Mockup Concoction - Character Creation

[Indigo]

this may help you - written a long time ago while giving C+C to a friend, but it could just as easily help you. Some of you may remember it.

As promised here is some critique for ya...

This will only focus on the main character today - tomorrow (hopefully) i'll get into color theory dealing with your background.

so without further ado....


Well, first things first.  Lets talk anatomy.  Now i know that the style you were going for was cartoony, and thats fine.  But since i dont know how intensionally you did everything, I will show you the hard-core correct way, then you can vary off that path as much as you choose to.  In my version i've fixed the following; the head was too big, legs too stubby, pectorial muscels too saggy, you locked all of your limbs so i gave them a little bend, gave him a prince/knight like posture, and a few other minor things.  I'm sure that you catch on pretty quick, so i'm not going to spend any more time dealing with anatomy.  (PS i was just too lazy to draw that crazy hair due you have on that guy)

Alright - now lets talk artsy.  The first thing i noticed about your sprite is the retona burning amount of saturation...almost %100 saturation i think.  Generally speaking, things aren't ever that high in saturation except for controlled situations.  The basic color theory about game design goes as follows; background = low contrast, low saturation.... sprites = high contrast, high saturation.  I'll talk more about that later, but basically its just to make sure the user can always know the difference between his sprite and everything else cluttered around the screen without losing him constantly.  Now although i say sprites are supposed to have high saturation doesn't mean that it can be retna burning and still be okay.  Just lower the hue to be a bit more grey and you'll be fine.  In my version i raised the contrast, lowered the saturation a tad, and added an outline.

The second thing I noticed was your whomping 42 color count.  Thats just crazy.  I lowered the color count to 12 colors plus transparency.  if you notice, even though i have about a fourth the amount of colors you have- mine looks more detailed and shaded.  If you smart with colors, you can achieve this without too much hassle.  Also it makes replacing colors if you need to not nearly as hard.

the last thing that i did to make your character pop out from the background was add an outline.  if you look closely at the outline, its not a continuous black line.  In some areas where light would be hitting, i used a technique called "selout" or "selective outlining".  Learn about it here and any other pixel term you dont understand: (Selective Outlining)  As you can see - sometimes on different colored backgrounds (like you might find throughout various levels in a game) makes it hard to see the sprite distinctly unless it has an outline.  The outline is optional, and not all games use it, but i think you can benifit from it in your case.

Also notice how before i shaded the sprite, i 'blobbed' things in roughly.  This is how i will be animating the whole sprite.  Its generally not a good idea to animate a fully shaded sprite this complex - so instead, you do all of the frames in a simple manner and then shade each one individually.  this will make your animation look more fluid and non-mechanical.  This leads us to our next section - animation.




here we have alot of useful information.  Basically there are 3 steps in creating animation cycles. in step 1 you create base frames; or in this case - the 4 generic running poses that we all know.  In step 2 you create the 'tween' frames; or all of the ocward stuff the body does while moving from one generic pose to another.  In the last step you shade it.  I didn't complete step 3, but you'll get the idea.

Usually people get overwhelmed on the mechanics of how a run animation works, but in reality you dont need to know much.  Just by laying out the basic building blocks of base frames, all we have to do is look at the base frames before and after a tween in order to create a good seemless motion.  Alot of useful info is typed up in the pic itself, so i'll just let it do the talking.

Here is what my step 1 looked like when i was done with it, along with my step 2. 


Its amazing to note the big difference it makes when you add the tween frames in.  Through the tweens opens the door to adding so much character and even emotion into the animation of your run to help 'define' who the character is.

in closing, here is a final comparison to see how much difference these techniques have made in the overall product.  Might be useful for ya.

One last thing i'd like to say before i go to bed is just a quick thing about what defines a walk vs a run.  In games its much better to have the character always running because it makes the game feel more fast-pased and dramatic.  But what defines a walk vs run.  Certainly a run is NOT a sped up verson of a walk, right?  Heres a quick answer for you; When you walk, there is always at least 1 foot planted on the ground.  When you run, there are moments when both feet aren't even in contact with the ground.  Study the animation i made to see more clearly what i mean.

