AuthorTopic: GR#167 - Creature From Hell - Shading  (Read 14363 times)

Offline Zizka

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GR#167 - Creature From Hell - Shading

on: January 31, 2014, 12:39:35 pm


I would like some input as to how to improve this.

The reference is this one:


I will then proceed to animate it flying.

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #1 on: February 01, 2014, 08:46:56 pm
That is quite a complex monster for the size of the sprite. I made an edit to address some issues and help with that, but I'm not sure I even translated it extremely well. Some things to consider:
- try and think of things in 3 dimensions. give the body a more spherical shape and shade it to represent that.
- Focus more on overall forms rather than details- some things just cannot be represented at such a small size.
- I tweaked the colors a bit. If you look at the reference you'll notice the main colors are black, red, and yellow. "Black" actually has a different color highlight to it than the others, so I threw in a cooler ( closer to violet) dark color to represent that.

Hope this is of some help, good luck on the animation!

Offline Zizka

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #2 on: February 02, 2014, 07:12:15 pm
Thanks for the edit, りゅまる。

I agree, it's pretty complex for the size. I just saw your edit as I came to post my new version so your criticism hasn't been taken into account unfortunately (as I had not read it before). I've saved it to my hard drive and will try to implement it next time though.  :y:

Offline HarveyDentMustDie

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #3 on: February 02, 2014, 09:11:12 pm
Your colors are to saturated and form is not very precise.

My sloppy attempt of edit. 8 colors including background. Hope this is useful.  ;D

Offline Zizka

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #4 on: February 03, 2014, 12:08:35 pm
Quote
Your colors are too saturated

Let's discuss this for a while. Do you mean they're too saturated in regards to the reference or in general? If you mean in general how does it ''harm'' my piece? I'd like to learn more about this please.

Quote
form is not precise

You mean the body of the whole thing? The wings seem fine to me, what do you think? As for the body, how can I improve this please?

Offline HarveyDentMustDie

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #5 on: February 03, 2014, 01:59:53 pm
They are to strong in regard to reference. If you compare Ryumarus edit and mine with yours, you will see that you have a lot of orange and bright red colors that are not very dominant in original reference.

If you are trying to recreate the drawing using pixels you should first try to draw basic form as good as you can, without going for details and outlining right away. Then you should try to recognize main tones and colors and use them to block out main parts. Detailing is the last step, and If you done previous steps good, this will just improve overall piece. In my edit there's very small amount of last step (cleaning and detailing).

I edited v.2 so my comment regarding form was for that version, but when I look your third version there are still some problems : space between wings, left wing shape, tentacles (or whatever) length and shape etc. 

EDIT: Also try to analyze edits, and figure things out. See what's different and what people try to say using examples.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2014, 02:34:38 pm by HarveyDentMustDie »

Offline wolfenoctis

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #6 on: February 03, 2014, 04:49:06 pm
Biggest problem is the proportions(yours is too squashed imo), I made an edit (looking at it now, I think its a little too big but what the hell), hopefully it will help you  :y:

Offline Zizka

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #7 on: February 03, 2014, 05:16:20 pm
Holy smokes, nice edit wolfenoctis.

I like the color you picked for the highlights, it looks really solid. Thanks!  :y:

Thanks for explanations, HDMD. Very generous of you.  ;D

Offline Facet

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #8 on: February 03, 2014, 11:13:11 pm
This is a pretty fun little monster, I might have gone a bit overboard playing with it, a bit beholder-y, anyhow:

Your colours were kinda monotone (at least more particularly in v2 which I had saved to work on :P); as long as you keep the local colour (as uninfluenced by lighting) around the middle of the ramp you can retain the impression of it being red…without everything being red. I desaturated my lows ‘cos less light = less colour and moved towards yellow in the highs ‘cos that’s a nice fiery look, and so they don’t have to be ultra-saturated in order to contrast (yellow being inherently lighter than red) while adding white would lose colour identity and look drab.

I think the issue with detail is as much the bit shapeless/awkward monster design as lack of space for relevant stuff. I dunno how the painted ref. is related to what you’re doing but it leans quite heavily on those omni-rimlights to be understood which I think would be a major pain as an animated sprite, the tentacle-things flatten/unbalances stuff in their current position (also tangent on the farmost) and the yellow wing tips distract from the glowing mouth; are they glowing too?

Gotta reiterate quickly what’s been said on form already; looks like you’re flood filling black linework rather than shading and I’m sure this has been mentioned before for stuff you've posted. You could really do with practising simple volumes/contrasts without lines and sketch stuff out as rough geometric primitives (boxes, spheres) before starting details or specifics.

« Last Edit: February 04, 2014, 12:53:11 am by Facet »

Offline Zizka

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Re: Creature from Hell.

Reply #9 on: February 03, 2014, 11:56:26 pm
Thanks for the edit! Wow, so many edits, you guys are spoiling me!

I've saved the comment to my hard drive and will study it in greater detail after work.

I really appreciate the help!!!  :y: :y: