AuthorTopic: [WIP]Knight  (Read 9308 times)

Offline lachrymose

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[WIP]Knight

on: July 22, 2014, 12:21:19 am
Working on a knight character, that I would like to hopefully animate.
It has some obvious problems, and not so obvious problems.
But I'm at a point now where a second or multiple pairs of eyes would be beneficial.
So please tell me what you think!

Offline jahasaja

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #1 on: July 22, 2014, 05:52:22 am
This is like my first post here.

My first advice: read this tutorial: http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm
also the same person, Arne, answered my first post and gave some good advice: http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=15704.msg143598#msg143598

Metal is, at least for me really hard, since it reflects the surroundings.

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #2 on: July 22, 2014, 01:46:09 pm
Yeah I knew my shading was way off on the metal. Thanks for the tutorials, those will help a lot.
Looks like I should add a few more colors to my metal as well.

I think i'm on the right track now. Thanks a lot!
Also a boar.

« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 12:39:59 am by lachrymose »

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #3 on: July 23, 2014, 09:40:00 pm
An update.

« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 09:49:38 pm by lachrymose »

Offline PsylentKnight

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #4 on: July 24, 2014, 02:29:30 pm
These images are really high resolution, gonna be hard to work with if you animate them. Why is the boar so huge compared to the knight? Or are these just for fun, not for a project?
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Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #5 on: July 24, 2014, 02:46:25 pm
The knight started out as a project, I intended him to be far smaller and more cartoony. Things evolved a bit though, so now i'm just doing it for fun.

Just ignore the boar. I forgot to hide that layer when I exported the picture. It's just a doodle I did while I was musing over the knight.

Offline astraldata

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #6 on: July 24, 2014, 04:11:15 pm
So many colors... Using so many low-contrast colors in your color ramp is really mucking up the clarity of your forms. It's throwing off any true sense of lighting direction you could establish, making everything seem a bit hazy and ambiguous. Try using less colors with more stark of a difference between them to fix this.
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Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #7 on: July 25, 2014, 02:13:24 pm
I tried to reduce the colors, by two or three.
I know I need to work on my color sense.
                                [EDIT] An improvement?
   
« Last Edit: July 25, 2014, 05:31:55 pm by lachrymose »

Offline Cyangmou

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #8 on: July 25, 2014, 07:22:49 pm
The first thing I think if I look at it, is that the design is pretty bland and the pose is rather stiff.

Let me first talk about the pose and the proportions.
The main problem with the pose is that the knight is just standing, neither sword nor shield are with this pose ready for attack or block and the weight distribution which is 50/50 on both feet don't allows any quick movement out of this pose.
Knights were professional trained warriors, a wrong stance could be a matter of life and death and that's why they would never stand like that with an unsheated sword.
Proportion wise the helemet is pretty big, and the lower legs are really long, while the arms are a tad to short.

My suggestion would be to go with a more ready to attack pose with an actual weight distribution and carefully checking out all proportions:



THis edit illustrates where your drawing currently suffers the most.


Now let me talk about the design.
Designwise I can see that you don't know how armor works. The main goal of any armor is to protect the critical spots of the human body, while maintaining a high amount of movability and not having too much weight. There are tons of great full-plate examples from history around, displaying the craftmanship of the smiths and you also can see the differences in designs to protect the wearer from the most lethal weapons used in different periods of times. If you are going to make a game about knights, don't go first with what you imagine a knight looks like. Look it up, try to understand it and then you can alter those designs in order to get something which is fitting for your purposes and visually pleasing.


Your smallest problem currently, is that your metal doesn't look like metal at all. The only thing which will help you there is to understand how metal behaves in different lighting situations. This needs to be practiced with references. But even if you would apply a perfect metal shading to your current drawing, the difference wouldn't be that big.

to show you how I'd go over designing and shading an armor - 7 values used (changing the design would still have a bigger impact on your drawing).


To be completely honest, knights are really an advanced subject to draw, you need a lot of knowledge regarding basic art principles, the human body, plus a big background of medieval weapons & armory and how to shade metal.
Despite I don't even went really deep in the design aspects, my version still took me 3 hours to draw.
In order to get a complete game done, you might be better off if you significantly decrease the resolution.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2014, 07:43:15 pm by Cyangmou »
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Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #9 on: July 25, 2014, 07:54:18 pm
3 hours! It took me like a week just to get what I got, and their is no comparison! haha.

Thanks you for your time and your detailed analysis, i'll take it to heart and scale things back a bit.

I'm thinking i'll just find a Templar knight reference and use that. I'd only have to worry about a metal helmet in that instance, and just use chain mail/cloth for everything else.
I'm done trying to use this for a game, just going to keep at it for fun, and for the learning experience.

anyway, back to the drawing board.

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #10 on: August 09, 2014, 03:16:15 pm
Taking some ques from Cyangmou and using this referance for the pose I redid the character, and made it a whole lot smaller.

