GR#204 - Cartoony Cat Portrait Sprites - Gameart

[HarveyDentMustDie]

@astraldata My mistake. 

[donuts]

I made a quick edit for kicks. Tried to reducing the colors to 9 (using colors from the original palette you posted) and added a 'hissing' face. Maybe this can give you some ideas. 

[9_6]

I don't know about cats but with dogs, downward ears usually mean apologeticness or warning while upward ears mean excitement, concentration or just a neutral expression.
Both versions of your cat look sad to me. You might want to utilize the ears for expression too.
Also that beard your cat has isn't found on house cats so unless this cat is part lynx, the fur there wouldn't drop that way.
But that is part of looking up references which, as said before, is something you might want to do.


Oh and don't post giant pictures with 3 different sizes, this forum has a zoom function so you only need to post the 1:1 version.

[W.A.C.]

I want to apologize for not responding in quite awhile. I initially wanted my response to include an update of my sprites, but I've been really busy with work and addicted to an awesome game called Freedom Planet. I also want to thank those who took the time to make edits of my sprites. I find the unique approaches really interesting.

Here is my quick edit.


In my eyes, the main problem here is cat's ears. You should find some references and learn from them. Cartoony style is ok, but even cartoons need to follow some realistic aspects to make everything look right.

While I could change the ears to be more realistic in proportion, I really love the large ears I gave my cat character. I feel it gives the cat a more stylized look. I think your edit looks really nice though.

The lightsource is unclear to me, with the sprite appearing to be lit from below and above.
I've attempted to fix that in my edit, but I don't think I was very successfull with the cheeks.

For some reason, your link no longer shows up for me. But I saw it earlier and that animated GIF HDMD posted still shows what it looks like. The eye lids was an interesting touching, but it makes the cat look mean in both sprites. I'm also not a fan of the way the shading is done for the whisker area. You did a nice job with the shading adjustments to the forehead and ears though. For the light source, I'm surprised it confused so many people. I had the shading be a combination of the light source and the position of where everything is positioned. The darkest shaded area for the whisker area is the furthest back and the closest area of the whiskers to the front of the cat are the bottom part of the whiskers, so it made more sense to me to make that part the brightest part of the whiskers. I also wanted the brightest shade to be only on the forehead and ears because they get the most amount of light. A lot of the older Sonic games did something similar for the shading. [LINK] However, the light source is more clearly defined with those sprites. I guess I need to do more editing on the shading until the light source is more clear.

Quite a lot more progress since I last looked at this topic. Looking tons better man. I wouldn't worry so much about the 'primary color' of the cat -- most people associate bluish-purple with black as an alternate color for a highlight because greys usually dull the image and most artists rarely use them without some blue or red mixed in (read as: some color and saturation) to draw out the forms a bit. Really glad you did this in your newest version.

Definitely going to stick with the purplish shine then.

And I was referring to that dark pink in my last comment, but making it more saturated helped a bit to distinguish it from your blacks, but this is a case where one of the greys could have worked still because grey absorbs the colors nearby and it would read as 'pink' as its 'color' in this case. It's your choice if you want to fully-optimize your colors though. The additional color doesn't detract from the overall image -- it's just food for thought more than anything.

Ah.

I made a quick edit for kicks. Tried to reducing the colors to 9 (using colors from the original palette you posted) and added a 'hissing' face. Maybe this can give you some ideas. 

Your edit reminds me of a panther. Very interesting take on the eyes and how you pulled off the ears.

I don't know about cats but with dogs, downward ears usually mean apologeticness or warning while upward ears mean excitement, concentration or just a neutral expression.
Both versions of your cat look sad to me. You might want to utilize the ears for expression too.
Also that beard your cat has isn't found on house cats so unless this cat is part lynx, the fur there wouldn't drop that way.
But that is part of looking up references which, as said before, is something you might want to do.

One of my friends thinks the ears in the first edit look too rabbit like. >_> Cool edit though. As for why I made the fur like that in the bottom part of the cat's face, I was trying to give the cat a unique shape for the whisker area that looked very cat-like but uncommon. Considering how the character will probably be more wild in my game, I think that fits really well.

