does the furnace to wall angle seem a bit awkward?  Should I angle either one away?  I wasn't really going for a smooth quadrangle room, but are the odd angles off putting enough to be bothersome?  I'm thinking about turning the furnace more downward or laterally to match the wall or feel more apart from the wall.  ~It might be easier to angle the wall away though, not that easy was my goal.~

3:  Finally any advice on color palette shifts for the wall and/or advice on how to do the stone tiles on the floor.  I was aiming for a sort of diagonal layout of offset square tiles to challenge myself.  [Maybe bit off more than I was ready to chew there. ] 

4: Does the off center placement of the character force more attention on the furnace layout?  Should I move him back to the center by widening the shot or cutting off the edge of the furnace?

Anyway, my thanks for any comments or critical assistance on this. Advice is greatly appreciated and I'm really looking to push my limits to new levels with this new layout.

[Mrwhitepantz]

1: Does the angle of the tiles on the floor (they aren't finished at all) look odd when lined up with the furnace/wall.

I don't think your floor tiles look odd when they are lined up with the furnace or the wall, however, they do look odd because the left side is much more angled than the right side.

2: Does the furnace to wall angle seem a bit awkward?  Should I angle either one away?  I wasn't really going for a smooth quadrangle room, but are the odd angles off putting enough to be bothersome?  I'm thinking about turning the furnace more downward or laterally to match the wall or feel more apart from the wall.  ~It might be easier to angle the wall away though, not that easy was my goal.~

You should definitely pull the furnace off of the wall. It's a decent position, right behind him, but there isn't really anything to indicate that it is closer than wall, which it should be. I'm not sure how to explain this exactly, maybe all it needs is shading on the wall, but it should be a separate entity, rather than like a part of the wall.

3:  Finally any advice on color palette shifts for the wall and/or advice on how to do the stone tiles on the floor.  I was aiming for a sort of diagonal layout of offset square tiles to challenge myself.  [Maybe bit off more than I was ready to chew there. ] 

I think the diagonal offset could work out fine, but you might try using a color closer to the stone that the anvil is sitting on, rather than the blue thing you've got going on there. I think the bricks on the forge could stand to be a bit darker/redder, but I'm not exactly certain what effect you're going for there.

4: Does the off center placement of the character force more attention on the furnace layout?  Should I move him back to the center by widening the shot or cutting off the edge of the furnace?

Are you familiar with the rule of thirds? I don't think that the off-center hurts necessarily, but you could definitely widen the whole shot if you wanted to create a larger scene. I wouldn't cut off more of the furnace, but maybe if you widened it to show the sides of it as well, possibly shrinking the whole thing by a bit it could help.

Another thing I just noticed, it looks to me like the forge is slanting downwards. The line on the bottom of the opening should be parallel to the floor line, but it looks like they get narrower as the go to the left. Maybe I'm just seeing things, but it also feels like the bricks on the bottom half which should be farther away (on the right) are bigger than the ones that should be closer (on the left).

These are just my initial thoughts as a viewer, I'm certainly no art critic; I just wanted to give you a different perspective, since you've probably been staring at for awhile.

[Ai]

The furnace to wall angle is not 'awkward' so much as 'impossible' -- it appears that the back corner of the furnace would most likely be within the wall.

This is basically because the perspective is inconsistent.



* eyes are out of perspective ( though this is somewhat excusable, it would still look better if fixed)
* back wall is out of perspective.

There are two basic guidelines to go by here:
A) vanishing points should fit onto the same line. Usually, but not always, this is a straight horizontal line.
B) If you're using a non-perspective view (this is called an 'orthographic' view, size does not diminish with distance), then the angle on the canvas of any plane along the normal axes (X,Y,Z) should be uniform.

In this case, I suspect you are using an orthographic projection. Your back wall is at an angle which is about 15 degrees off the possible angles defined by the faces of the anvil. Therefore, the furnace is at 15 degrees to the wall, rather than what I suspect you wanted, 90 degrees.


(I also had setup a very quick+dirty illustration of how to make the furnace visually stand in front of the wall, before I noticed the perspective/projection issues. Basically just enforced a jump in value between the wall and the furnace.)

EDIT:
BTW, the floor tiles, they're out of perspective no matter what: the floor is projected in perspective whereas most other elements are projected orthographically. That said I think it's a nice effect, but you would have to redo the projection of most other objects to match it in order to eliminate the current 'objects float above the ground rather than rest on it' effect.

[Johasu]

Feeling like I have been a bit verbose in my replies and postings so, I'm going to try to keep it a touch more concise.
[First]                [New]                      [Framing]

Started by trying to push wall back away. Didn't like it. Worked on redesigning the layout with a new perspective arrangement.
Testing the layout of the furnace with some bad wire framing technique to see how it lines up. Reworked floor.  Preparing for wall revamp.
Any crits on current layout? I lined up the perspective based on the lines of the anvil base.  It was the only thing I had which was concrete(snicker) in it's form.  I'm no expert on perspective yet so I may need to do a bit more tweaking before I do any heavy coloring such.