[WIP] Improving my character & scenery-piece

[Lakelezz]

I already planned on using a color palette for the next time! Stava offered me one, maybe you know him, haha.
But that is for the future! I do not want to select one now.

What do you mean with the pool light source? The broken glass? I feel not ready to do such a huge step on lighting/shadowing. It would be the hell of a work to create a realistic copy of this NPA version. I simply could not even imagine how this could be done. Where to set the darker colors, how create the transitions (dithering?), ...
That is why I used effects. I have never seen a pixel (game) not using mass of effects for shadowing which will end in a lot of useless colors.

Sadly I did not really understand the "head"-system. What do you mean?

[32]

A pool as in only a small area of the image is well lit, while the rest is in relative darkness. It is a fair amount of work but so is the animation. Really depends on how much time you're willing to dedicate, your edit alone is enough proof to me that it would be time well spent though. If you're painting a dark object all you really need to do is just use the darkest colours you have, no need to add more colours into the mix, just a couple is all you need to give the impression that something is there. Here's a few examples.

When you count heads you're basically counting how many times taller their body is than their head. Like so.

Edit: Alright had a bit of a go at the character, obviously not finished but you get the idea.

I only changed two colours I think, the bright red in the hair and the light purple on the dress, I also added the light pink on the top. The really bright highlight colours help make the image pop and will give it some visual priority. I changed the pose because you say the first action is "idling" and your pose is a bit more active than that. Hopefully it helps.

Edit2: I had this open in graphics gale and I wanted to see what my edit looked like on the background then I couldn't help myself haha. Might be useful to you.

[Lakelezz]

Wow, this is an awesome edit! I am amazed!

However are those bold lines for some reason (pointing out specially the left leg ? Is this meant to be a huge shadow on the rather right side? Just to get the idea if this meant to be a part of the stylistic change or just a thing I can remove? Because I started to remove it and it still seems to work - even more accurate (even improving  readability).

While thinking about the whole shadow-thing, as you have shown in the examples, I tried to figure it out. Specially to learn to work with more contrast, with much more focusing the important parts and everything else.
Some things I made my minds up to: I guess, it is necessary to make it a night scene. I rather would go with a white lighting then because it feels more cold.
I also thought about the properties of glass. If I let the light only through the broken parts, what is about the rest? The light will shine through it, too.
Except this last thought, I tried to figure it out.
I stopped working when I came to some confusion points. Where is the logic maybe less important than the organization of a piece?

Original idea:


Logical idea:

The red lines show the usual way the light would run through the broken parts.

The question is, how can I actually combine both examples? Just ignoring open glass parts feels "wrong". Making the light ray shorter could be one way. However Dithering would be complicated into so many colors.

And about the idling. I meant to have "aiming" as idling. Since she is used to run forward with the gun just in case she needs to shoot quickly.
On the other hand, I really like this new way of idling!

I will of course keep on working with your edited ideas - however this was done before I had your edit.

Thank you a lot, again!

[32]

Yeah the bold lines are just cause I hadn't cleaned them up. Don't feel obliged to use the style I did, the core concepts of anatomy and colour were more what I was trying to communicate.

The question of lighting is a tricky one yes. I would say option b is better. I'm assuming the glass is opaque so the light beams through the holes makes sense and could look quite atmospheric. Consider though that there is only one real light source (the sun) so the beams should all be parallel rather than each coming in from their own angle. And yes always have composition in mind over realism, though ideally you would consider both when you're deciding how to set up the scene.

[Lakelezz]

Not keeping the style is pretty hard. You remade her really good! However I somehow think the style fits rather more to steampunk.
Coming with something completely new is totally impossible for me since I need to "compete" against what you made and due my lack of knowledge and specially skill is this hard.

But of course I wont give up. I just need to practice and practice.
Also if it is hard to pull off something more equal to your edit, I tried to work with the idea you gave me. I looked onto your structure, the lighting and everything.

It is of course not as good but I guess it is an improvement in terms of learning shadowing (should the right part of the cape be totally dark instead?).
However I am not pleased with what I do at all.



