3rd iteration

[Cyangmou]

art piece for the discussion is the sprite in the middle.



I wanted to try a new artstyle, which keeps the strengths of both earlier styles.
The two main problems I had with the style of the older portraits (third sprite) is that it will get pretty hard to get human portraits animated in a good way and that the high amount of colors doesn't seem to work to the advantage of the pixel art medium (that's just a feeling I have though).

With the face I tried to go back to the first version (left sprite) while keeping the overall proportions more realistic.
Now she looks older than in the first sprite, but I hope the new face keeps the charme of the first sprite.

shading wise I tried to go back to a more simpler and flatter approach with overall less colors, while adding extra colors for the smaller details to highlight them a bit.
The overall light situation is similar to the third sprite.
no outlines, only partyally seperation..

On top of that I tried to add posewise more dynamism and flow, (like with the steamfantry sprite)


so basically I want to discuss the newest artstyle and receive some critique for the newest sprite.

-At the current point I am unsure if I should add a bit more texture (dither) to the stockings and gloves.
-Would also love to get pointers to weird things which escaped my attention.

[32]

I think the new style looks just as good and definitely seems more manageable. Only issue I'm having with the overall aesthetic is the green part on her corset, it's far too busy and detailed, draws my eye right to it and away from the face. Something about her hair/ face placement bugs me a bit too, maybe her goggles look like they're on a bit wonky?

The pose is nice and dynamic but there's something gone wrong around the hips, looking at her legs I would say her hand is touching around her lower back but if I look from the top it looks like she's touching her upper hip. I'd say this is mostly just because of the direction the back leg is heading into her skirt at. Overall looks like she's twisting about 270 degrees.

Dithering I would definitely say looks nicer on the old version, especially around the darker tones. Big clusters on her upper body skin look freaking awesome though, and the redder tone in the middle of the ramp is nice.

Oh also stray grey pixels at the top of her stocking. Awesome stuff

[Cyangmou]

worked a bit more on it:



-proportions (longer arms, shorter upper torso, longer neck)
-hip area (placed the hand more at the front, also edited how the legs connect to the hip)
-hair/googles/fayce - this seems to connect. I tried to align the lines. Not to sure about the positioning of the bangs)
-removed the detail on the green part, also won't add any dither for sure now, to keep the focus.
-gray pixels on the stockings wer ethe clips opf the suspenders, added a bit shading there.

[Tijjer]

For animating you could always do something like with what Arena/Daggerfall does and just use only a total of 3-5 frames?  Though overall I'm unsure of what you trying to go for animating wise, I just thought sharing that information may help somehow.

[Night]

Some thoughts anatomy wise (didn't include lower legs because I thought you were going for a different pose and as a result messed it up). Think you should really utilise foreshortening more; it's great practice.
As for the style - not much I can say. I would say choose realism despite the animation, but that's just my personal preference.

edit*
Just noticed; really huge improvements when comparing the 3 sprites, good job! 

[Decroded]

Looks awesome as usual 
Only thing bothering me is the hip on the left is large and bulbous which makes it look like she's pregnant or something.
Seems like it should be reduced down to be less curvy and a bit pointier I think from this angle we'd be seeing the edge of the pelvis hip bone thing protruding.

[Cyangmou]

I want to have animations for the faces.
With all the realism I have to avoid the uncanny valley which is hard enough with drawing, while with pixel art and keeping the things readable at this size a simpler style will be in comparison much more expressive.

@night: I appreciate your input, and the idea of foreshortening.

The detail of the edit is of course well roughed in, but with this version I deliberately moved away from realism.
In fact I tried to get rid of all the small details and focus on the flow and rhythm of the overall impression.

If you remember our discussion regarding the posedrawings in the cavalry thread: this time I went from one of those really expressive and strongly broken posedrawings and just scaled back
from there the bits which was obviously wrong.
If stuff is a little broken this time, but enhances the flow it's alright for me.
Most of the foreshortening which is happening in reality actually takes imo away from the flow, but enhances the depth.

However I think your anatomical edit is posewise really uncomfortable and even breaks the limbs. Try to act in the pose and observe the angles of the arms.
I made an edit on top of your edit which adresses what I think is wrong with it.



edit: thanks, 2014 was indeed a great year, filled with lots of practice and studies. At leas tthe hard work shows off 

@decroded:
look at how thin the wais is. The corset usually emphasizes the bulbs of the hips.
Got you a reference image for a better understanding. It could be that I have exaggerated that too much though.
What do you think after checking the ref?

Spoiler

[Tijjer]

Hmm, maybe for more recognizable facial animation keep the big eyes like with the first, keep the reduce colors of the second, and perhaps make the lips bigger?  I'm so sorry if I'm being not very helpful like Decroded or Night. 

[Night]

I'm not terribly sure what you mean by the flow, care to elaborate? If it's like a line that marks out the basic movement of the whole body then I can't see why foreshortening would limit that, if anything would only enhance it in some occasions.

As for my anatomical edit, I can definitely agree on the front arm; lots of mistakes. It wasn't so much the elevation of the clavicle, but the rotation of it forward (in my edit it looks almost as if the clavicle is in a resting position, it should be closer to the viewer) that made it look weird, and then the lower limb is too short, too short in that it bends too much inside (the length seen, not the actual length of the limb) which wouldn't make much sense with the hand in such a position, a clenched hand on the hip with that rotation of the arm would probably work.

Despite this, this heavily depends on the rotation of the torso. In your edit, with the clavicles the way they are, it implies that the whole body is bent in the same direction (like the pelvis and rib cage even), while in my edit I tried to retain the pose in the original post. with the bending of the torso outwards towards the viewer to some extent.
The placement of the clavicles is a pretty big reason to that.


But regarding the rear arm, there aren't any mistakes there; what you did is basically just move the clavicle backward and as a result a larger extent of the arm from the side is seen. From what I get in the little sketch you're trying to say that it's impossible to rotate your arm that way, hence the -5 degrees; which is of course not correct. Making it closer to the body was actually my intention, not otherwise.

[Cyangmou]

@Tijjer: every opinion is woth to read. Even if I don't consider the critique it's nice to get a different perspective on things and consider it at least.
I am happy with the size of the eyes, the first one has by far to big eyes imo.

@night: the rear arm isn't anatomically "wrong", but if you place it like you did it in your pose (act in!) it will unpleasently affect your field of vision.
The front arm was broken.
The positioning of the clavicle line affected by arms movements is definitely one of the hardest things, which needs more studies on my side.
I don't have a good answer for that yet, so I will look into that in further studies.

Changed a few more things:

-edited the lips (bigger) and the size of the nose (smaller) and the ear
-edited the position of the glasses + changed the hairs one more time (happy with the bangs now)
-added more foreshortening to the front arm + moved the shoulder a bit up
-changed the rotation of the rear arm
-to keep the flow weighting intact (slighter front arm curve) I also could change the convex shape of the skirt, which looks a lot better now and strengthens the flow (also edited the other hip slightly - @decroded).
-few pixels polished



practically I am now pretty happy - also with the character.

left one looks very shy and lovely
middle one looks now very confident, sassy and self-confident (which is what I looked for)
right one looks very arrogant and untouchable

pretty interesting observation on the characters, especially considering that it took multiple tries to get out the core of what makes her character in a visual way.


here is a gesture chart:
Spoiler

I  brought everything down to the basics:
consider the main gesture line (green) which whirls down in a helix over the complete character
and the flow-bounce line (orange) which visually leads the eye downwardy