AuthorTopic: Knight Artorias  (Read 8957 times)

Offline IvanX

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Knight Artorias

on: March 30, 2014, 11:30:45 pm
I've never really made anything grand with pixel art, mostly just small sprites and portraits, so I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone and make something more in line with a composition.



Still very much in it's preliminary stages, but any advice to improve upon the piece as a whole would be fantastic!

Offline Crow

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #1 on: March 31, 2014, 01:24:20 pm
One thing I immediately noticed: Artorias' colors are off. His armor is mostly silver in color, with high contrast and super bright highlights. Only a few select pieces of his attire are actually blue.
Discord: Ennea#9999

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #2 on: March 31, 2014, 10:35:17 pm
So I started editing this, and things got a little out of hand; I'm a big fan of Dark Souls and especially Artorias and Sif so I got really into it >.>



I felt your composition was off, or could be done better in a few areas:
- focal point
While it's obvious that Artorias and Sif are the most important part of the scene, the stand alone sword grabs our attention in part to its strong silhouette and its awkward placing squished between the humanity sprites. Artorias left his greatshield with Sif, but I feel quite sure he would not leave his sword unattended.
- Artorias's pose
It's not necessarily bad, but if you notice, he's placing a large amount of weight upon his mangled arm, which would hurt like hell if he was even able to do it all.  A reclining pose of sorts is probably possible, but I opted for him on his knees huddled over Sif with his right arm bearing his weight behind him.
- Orientation
This is another thing where personal preference weighs heavily, but Dark souls is such a classical high fantasy game, with Artorias having such a tragic story, that I thought the composition should match. Sif, the shield, and Artorias form a triangle ( which is often used in classical/ religious compositions) with the sword reinforcing the shape at it's Apex. A vertical composition allows the humanity sprites to better surround and loom over the characters.

There is also a lot of color reduction, optimization, and lighting improvements that could be made. I think the concept and feeling of the piece are really solid and hope to see you work on it further! Feel free to take any or none of the ideas I brought in my edit.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2014, 10:49:09 pm by Ryumaru »

Offline IvanX

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #3 on: April 01, 2014, 08:03:35 am
Wow, what an amazing edit!
Really blows what I had out of the water.
I really see how a vertical orientation can benefit the picture, so much so that I dropped the awkward pose I initially had and aimed at something more akin to yours.

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #4 on: April 01, 2014, 08:15:27 am
Good stuff! I like what you did with Sif, although you could probably keep his hind legs sitting on the ground; right now they are too short for how extended they are.

Any particular reason you're working so large? You could easily reduce this piece by 50% and still have an impressively sized pixel art piece, but with much less work- and more opportunity to get into the nitty gritty of pixel art technique  :)

Offline IvanX

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #5 on: April 01, 2014, 08:51:54 am
Regarding the size, I have no clue.
I've never worked on anything like this, so it's all a mystery right now, in fact when I was initially sketching it, it was twice as big, until I realized something 1000 pixels wide might have been just a little bit excessive. excessive.

Offline Manupix

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #6 on: April 01, 2014, 09:58:08 am
Any particular reason you're working so large? You could easily reduce this piece by 50% and still have an impressively sized pixel art piece, but with much less work- and more opportunity to get into the nitty gritty of pixel art technique  :)

This. 500x600 = an insane 300,000 px, do you think you can really control each and every one of them? :o
Downsize while it's still time!

Offline IvanX

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #7 on: April 08, 2014, 06:05:11 am
Still working on this! Work has been pretty heavy as of late, so I haven't much time to pixel



So I opted to shink the resolution by half, seeing as the over pixel work for a piece that would would have killed me.

Offline Manupix

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Re: Knight Artorias

Reply #8 on: April 08, 2014, 10:17:10 am
Wise move =)

Composition looks a bit boring because of the ghosts. You might make the larger one even bigger and more central, leaning menacingly, balancing the foreground chars. Stagger the others in a less even way.

Perspective/anatomy/pose inconsistency: the angle of view seems rather high as indicated by ground, ring, and part of character pose, but the foreshortening of his right thigh, alignment of his right knee and left foot, and alignment of the wolf feet suggest a view angle very close to the ground instead. When you look hard Artorias has no right thigh at all. Also the wolf looks very small.

What does the shield lean on? In Ryu's edit it was leaning on the sword (not even mentioning careless heroes who stick their swords into the ground at the risk of blunting them and not having the time to pull them when needed haha).

I guess the light source is the ring on the ground, it's consistent with Artorias but not the wolf which seems largely lit from above left.