Emo... Alien... Thing?[C+C]

[PsylentKnight]

I think I have the final iteration of the clown from my previous thread, so I'm don't want any feedback on him. I just wanted to show him and the new character side-by-side so you can see the color scheme I've got going here.

Anyway, on the subject of the new girl- for context, she's a bored teenager working a carnival booth, which I obviously haven't provided for her yet lol. I'm a pretty happy with her, and I promise that I won't make a habit of posting each and every character I make, but I just wanted to see your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

[astraldata]

At first I thought she was a mini-person laying down, but I couldn't tell what was going on with her hands (or where they even were!). I think you should probably draw her fingers going through her hair a little bit to show she's leaning on her hand. Although after a bit of looking, it's not too hard to tell that loop of white and blue is her arm, but it doesn't add anything to the silhouette aside from a bit of confusion. You should, at the very least, show her hair responding to her hand in it.

Outside of those things, I've got nothing. As always, your characterization is awesomely toungue-in-cheek. Keep up the good work man!

As an aside, I know you didn't ask for clown feedback, but I miss his lower-eyelids making the almost upside-down 'U' shape. He looked so sickeningly miserable with those -- they really justified the tear-wiping device! Now he just looks a bit curious and almost hopeful since he's looking skyward with clear and mostly open-eyes (not like the 'sad' I thought you were going for imo). Otherwise, nice job on him too! I hope you post more character designs. These are just fun to play with.

[PsylentKnight]

The mini person laying down illusion should be fixed once she's in place behind the counter of her booth. Then it will be clear that its just her from her chest up. I've actually finished her idle animation, in which she blows her hair off to the side to reveal the rest of her arm and part of her other eyes for just a second, so its more clear that she's resting her head on her arm. However, I made it in GraphicsGale so I can't export it as a gif. Do you know what program I can use where I can import the sprite sheet and export a gif? I would use ASEprite but it always screws the colors up. Thats my one qualm with ASEprite... everything else is perfect, but the colors are a pain.

As for the clown, yea, I might add back the eyelids lol. And I need to add back the balloon and hat device... I originally just put him by the new character as a size reference, but I got super distracted redoing his palette and such. I think I spent more time editing him than I did on the new character from start to finish haha. 

And thanks for your compliments. Bizarre and dramatic creatures are kind of my specialty in my regular, graphite art, so I'm hoping they'll bring a lot to my game. That's why I'm spending so much time on them. Merry Christmas dude.

[astraldata]

As far as Graphics Gale goes, I use it constantly. I rarely use the GIF export feature even though I have the full version since I save as .PNG strips for my animations, and .gal otherwise. The GIF settings are really finicky in many programs, so, to combat that, the "export to combined image" option + .PNG to generate animation strips in Gale suited me best (this can be done in the FREE version as well ). I've messed with ASE before, but it was just too erratic for me (at least the windows version I tried was).

I rarely export as GIF, but when I do, I use Gale (unchecking OPTIMIZE of course). I think it's worth what they ask for it, despite it having a couple of quirks, because it's top-notch at letting you do what you need to with the pixels, especially for animation. They may have made GIF support better in more recent versions, so it could be an option to see what other people think of that feature since I don't use it much. I haven't hand any destructive glitches with my GIF files in Gale though, as long as I unchecked optimize before saving. If you're planning to do an entire game though, I really feel like Gale is the way to go if you're used to the right-click to grab-colors/select-areas and like the ability to customize your shortcuts/scroll through frames with the mouse-wheel, etc.

You can always post your frames here, and those who are using gale can import the strips "from a combined image" easily enough, plus it helps us to see the construction of each frame that way (albeit less effective for demonstrating the animation itself until we import it of course, but if you're worried about an awkward animation at the construction stage, this is always a good way to go).

I did find one that seems like it would work pretty well actually. I still suggest Gale over this, but do what you have to do:

http://rmrk.net/index.php?topic=41524.0

Hopefully that helps you out dude. And Merry Christmas to you too man! I can't wait to see more of your characters! ^_^

[Agent K]

I really like editing your chars 

That being said I might have done too much, but I swapped out your dithering for clusters, I just feel that dithering on this small a scale is tough to utilize and that clusters are more appealing, but thats just my opinion.  I smoothed out her face a little and got rid of her duck lips (don't know if that is what you were going for or not.)  I also added and ear, and here is why even though it may not be inline with your origional view.  This char is an optical illusion that has been giving me a headache and the ear still didn't fix it, but I think it helped.  She is capable of looking straight ahead, which I think is the intended view, and also she can look to her left and lean back on the arm supporting her head with her mouth on the side of her face....somehow niether really looks wrong lol.  I lowered he left shoulder, moved her pupil and added the ear all to try and negate it, but she still turns her head!    But anyway you stuff is fun to play with man keep up the good work 

[PsylentKnight]

@astraldata: Thanks, I didn't know about the export to combined image. I'll try that later... I'm on different computer right now. I'll look at that other program too.

@AgentK: I think it looks better without the dithering as well. I think the body of her hair looks a lot better, especially where it parts on her head.




I'm working on another character now. I'll post it if you guys want... you don't have to critic it, just if you're curious.

EDIT:

I'm not sure I really like this one...

[PixelPiledriver]

He's cool looking.
Its somewhat hard to tell which direction he is facing at first glance.
There are also some clarity issues as to what he is and the flow of his forms.
Re use some of the neutral colors on his hat, they are good.
Here are some thoughts:

[PsylentKnight]

Ah yes, I like the cape a lot better, it makes him look more like a carnie than some lard in a t-shirt. It also makes his body more interesting... I tried adding white stripes before for that reason, but they looked awful. And I like his nose a lot better too. I'm going to take your version and make his face look just a little younger, probably just by making his eyes and cheeks less sunken. All of these yellow characters (plus the main character) are supposed to be approximately the same age as they're all siblings of the same litter.

[PsylentKnight]

Here's the ticket booth. Still a WIP.