GR#219 - Steamfantry - Sprite Process

[Cyangmou]

Pretty early wip this time. Being this time far out of my comfort zone I guess.
I Just think it might be good to get some opinions on a few troublespots (I am especially unsure about the legs)
Compared to yesterdays pencil drawing I already moved around a lot of things, fixed a lot of proportions and smaller details.
And after a quite long in depth discussion about a few perspectivical things with Wolfenoctis, I also tried to implement some vertical depth impression to get an overall more natural feeling of the space, which adds a lot I guess (compared to the pencil drawing)

If anyone is interested in discussing depth, form and and figure drawing, I am open for it too =)

Placed the current wip version next to the other figures in order to give a better size/space impression
The armor is pretty heavy and won't work without the engine/external support



concept art to find out how the joints work (because just with the grayscale sketch without light or shading it's hard to see) can be checked here:
Spoiler

and that one for Manupix
Spoiler

Regarding the stormcrow topic
Spoiler

Just a question, what kind of material are the shoulder pads made of. It looks like textureless plastic in the version you have now.

Besides that I like this a lot and love the fur.

I think some light leather-like material or thin metal, and the fabric is just added on top of it.

[Manupix]

that one for Manupix

 

I find the pose is somewhat unbalanced, not in the sense of unrealistic but rather of being frozen at the wrong instant: he's falling forward a bit.
Because of other things that I can't pinpoint, he doesn't look as heavy, powerful and menacing as (likely) intended.
Random example (obviously not relevant as far as the pose and structure are concerned, just for the kind of feeling I'd expect):

Spoiler

[Mathias]

OH MAN
Can't wait to see you knock this one out, too!
Really love the girl and Sturmkrähe.

Being this time far out of my comfort zone I guess.

I'm curious - what about rendering this character makes you feel that way?
I mean . . . not that following through with this one isn't outside 95% of pixellers' comfort zone, hehhhh . . .


Are these images all meant to be part of the same "family"? The same set? Should they be more similar so they can serve that function better?
The girl and Sturmkrähe are facing left and pictured in a simple standing pose.
Heavy infantry is going right and actually in motion. Will this still work for their intended purpose?


First impression of this guy is that he's a diver. He resembles antique divers. (guessing you referenced them)
I think because of the large, bulbous, rounded helmet and bulky shoes.
Not a bad thing necessarily, just my observation.

Love how the bullet magazine is attached at the elbow piece.
I guess the trigger/switch to fire the gun is in that rounded hand-covering above the gun.


About his design, which is very cool, two things do bother me:

• The exhaust pipes.
  They seem too modern. Especially the grid of holes in the heat dissipator outer pipe. Maybe diamond-shaped holes instead? I know you're trying to avoid unnecessary ornate details.
  And why two of them?
  The pipes' presence indicates a serious heat source. Seems possibly too close and too great to dissipate without burning him/heating his armor up to unbearable levels. Is this issue too realism-concerned to worry about in your game world, though? Probably.
• Hands free.
  If this guy falls over, he's done. I highly doubt he could back up on his feet without assistance, but it couldn't be from another heavy infantry unit. They'd all have the same issue - no useable fingers. What could they do?
  Can he drop his shield if he has to? Appears tethered to his arm.
  While this guy looks very imposing, possessing devastating firepower and high defense, he seems to also have some very dangerous weaknesses.

[Night]

Look really cool so far, good job. 

A few issues, mainly with the pose, which is tricky so I don't blame you; I'm not even sure if what I'm proposing is correct tbh.

First thing I'd change would just be its size for general impression. Just making it slightly bigger would make it look better in my opinion, reinforcing the fact that it's supposed to be heavily armoured and powerful. I'd go as far as to making it look bulky in certain areas (places that wouldn't hinder mobility a lot for an instance).

Second thing I notice is that it seems like he's kind of leaning forward (it looks like if you just rotated it slightly to the left it'd be fine). What I would suggest to do is rotate the upper part of his body (basically torso) a bit to the left, to give him an upright stance.

Now the really tricky part is the legs (and right part of his body too -- to an extent), this is the part I'm unsure about, personally I'd go for a completely different pose for this character, but that's besides the point I guess.
What I imagine you should do is pull his right leg closer to his body and make it point almost directly at the viewer. the kneecap, too pointing closer to the viewer's perspective, should be slightly facing the ground, but just slightly really.
His left leg on the other hand, should point almost completely to our right (still keeping in mind perspective of course, so you'd see it from the top too a bit).

The other part that I suggest to change, but I don't find critical, is the right part of his body; making it closer to the viewers perspective, kind of going along the same way as his right leg.
Here's an edit to help you understand what I mean better:

[Cyangmou]

current version:
Is a lot cleaner, played myself a lot around with different proportions. I Also started with rough clustering, I don't put much effort in a consistent light direction so far, because I mainly tried to seperate the parts and get overall an better readability beetween them. Consistent lighting will come in as I go along.