Oh and don't post giant pictures with 3 different sizes, this forum has a zoom function so you only need to post the 1:1 version.

I post my updates on four sites and this is the only site of the bunch that has the zoom in feature. That, and it's annoying I can't zoom out without refreshing the page.

[9_6]

One of my friends thinks the ears in the first edit look too rabbit like. >_> Cool edit though. As for why I made the fur like that in the bottom part of the cat's face, I was trying to give the cat a unique shape for the whisker area that looked very cat-like but uncommon. Considering how the character will probably be more wild in my game, I think that fits really well.

We're not here for you to tell how much you love your stylistic choices since they fit so well you know.
This is literally the first time the word "wild" has been uttered in this thread to describe where you want to take this character.
All you do is frustrate people and not make any meaningful progress this way.

I can fix the bunny ears but what does that do for you if you seemingly won't try any of the approaches presented to you?
You really need to forget "style" right now and experiment to see what works any why.

I post my updates on four sites and this is the only site of the bunch that has the zoom in feature. That, and it's annoying I can't zoom out without refreshing the page.

Shift click.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

I agree with 9_6, why did you ask for help when you aren't taking any of edits into consideration? All edits here are very different, and made with different styles and you only say that they are good but you like your version better. If you are satisfied with your current version (which is your choice, and it's perfectly ok), you should say that and close this tread.

[W.A.C.]

We're not here for you to tell how much you love your stylistic choices since they fit so well you know.
This is literally the first time the word "wild" has been uttered in this thread to describe where you want to take this character.
All you do is frustrate people and not make any meaningful progress this way.

I can fix the bunny ears but what does that do for you if you seemingly won't try any of the approaches presented to you?
You really need to forget "style" right now and experiment to see what works any why.

I agree with 9_6, why did you ask for help when you aren't taking any of edits into consideration? All edits here are very different, and made with different styles and you only say that they are good but you like your version better. If you are satisfied with your current version (which is your choice, and it's perfectly ok), you should say that and close this tread.

"Wild" was probably a poor choice of words. My ideas for this character frequently change and evolve as I work on my sprites. I had no idea what type of plot I wanted for this game until about two or three weeks ago. But to give better context, I'm thinking about having the cat live in a small village that's located in a exotic location in a fantasy setting. These ideas can change at any time, but it gives more context into how I currently vision my character. In terms of style, while yeah, I like the style of the ears, I'm fully opened minded about experimenting with any aspect of my cat's sprites. I initially wanted to do a bunch of experiments that take influences from the edits before responding to this thread again, but after not making any progress with my sprites for over a week because of work and my love for the game Freedom Planet, I felt it was best to make responses instead of going a long period of time without saying anything. I feel my sprites are still very WIP and what I've created is a tiny fraction of all the sprites I'll make for my character. I find much of the responses very helpful and gives me context into how people perceive my sprites. Probably the biggest change I need to make is make the light source more obvious since it's unclear to so many people.

Shift click.

Thank you.

[W.A.C.]

I want to thank everyone who took the time to make their own edits of my sprites and to everyone who left feedback. If it weren't for you guys, the new version of my sprites would not look as nice.



I completely redid the ears and made huge changes to the shading. How do you guys feel the new design compares to the previous one?

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Now it looks like a cat with ice cream cornets stuck onto it's ears. It's because of ear shading. Bright pixels in cats ears give the impression that ear isn't hollow but that it's going outward, that's why they give conic feel.

[astraldata]

I second HDMD's feelings about this sprite's ears, and also about the shading. Your new version also has a weird skull shape -- seems to be shaped like a rock instead of a skull.

My edit addresses the main problem of your skull issues, both in the new version and the old version, and it addresses the ear shape in your new version. In your old version, your ears were part of the skull somehow, and it seems that's the case in your new version somehow too.

There needs to be clarity in your 3d forms -- not just a stylized 2d silhouette -- to make it work.