Offline Kosvid

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #11 on: August 09, 2014, 05:32:17 pm
I can`t give you a big piece of advice, just that: avoid pure colours, especially pure white and pure black. Also the torso doesn`t really seem to be turned unlike in the reference picture. Honestly, I`d change the palette completely, as everything about colours in this version seems unnatural to me.

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #12 on: August 09, 2014, 06:45:04 pm
Thanks, I altered the palette using Cyan's, and turned the chest a bit more.

« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 07:10:29 pm by lachrymose »

Offline Fizzick

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #13 on: August 10, 2014, 03:32:33 pm
infinitely better. with such a small sprite i recommend a smaller palette, tho. the new chest also looks more blown-up than pronounced.

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #14 on: August 10, 2014, 05:01:16 pm
I see what you mean, thanks. Extra eyes are awesome.

I reduced the size of the chest and also moved it back by a pixel, I also moved in his right arm in a bit closer to tighten thing up.



I hate to ask but any suggestions on the colors for the smaller palette?
I hate to use my mild colorblindness as an excuse because it doesn't effect my day to day life. But it seems that with pixel art I am at a distinct disadvantage. 
« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 05:04:54 pm by lachrymose »

Offline astraldata

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #15 on: August 10, 2014, 08:24:56 pm
I too am mildly colorblind, so I understand your pain. However, I choose my colors based on science and the vividity in style/color I'm going for in overall look and feel to make up for it.

Regarding your armor, I would suggest allowing the armor to reflect the environment the suit is in more (such as the color of the ground in one of the shadow colors, or the color of the sky/ceiling in one of the highlights) by hueshifting toward that color.

Also, the inside of the shield against the arm should use a darker color such as close to the darkest color you have so that it will show the arm better. It seriously needs some contrast against that arm/hip.
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Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #16 on: August 11, 2014, 03:52:04 pm
Tried to incorporate your suggestion, best color I could find for the inside of the shield was flat black. Now i'm running into a perspective problem with the shield.
Also his whole left side blends to much with the right I think, so I made it lighter, but now it doesn't match the lighting with the rest of the area. Small sprites is hard yo.
His arms are also a bit to long, but I kinda like them.



Overall though I am much happier with it. I'd like to animate it, but I think that is way beyond my skills right now. Maybe I should just commission someone to animate it for me.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2014, 04:21:15 pm by lachrymose »

Offline EvilEye

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #17 on: August 13, 2014, 05:29:51 am
I was going to suggest something like this for the color.

Offline Daimoth

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #18 on: August 17, 2014, 07:06:51 pm
Tried to incorporate your suggestion, best color I could find for the inside of the shield was flat black. Now i'm running into a perspective problem with the shield.
Also his whole left side blends to much with the right I think, so I made it lighter, but now it doesn't match the lighting with the rest of the area. Small sprites is hard yo.
His arms are also a bit to long, but I kinda like them.



Overall though I am much happier with it. I'd like to animate it, but I think that is way beyond my skills right now. Maybe I should just commission someone to animate it for me.

Massive improvement! Well done!

Try to throw in a few more sparse details on the visible face of that shield. I can't figure out what those two red lines are.

Offline astraldata

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #19 on: August 17, 2014, 10:27:25 pm
I agree -- great improvement overall.

EvilEye's edit shows how to shade the ridge of the metal. See the v-shaped 'line' in the left down to the center of the chestplate on his edit that's somewhat lighter? That's where the light gathers along creases in the metal, which brightens the sharpest edges the most. His is shaded less like super-shiny metal/aluminum and more like yellow-tinted tinfoil -- though the crease principle still applies to less-shiny materials as it does to super-shiny stuff too -- it just requires more contrast value-wise on the latter.

As for the blending issue you mentioned earlier -- feel free to grab the next to brightest color on the lit side (i.e. just under the white) if you want the darker side to have more 'shine' and 'form' to it, but do use it sparingly -- that is, only use it where you need to define form more starkly in the metal, such as on the knees, toes and shin. The foreground toe should use some of the white too though -- you have to keep in mind your planes even when shading metal with wildly-differing color-contrasts.



@Daimoth:
Those are the straps on the forearm and hand to hold the shield to the arm I would assume.
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Offline Daimoth

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #20 on: August 17, 2014, 11:11:53 pm
Oh, I see. That's his thumb hanging over the straps, I think? I'd rework that area in the name of readability, even if it isn't technically wrong. The red's a bit too vivid too, considering how deep that shadow is.

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #21 on: August 17, 2014, 11:18:21 pm
Yeah its the straps.

Its been awhile since I’ve played with this sprite, so I’ll take a stab at improving it more with all of your considerations. Thanks as always.

Offline lachrymose

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Re: [WIP]Knight

Reply #22 on: August 23, 2014, 01:28:43 am
Been awhile since I've messed with this dude. Been trying out various stuff. Mostly the construction of the armor itself.
I had started with a full silhouette but I found that it was distracting me to much.
(Don't have much time, college courses have started up again)



[edit]
« Last Edit: September 21, 2014, 03:05:47 am by lachrymose »