[WIP] Practicing outline-style

[Lakelezz]

Dear wayofthepixel-community !

Currently I am practicing an outline-style.

I already completed two pieces making this the third one.

Nonetheless there is something making me stuck on my current piece.
This is Aoba Tsugumi from the manga and anime "Kannagi":



I am using several references, some are quite big therefore a spoiler:

Spoiler

Not the best but one of the only good front views. Though the front view is roughly lined.


The left girl of course.


One very good but not full body and not front perspective reference.

Once you took a look at the third reference you may see the features on her dress. Those lines which are folding the dress back on the bottom and go up to her breasts and then moving strictly into mirrored directions.
Those lines are my current struggle. Please do not mind the current shading on the dress since I stopped adjusting it that much as long as work on the lines is going.
Any ideas how I could solve this problem?

Beside that I am happy for every constructive critique

Thanks for reading!

[lachrymose]

The bigger issue I see is with the anatomy and proportion.
I am by  no means a master but there are a few things that are pretty visually wrong here. Her legs are too short, torso is to long and arms are too short.
Here are some thoughts.


I think what your main problem is, is that by staying in"outline style" you are constraining yourself too much to your line art. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. IF you have solid line art.
Take a step back and continue to work with blobs. Then go back through and outline  your forms after the fact if you really want too.

I like the head though. It looks a lot more refined than everything else.

[Seiseki]

Been trying to practice some anatomy lately, and edits are a good excuse for that. Hopefully this is helpful but there are probably errors.



------

lachrymose drew the shape of the body on top of the clothes as a guide which I can recommend since it helps a lot!
I think that his pose works really well. It looks more natural compared to when the elbows are too close to the body which looks really uncomfortable..

[wolfenoctis]

Some thoughts on anatomy and pose:


Your current proportions are closer to a chibi character than an anime character. Anime characters have elongated legs

[Lakelezz]

Wow, I am stunned! Thanks for all of your commitment and feedback 

Lachryrose, yes I suspected her anatomy to be off.
I am thankful for sharing your ideas with me! However I am not sure whether I find your idea too tall compared to the size I was aiming for while doing those pieces. The other two pieces are around 100-120 pixels height.
The idea of using guidelines is good! I should and will do that more often from now on.

Seiseki, I appreciate your commitment as well - it is a bit smaller than Lachryrose's edit which might fit more to what I planned in terms of size - as I said I wanted this to be all a little bit smaller, around the mentioned height of 120 pixels.
On the other side I would accept this height change compromise to keep the head as it is.

Though I am a bit confused what anatomy is right or wrong now - two different attempts of you, haha.
Nonetheless I prefer my arm pose not because of the anatomy but since it seems to be cuter and I do not think it is uncomfortable. Hard to explain - I just tried it on my own before.

Wolfenoctis, I just felt in love with your edit! I agree on your opinion that my current piece looks more chibi-like. On the other side your edit is simply stunning. Sadly I am not sure whether I should try "copying" this. Since orientating will probably just be close to copying it in a stylistic manner.
I am very thankful for you inspiration, though I will see what I can make out of it.

Thanks everyone. I still have to think about this and how I could progress.
I might look at some more poses of other pieces to get more sure about the anatomy.

[Lakelezz]

I made some edits!



In the end I decided to change the size for the sake for this piece!
However I still have some struggle with adding depth to the dress... :/
This is the clean version - my other attempts simply did not work.

[Lakelezz]

I added some dark shades on her right sleeve. Though I am not sure if it looks better without.
Also I tweaked her shoes a bit.
Nonetheless I am still struggling with the depth of the dress, it is like one of the last things I am not happy with.
Any suggestions?

[Kazuya Mochu]

on the references you posted initially, there's almost no shading done on the dress, and the volume is suggested buy seam lines or by the outline occasionally curving around the body shapes.
maybe you could try that and see where that leads. if you feel comfortable understanding how the edge curves work, you could then gradually add shades on the inside of the shape that match the body's volume.

[Lakelezz]

Thanks for your feedback, Kazuya Mochu.

I just found out that one of the references did only load when the user already saw the piece embedded on the original webspace - I fixed this issue in order to see the third reference.

Additionally I tried to add depth of course. This is what I ended up with:

Oldest attempt:


New attempt  using some stronger lines:


Removed the "ugly" lines:


The skirt has been folded on the left and right side. The right side is pretty dark already so there is not that much of detail put in it.
Additionally I tried to add some depth with shades and everything.

Maybe the first attempt was the best.
Oh, and do not mind the blue colour change. Just an experiment.

I am not satisfied at all :/ Though I do not know how to encounter this.

[dpixel]

In something this size probably selective outlining might work out better...or use it other places on the interior of the piece.  For example in your last edits, the legs are outlined but the line between the thighs is pretty light, which kind of throws if off.  Look at your references.  The black lines are throughout the character. 
The edit by wolfenoctis shows selective outlining very well.  The dark outlines are throughout. On the outside, some are dark and some are a bit lighter.  Very cohesive.

I would think black outlines are more used for small detailed sprites to add definition to small details...to make them 'pop' more.  Also more used in video games on sprites to make them stand out from a background, especially a highly detailed background.

[Lakelezz]

Thanks for the feedback, dpixel!

I agree on your opinion and was already thinking about doing a while ago.
However I wanted to fix the skirt first. Nonetheless I decided to give it a try - might help be to improve the depth.



I might have to get new colours for the outlines to emphasize on them.

Still struggling with the darkest blue shade. I lowered the tone to make it fit more into an outline role. On the other hand it does not work that well on the right sleeve.
I might have to add another colour there or tweak a little bit around. The last option would be removing the shades on the right sleeve.