She feels so stiff. I simply pixel too stiff, too lifeless, too boring.
Her arms are really awkward and somehow I got back into the old scheme. I just do not know how to let her aim on a serious but not so boring way...
But when I try to add curves, they feel awkward and wrong.
Is there a way to get rid of this? What should I improve on this one? What could be fixed?
Or should just delete and do it again?

[32]

Well my method is always to delete and start again if something isn't working but that's really up to you. Always make sure it looks right in the rough stage before you move on. The most glaring anatomical error, and the one you made in your initial sprite is torso/leg ratio, from heel to crotch is usually about the same length as it is from crotch to the top of the head. Obviously with a big cartoony head this doesn't necessarily hold true but you really can't go wrong with longer legs and a shorter torso.

When you're posing a character pay attention to the line of action (google it) foremost, it looks stiff because your line of action is a big straight vertical line. Look up references for the pose, stand up and do it yourself, take a photo if you need to. Posing realistically from your mind is one of the hardest things in the world but standing up is one of the easiest  .

Pay a bit more attention to the hair, you're making it clump up too much, you want it to more or less read as one big mass and then you can add a couple little tufts or whatever that follow the general direction of that mass.

[Lakelezz]

So, I tried it again and even started to do the lighting.
The character might be a little bit better. I have to admit that I of course cannot compete with your edit but I can still try to learn from it.
Hopefully the hair is better this time, haha.



The lighting is still some buggy and a lot of old AA dots have to removed now since they are too bright for the darkness.
Too bad that the character is not in some sort of light source - I should fix this.
Maybe I should let the lighting rays stop onto the ground, too? Right now they just shine out via the bottom but letting them collide with the ground could add more "depth".

Also the gun is suffering. I liked the idea of a pure black one but with those window-frames they get sucked into the noun and you cannot see them anymore I will figure something out - changed them a little bit for this picture to make them more recognizable.

[32]

The thing about a light ray is it exists in the air, it's the particles floating in the air that reflect the light, the light is not necessarily shining on the objects beneath the light ray. When the light contacts a surface it will diffuse from that point, so the point where the light ray hits the inside of the room is actually the light source (as well as the light reflected from the particles in the air to some extent). The point being that you can be a bit more loose with how you light the scene, you only have to make sure that the lighting conditions loosely reflect the holes in the glass. And yes consider where the light rays land in the room and which object will be blocking the light. Right now the way it's lit is more like if the light source was coming from the direction of the camera through a slatted window or something, rather than them being light beams as such.

The character is looking better but she's still pretty stiff. Try drawing the pose roughly on paper a couple of times just to get a feeling for what direction the limbs go in and the curve in the back.

[Lakelezz]

This so much at once. Next time I will go for a scenery I will twice about it.

Some small changes. I tried to draw her back "into" her body while bottom is rounding up to this point. How it should be since she is holding her right leg into the front, which is moving her bottom to the side a little bit.


I cannot change the total back line since she is standing straight. Nobody would bow forwards to shoot due some distorting chances - I guess.

I could stress her backline much more, so I would dot into her.


The lighting is making me totally crazy. Since it is all from the angle, there should be different points of collision on the ground.
Then I thought about something much more problematic. Since light is entering the inner of the building via a geometric form the light wont enlighten the wall. So I would have to make the wall all in dark, should not I?
Due this form I should also change the look of the colliding point fitting to the entering form?

[32]

Actually leaning forward is a pretty good idea when you're about to fire a gun, you don't want the recoil to knock you off balance, like I said, look up references.

It's not entirely true when I say all lines are parallel because there is a single light source. The sunlight outside reflects off of all of the surfaces outside the window so a fair deal of scattered light can come in at different angles, depending on the time of day you could have perfectly straight sunbeams which just light up a point (yes shaped like the entryway) or a sun beam which expands or even no sunbeam at all, just diffuse light that comes in and lights up the whole room from every angle, even through a small entry point. The wall itself will likely be lit to some degree no matter the time of day because remember the light ray bounces of the floor and scatters through the entire room. When I said the beams should be parallel I meant in their general direction, not necessarily that they need to be perfectly straight.

This all leads me to my biggest point which is, don't worry about it too much. There's a million things that could be going on off screen to create the lighting conditions, as long as you're consistent it won't be a big deal if it doesn't perfectly obey the laws of physics.