Cavegirl mock up

[junkboy]

And here we go again... The baisc idea here was something like "What if Capcom made a game inspired by Frank Frazetta's paintings?"

The result is "Cavegirl - The Game" (at least according to the folder on my HD). The player's objective is to guide Cavegirl and all her animal friends out of, uh, Misty Valley, since the smoking "Fire Mountain" is a sure sign of impending doom. However, dinosaurs, neanderthals and other sub-human bad guys will make it a difficult task to accomplish...


Mock Up

In this particular mock up Cavegirl is being assisted by a sabertooth tiger.



Stuff

Here's Cavegirls sluggish neanderthal stride. It's a bit wonky, but whatever. My main focus with this (besides actually animating a sprite this big, wich I've never done before) was to make it look like her leg muscles actually are working. Topless version available on request. 


Here's the sabertooth tiger (nicknamed Fang, to keep in with the "originality" of all this nonsense). I made this in like 30 minutes but I'm still quite satisfied with it. I might try animating it, if I can build up the courage.


Last and least, the background. It's a mix between pixels, color-reduced CG and a few things from previous pieces. Just a heads-up for all your purists.

[AlexHW]

wow, very nice.. that looks like a lot of work.
I like the colors used, and with with content, it does look very frank frezetta
Great effort with the animation, though I want to point out that the forearm seems too short. If you check where your wrist reaches near your the shoulder, you can see that the hand would extend past it. In the animation it looks like it wouldnt do this.
The leg also seems to get longer as it extends backwards.
Animating the tiger would be a good challenge. I wouldn't mind seeing that.

[AdamAtomic]

Frazetta was really fond of those super hot highlights and the dark shadows, I think a little more contrast would help the girl with that feel.  I'd like to see a specular highlight on the tiger, especially the haunches and shoulders and face.  The walk is amazing in some parts, i think the hair is a little jerky/overdone right now, and the feet and hands could use some secondary love.  I really have no complaints about the background, I think especially in real production pixel art as long as you get the exact pixels you wanted, how you get there is up to you!

[ndchristie]

i love frazettas work, especially the Cave Girl (which he rescued from krenkel, who was being a little too experimental with colors when he did the original cover for the cave girl.  its one of the few cases where i prefer frazetta to krenkel)

THis looks terrific so far, i love the oranges, but i wonder about the shadows - at the moment everything seems incredibly warm.  i know this similar to how frazetta worked much of the time, but i wonder if its too warm?  he also enjoyed the interplay of warm and cool in pieces like the battle scenes from Conan.

something more along the lines of that.  helps unify things a bit, even if its not exactly true to the artist (damn did he love purple or what?)

all of this looks great, you should be proud.  i would have put a bit more clothing on the girl, but i suppose you are being true to the originals >.<

[junkboy]

Alex Hanson-White:
Thanks! It was quite a bit of work, but I like to go all the way when making stuff like this.

And damn, you're right about the forearm. I made a handless arm-pending movement first, with the intention to add hands on top of the "arms" when I had the general animation locked down. I see now that I've actually "sculpted" the hands out of the forearms, hence making them too short. 

AdamAtomic:
Yes, hands and feet (and hair) could use some (or a lot) of polishing. I think that hands, especially, is something I need to work on when it comes to pixel-art. I just can't see to make them look decent.

About what you said about the background, couldn't agree more. But I've noticed there's a certain "idea" here of how pixel-art should be produced, so I thought I'd just mention it. 

Adarias:
Hah, that's funny. I didn't know there actually was a E.R.B. book called "The Cave Girl", that used the same Frazetta image I was inspired by as cover. I guess that only goes to show, once again, that great minds think alike. Or not.

Hm, you're probably right about the colors. I'll see if I can cool it down a bit. Regarding the clothing; I was actually going for a topless cave girl at first, but I couldn't make any decent looking nipples, so I ditched that idea and went for the clothed-but-not-so-much-that-the-clothing-covers-up-boob-highlights-i-tried-to-get-right-for-like-45-minutes route.


Anyway, thank you guys for your comments and kind words. Even though I don't usually go back and revise what I've done, despite excellent critique, I wan't to make it clear that I certainly appreciate it, take it to heart and usually try to improve upon what's been said in my next endeavour.

Now, let's see what I can do about that tiger...

[Frychiko]

Mockup looks fantastic! You no doubt put countless hours into these works.

If I look more carefully, I can see gaps (green grass shows through) in the right-most tree grounded trunk, and just below that tree trunk, there are funky bright stranded pixels on the floor.

Great job~

[Silver]

Mockup looks fantastic! You no doubt put countless hours into these works.

yeah,
so much i wish i could animate like that 

[Feron]

This is great viewed at 2x - I can really appreciate the detail.

[Joo]

I hate you.
In a good way.
Absolutely wicked work. Keep it up! (And then die. HORRIBLY)
Jokes, jokes...

 

[Darien]

Oops I missed this first time around and I didn't realize it was an old thread.

Joo stop resurrecting dead threads.

[Draco9898]

I'ts incredible! Amazing pixelizing there, I really like it

[AdamTierney]

The run has a lot of nice detail, but could use some work in the movement:

- Her hair looks liek it's stabbing outward. Have it pointing downward as it lifts up, then upward as it falls down to create a ncie flow.
- Her feet lift off the ground too quickly. They should push back, bend and extend, then pop up. Right now they sort of float off the ground.
- Her musculature seems to be popping in and out frame to frame. You can stress flexing if you want, but it might read better if it's consistent.
- When he foot lands, it should pop the heel down first, then roll the front of the foot down. Right now it sort of slides in.
- Everything very equally-spaced, which makes it strobe a little. You might squish the frames closer at the forward and backward extensions of her walk, then only use 1 or 2 frames for the crossover to make the motion a little smoother-looking. Anytime a limb moves at equal distance, it doesn't overlap previous frames which makes it hard for the eye to follow and understand the movement.
- If you're pivoting the chest, the head should pivot as well (can be very subtle, just a few pixels).
- Given her speed, she should have a bit of a hop or jump. Right now it looks like she's walking very fast, which is a little awkward. Lift her up a few pixels in the middle and give her a frame where both feet are in the air. Otherwise it's somewhere between a clear walk and a run right now.
- The closer foot isn't touching down. The back foot does pretty well but the nearer one starts pulling back mid-air. It should whip forwar,d land, then start to pull back and it rolls down the foot. But it needs to be on the ground before moving back.

- Adam

[ptoing]

it's also over a month old! locked!