I also changed the forward bend body, although I assumed that it would help with the impression of the heavyness, it seems to get pointed out consistently.

@Mathias:
First it's a rather difficult design for a human figure. Humans are a difficult enough task, but with all those angles and ellipses which need to look correct and technical on top of the figure, it's just difficult.

The characters are meant to be out of one universe, the big sprites are designed to be used for 2 reasons
1) as individual pieces of art, illustrations for some concept sI did.
2) if it comes to a game, I want to use those sprites maybe in a dialogue system.

Actually If I display them from the left or the right should be unimportant anyways since the light comes directly from the front - we had this discussion already in the crow topic.
That sprite is displayed from the other side, mainly that shield and gun are aligned with the concept art, I could mirror it, but it won't make too much of a difference.

As a quick reminder form the older topic:
Spoiler

which shows the intented use quite well.

You are right with the assumption of the diving suits. Parts of this character are older than others, the engine for example is new, which explains the different style for that.

Hands: already thought about that, will mos tlikely go for a similar design as for the helms and I seperated the thumbs - that just for the visual side - pretty rough edited in the current version.

@Night:
Your edit adresses 2 things I found out myself, the foreshortening of the front arm and the rear leg.
I really liked the placement of the rear leg in your sketch. The only issue I have there is that the legs now look like they have a different length (which is the same problem I alsways have and it's easy to overlook if one does it and also really difficult to fix...) I sketched it roughly in how I imagine and will refine it as I go along.
For the gun/front arm I also applied a depth effect, not to sure if it's cool or just looking out of place at the moment.

I went for this pose of the character to have a good descriptive view of all parts. I did myself about 20 sketches and despite a few of them might have looked cooler as single piece of art, they wouldn't work in the dialogue or wouldn't be descriptive enough, which is the reason why I went with this approach.

@Manupix:
should be completely different now.

[Night]

I don't know man.. I think I'll wait till you start with colours and/or shading so I can actually see the depth and comment better about the legs and overall character, just easier with shadows and such.

Meanwhile here's a quick edit demonstrating what I find wrong with the pose currently, and what I think could work better (with the perspective you're working with too).

I moved the helmet part also a little to the back too, but it doesn't make much of a difference; just wanted to test it out.

The problem is that both legs share almost the same lengths (view wise), despite the intention being for him to look like he's walking(?), which leaves the rear leg looking like it's floating in your version.
About the front arm, what do you mean by depth effect? Also I think I know why I suggested moving the front arm with the gun closer to the viewer's point of view earlier on, which is to do with the leg placement (what I changed again as you can see) because in my edit it looks like he's pulling the arm gun towards him, rather than it staying static.

[tim]

Yes the legs have been bothering me since the beginning. Night's edit is totally on point.

[Daimoth]

Critiquing your work always makes me feel uppity and precocious, but here we go.

Great edit,  Night, I hadn't even realized that bothered me before you pointed it out. The upper half of the arms is a bit narrow, and an individual would have to be really beefy to wear the suit at all.

This is very arguable, but I'd have have the left arm (our left) pointing more toward the viewer to open up the stance a bit. What's your context here? Are they chat box sprites? If so, there's nothing for him to be pointing the left arm at.

[Cyangmou]

Well what else can I say there Night, except that I love the changes and that I also love the nice feeling of dynamism added through the strong bent knee and the slightly contraposto which is now evident.
Guess I will draw the next pose sketch on the pc to make use of rotations and quick changes right from the beginning.
I am still always a bit scared to apply strong changes were I already put a lot of effort in.

Yes the legs have been bothering me since the beginning. Night's edit is totally on point.

Not only you, me too... =)

Critiquing your work always makes me feel uppity and precocious, but here we go.

This is very arguable, but I'd have have the left arm (our left) pointing more toward the viewer to open up the stance a bit. What's your context here? Are they chat box sprites? If so, there's nothing for him to be pointing the left arm at.

The weapon arm is fixed in the pointing position to make the aiming with the gun faster and more accurate and as counterweight to the backbag.
The shield arm is fixed in the shield position for similar reasons.

--

Every piece of art from everybody can be critiqued just from a reasonable and logical standpoint.
There will always be details which can be altered, changed or solved differently, maybe for the better.
As long as critique isn't abused as a way to personally attack someone, anything work related can be pointed out I guess.

[Night]

I am still always a bit scared to apply strong changes were I already put a lot of effort in.

Yeah, I feel you.

I don't know how your workflow goes like, but usually, even if drawn on a sketch I've done irl, I start with a quick, dirty and very general mash of blobs or lines (sort of like what I did in my edit of the leg) and go on from there -- fixing little problems before they escalate into bigger ones and then go into detail; pretty useful for avoiding that feel later on if you haven't tried that yet.

I hate pointing this out because it goes without saying, but it's always good to go from the simple to the complex. Details like all the little lines and indentations could be avoided up until you get the overall feel of the picture.


Also excuse me if I sound like an asshole by any chance, I always feel like I do for some reason after critiquing another's work.