general info about animating moving things:
the first instinct of an amateur animator is just to copy+paste+move and occationally rotate 90 degrees. And the first instinct of a more advanced amateur is to copy+paste+move and edit a little here and there. This is an alright technique to use, but only under certain conditions. If the part your animating rotates at all (Like the arms do), your better off redrawing it instead of the copy+paste method. But if it moves in a different way, its okay to copy+paste+move+edit+touchup. for example. In the animation i posted above, I completely shaded the torso. I did not redraw the torso for each frame. Instead, i just squished and expanded horrizontally a copy+pasted torso to give the effect that it is twisting on the y axis. Even the base torso to begin with (seen in the first pic i posted) was a copy+pasted verson of the profile view i drew. I just edited it to appear as if it has been seen on the 3/4 view. and the shoulder pad was also just copy+paste+moved (and also flipped horrizontally on the forward stroke of the arm). But as i said - in order to have a flowy animation, all rotating parts should be redrawn each time.

Something that i should have also included in my animation was to have the character leaning into the run a little bit to keep him balanced. Also little things could have been added to even further progress the animation. things such as the shoulder pads could have bobbed up and down in due to his bodies rise and fall.

I have already started on the second half of my little critique session and i hope to have it up by tomorrow.  I hope this was helpful to you in some way shape or form.

-Indigo

[Willows]

Indeed it was helpful, Indigo

I remember readin' that a long time ago. I'm still impressed that you took the time to make that, and I'm still convinced it was time well spent. In any case, I tried to follow the basic guidelines of your lil tutorial there, and realised that I had one frame too many, and that merely editing an existing frame to make the further leg closer and the closer leg further would save me time and probably make it look better.



Not much of an edit at all, but it is an edit, and something was fixed. I unshaded the belly, because I didn't like how it was.

[Willows]

Started making it more like an actual mockup. The one "screenshot" that I want to complete is the one depicting the Willow first seeing the armour or crown. Currently it's the crown, but that is subject to change.

For the GUI, I've got a brain as the healthbar, which will bleed as he suffers damage, kinda like Wolfenstein 3D (Oldschool fps) or Heli-Attack 3. The idea is (much like many bosses in many video games) he can only suffer damage to the head, hence the brain bleeding. The circle that the brain is incased in shall eventually be made look more like a magnifying lens, for comedic value, or somethin'. Also, the place where the portrait is would be for status and oxygen for underwater. He'd look poisoned if he were poisoned, whereas the sprite would only be tinted green (and maybe unhappy), and the water level in the portrait's enclosure would raise the longer you were underwater, eventually getting to mouth level, at which point the character would have increasing looks of panic, and eventually drown completely. Probably what I'd do then is have the water crash into the brain's little circle and engulph it, oooor something.
Oh ambitions, how fun you are.

I'm disovering that there are tooons of things I'm unhappy with, most of which having to do with colours. The bluish-grey metal will be given a completely new palette eventually, and I'm realising that I could do with a few more colours to smooth out my dear main character.
I'll actually redraw everything in the bluish-grey metal. It all looks like crap

Things to add:
A cave roof that isn't just the floor tiles flipped over.
Elaborateness in tiles (up and down slopes, basically. Maybe a pool or puddle of water)
More suited background (Rocks are out, so it no longer fits, really)

Things to fix:
The armour and everything using that same palette.
The main character, and adding some texture or something to the poor shapeless mass.
The Gui, which is terribly WIP atm.

Is there anythin' else? What I could really use is either some guidance in colour or someone smacking me and saying it's not as bad as I think it is. Whatever you say, thanks in advance.

(Note - this is also kinda a study/experiment in portraying emotion through the face. If I carry on with this, that'd be a main focus of the game. No dialogue would come from the character, only facial expressions and movements to "speak" with. With that said, feel free to critique what the character is "saying" as well)

[Willows]

Got back from camping trip.
Upped contrast in places.
Recoloured some things.
Made some slopes, probably broke some tiling laws.



Character now stands out too much, gotta up contrast in other things, too. Maybe.

[.TakaM]

inspiration?

[Willows]

Subconsciously, maybe, 'cause I don't remember seeing that 'till after I started this. It kinda tripped me out when I saw it.

[Willows]

Uhh. Basically added more tiles and moved some things around.

[Evil-Ville]

Make the background darker, it looks a bit confusing that way.

[Rox]

I wouldn't want the background to be any darker, actually. I'd rather see the ground tiles having outlines or something to increase contrast between background and foreground. Making the background darker tends to make things... uglier, from my experience. In fact, you might want to make the background lighter, like in the post-mock-up version. With those values and outlines along the ground/ceiling, I think I'd like it.