Skeleton /Warrior/

[Fizzick]

Could be used for a little game. I'm pretty happy with it so far but I want to fool around with it more, so why not hear what you all think?

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Good beginning, I like construction and color choices.

Part that bothered me the most is head. It lacks details and because of that at 100% it looks just like white circle. Also his right shoulder pad is a bit strange (but maybe that's good because this is old armor I don't know), you should pay attention to it.

This is not a big edit, but I've fixed some things.

[Fizzick]

Thanks a lot!
Tried to incorporate the ideas I liked best about your edit. also redid pants somewhat, new pauldrons and stuff too. Thinner chestplate and more dithered flail for spikyness.

[Fizzick]

Alt palette.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

You shouldn't double post, if you have new content you should edit your previous post.

Now shoulder pads are way worse then in fist version. I said just his right pad is strange left one was good. By giving him pants you are suggesting that beside torso armor he doesn't have any protection. This can be exploited later if you want to create different levels of this enemy through adding more armor.

Green color tweak is slightly better. I would suggest that you work on 50% gray background, cause the same colors looks different on different backgrounds, and this way you will avoid this type of problems.

[Fizzick]

You shouldn't double post, if you have new content you should edit your previous post.

Now shoulder pads are way worse then in fist version. I said just his right pad is strange left one was good. By giving him pants you are suggesting that beside torso armor he doesn't have any protection. This can be exploited later if you want to create different levels of this enemy through adding more armor.

Green color tweak is slightly better. I would suggest that you work on 50% gray background, cause the same colors looks different on different backgrounds, and this way you will avoid this type of problems.

Normally I would work on grey, this would be for a game where most of the background was that color excluding some details and tiles. Can you clarify what is wrong with the pads? Sorry about double post. I realized my mistake just after I made it, but at least nobody else had their thread bumped before I posted again.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Perspective and position cause this is 3/4 view and right pad don't read like that. First version had more volume. You should find some good reference for this there is a wide variety of designs.

Here is just a thought.

[cels]

Just a nitpick, but I thought the eyes looked better in the original. 1x2 pixels instead of 2x2 pixels per eye. Alternatively, three pixels in an L-shape. But 2x2 pixels per eye looks way too big at this scale, IMO. Where the original skull looked scary, the new one looks fairly cartoony and cute.

At this small scale, with these dark and muted colours, I also wonder if the pose (holding a sword in front of one leg, which is barely visible) conflicts with readability.

I like HDMD's latest shoulderpad, but not the changes to the breastplate.

[astraldata]

@cels:
Your comment about the pose is exactly what I was thinking the whole time I've been looking at this topic. The sword looks great on its own, but the skeleton really needs to throw it over his shoulder or hold it out in front at a diagonal or something to add a bit more interest to the silhouette and avoid obscuring the leg.

The issue isn't that the leg is hidden -- the issue is that the *front* leg is hidden, which removes any chance at really indicating proper depth on the subject. The back leg looks like *it* is closer than the front with the sword over the leg like that, thus reducing the readability of the sprite overall.

[Fizzick]

At school, so some of my better versions were unavailable for edit. Mostly just ideas here, what do you think?

[astraldata]

Can't see the image.

[Fizzick]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9pjajyite6cgbtd/knight.png

[cels]

imgur.com is a very nice and easy way of posting pics. You don't have to sign in or anything, and it lets you copy the forum code needed to insert the image in a forum post

I like that the legs are visibile now, because we can see the exposed shin bones above the boots, which is a very nice touch. Unfortunately, the arms look like normal human arms with skin on them, so it doesn't immediately read as a skeleton, just a guy with a skull mask. I would like to see the arms read more clearly as showing exposed bones.

He's holding the sword in a somewhat weird manner, I think. I guess it's to avoid the sword covering any other parts of his body. But now it looks like he's holding it like a soldier on guard duty. Have you considered having him hold the sword up behind him, or even dragging it behind him as he walks? Or he could hold the sword horizontally, at the height of his hips?

The skull has a dark vertical line between his eyes. What's the reason for this? It's like there's a cavity where his nose bone should start, and the line between the brows is greatly exaggerated. This also has the effect of making it more difficult to see where the eyes begin and end.

Just throwing out ideas here.



EDIT: Looking at it now, I guess the ball&chain arm should be darker than the other arm, to match the legs.

[Fizzick]

Nice advice and edit. I was using imgur the whole time before, but then I was at school and they block it there. I'll work on it further when I get to my comp.

EDIT:
Could be a bit of a copout, but I removed the trouble arm. I think it caused more distraction than added to the figure, and what mook double-wields two different kinds of great weapon at once?

[astraldata]

May be a bit too much of a cop-out -- at least draw the arm in dangling by his side, opposing the angle of the legs or something. The composition is too unbalanced at the top -- he looks like he would fall forward from the weight of the ball image-wise.

Also, his eyes look closed now. Either 1 dot, or something like this earlier version:



I'd suggest a lighter color to offset the deep/dark socket depths though. The issue with this one is that the sockets just look too big/deep vs. the sockets looking too small or closed. The lighter color will bring the "back" of the socket forward in some areas so it won't look like it's got a hole in its head made by a billard-ball.

Something like this:

[Fizzick]

gave him a censer too, also made his forearm ungloved and split instead of fused, for anatomy

[HarveyDentMustDie]

I have one geeky question that has just occurred to me.  Why is this a knight? This is regular foot soldier by all details. Knight should be noble warrior with fancy armor. I mentioned this only because of the concept. If someone ask for a skeleton knight, this wouldn't be very accurate.  First version was closer to the idea.

Example of the knight form Berserk:
Spoiler

[cels]

I have one geeky question that has just occurred to me.  Why is this a knight? This is regular foot soldier by all details. Knight should be noble warrior with fancy armor. I mentioned this only because of the concept. If someone ask for a skeleton knight, this wouldn't be very accurate.  First version was closer to the idea.

He has armour. Anyone who has armour is a knight. Amirite?

Latest version looks good. Good point about the color of the eye sockets, AstralData.

The censer smoke looks a bit grass-like, IMO. I wouldn't have guessed it was smoke, unless it was animated.

[Cyangmou]

He has armour. Anyone who has armour is a knight. Amirite?

Nope - and you know that.
Regarding armor: usually the most important piece of armor was the helmet (from an historical standpoint)
most soldiers in medieval warfare don't wore anything else than a helmet.
Most blows to the head cause a lot of damage (even with a helmet) but without a helmet most of them are instantly lethal.
And the head sticks out of the body, which makes it quite easy to hit on the battlefield.

played around a little, mainly tried to simplify clusters, maybe went to far away from the intention.

[Fizzick]

great feedback and fantastic edit. trying to incorporate as much of what you're all saying as i can.

[cels]

Very nice. A few more thoughts
- To me, Cyangmou's skull looks better, partially because the eyes aren't such a huge feature and they don't end up looking like 0.o
- I like the new smoke
- There's a bit of noise in the form of two relatively isolated dark pixels on the nearest shoulderpad, which I think it would be better to change somehow.
- Cyangmou's breastplate hugs the ribs like a suit of armour, but your breastplate looks more flat, like the crest/badge Norwegian officers used to wear on inspection. I don't know if any other countries have those, so it may not be a useful reference, but there you go

Nope - and you know that.

Why so serious?

Here are my sources.