In the end the dress depth is still not where it should be at - any ideas?

[dpixel]

I played with the dress for a while looking at various references and realized it wasn't fitting her right.  It's kind of snug around the hips and flares out a bit at the end.  So kept on tweeking the anatomy...shortening the torso, lengthening and thickening the upper legs, and shortening the dress. (still could go more on all of these).
As far as shading I think you might be over thinking the dress with too many colors. 
I messed with a bunch of areas such as the blue, dress straps, shoes, outlines, etc.  Hope you can get some more ideas from the edit.

[Lakelezz]

Thank you a lot for your input, dpixel 

I took your ideas into account and came up with this:



Specially your way of folding back the skirt was quite interesting! Overall I liked your changes on the skirt but I wanted to remain with a rather lighter base red on it and shaped it a little bit more.

Oh and I could finally fix the single hair on top, haha!

However the shoes are still a little bit weird, I think. I will try to look into that.

Any other suggestions or impressions?

[dpixel]

I think the shoes might be a perspective issue.  Almost like she's a bit on her toes.

[Lakelezz]

Yes, I tried to lower them bit by bit in the last updates.
However I just went for a bigger change on the.



Is this any better on a perspective way?

Additionally the colour amount has been removed from 24 to 17 (without the background grey).


Changed the shoes a little bit and went down to 15 colours.



Edit: Fixed a bad habit within the piece.


New update!

-Changed the eyes quite a lot!
-Hands got some changes.
-Multiple single pixel bad habits were fixed

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Try to keep the same rendering style on the hands as you do on the rest of the body, you're using basically a different spread of colors on the hands then the other skin. It makes them look reddish rather than the skin tone you use everywhere else.

[Lakelezz]

Thank you, Mr. Fahrenheit!

I took a look at your visual suggestion and followed your advice.
Hopefully this is right:




Tried to improve the lines again.

Here is an animated GIF for a comparison:


Additionally you can solely take a look at the new progress:

[Friend]

I don't think the new saturation changes are acting too harmoniously.  The blues are overpowering, the reds too drab. (EDIT- I see you reverted back to older colors)
  If anything I'd make the reds stronger to capture the anime style more. I reduced the colors since I find your ramps are too long in most areas like the skin and dress.  The ramps can be shortened a bit so you can control your colors better.

I also tried to focus on improving the lines.  Youre making good progress, but I find the lines can be even cleaner.  Her left arm especially.  I get youre going for the folds in the shirt, but you can imply that with the shading and make the outline cleaner.  I made a large number of subtle tweaks to cut down a little on banding and cleaning up the lines.  It is hard to see them at first, but if you zoom in and compare areas, you can see all of the little edits that smooth out the outlines and make the clusters stand out more.  Some changes that should be easier to see- bottom of the wrists, outline of the left most hair strand, her left shoulder, her calves.

  One thing I think you need to try to avoid is you try to shade edges of things with a very thin cluster.  It looks like banding.  These clusters can be thicker.  I see you already picked up on this a bit- You took out the banding in the hair strand that is the farthest left.  I'd personally make the shading around the edge of the face stronger so that it doesn't look like banding

also the black you have is a little too strong.  Try to avoid pure blacks since theyre a bit harsh

[Lakelezz]

Yes, I reverted the colours because I had the same problem as you mentioned.
Thanks for trying to balance it out! I might consider a red change but I am not sure about tweaking the black outline this red. When you were saying increasing the red's saturation to get closer to the anime style you were confusing me when you removed the black outline. Though I agree my black was probably too black ( 14 red, 14 green, 14 blue). However turning it red would not be anime anymore :/
I tried to get down to 13 colours but I could not use the purple instead of the dark red (brown one could say) because on this saturation it felt too bright.

What do you think about this new blackish (rather brownish) outline? I feel like it is too brown for an anime outline, haha.

Additionally lines have been corrected supported by neat visual considerations of the artist Jalonso

[neofotistou]

I thought I'd simplify your AA a bit, as it produced lots of banding. There's more to do, along those lines.
AA shouldn't be longer than half the width of the line you're trying to antialias.

[Lakelezz]

Thanks, neofotistou! I tried lowering the AA at multiple places.

However the red/brown colour has been tweaked to a bit more purple tone. I wanted to make the shades a little bit more interesting.
I feel like it could be a little bit better though.

[neofotistou]

Let me say this again: AA shouldn't be longer than half the width of the line you're trying to antialias.  Her legs are full of AA that violates this rule.

My advice would be to leave this as is, and try to remake her at 1/2 and at 1/4 size.

After the 1/4 size (where you'll be forced to work without AA), you can go back to this big sprite and see what you've learnt. I predict it will be a lot.
Do this as an exercise. Otherwise this will be a forgettable piece. My sense is, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're not learning anything new from this right now. Go smaller and revisit this. If I'm wrong and I wasted your time, come back and tell me

good luck

[Lakelezz]

In my point of view I learned a lot. Specially when I compare with what I started and then ended up with.
Your suggestions of down sampling it / redoing it on smaller sizes might be a quite interesting though.

This is my current version:



I changed/removed clusters, AA lines, sleeves, shades, hair, hair highlights, jagged lines, and some more minor stuff.


Here we go - the pre-final edit:



I updated the eyes based on this reference:



Any final suggestions before I publish this piece?


I published the piece
Thanks for everyone who helped me!

Take a look at the final piece:

pixel joint:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/93357.htm

deviantArt:
http://lakelezz.deviantart.com/art/Aoba-Tsugumi-Kannagi-520429431