AuthorTopic: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]  (Read 5017 times)

Offline Rosier

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Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

on: March 10, 2016, 06:10:45 am


Mainly concerned with proportions and shading, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  The pants are what I'm least pleased with, though.

The animation planned is just a loop of the clothes/hair blowing, but I'd like to make sure it's in a good enough condition to work on.

Offline DracoDragon42

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #1 on: March 10, 2016, 03:11:49 pm
The legs are too short and thin, the reason why you don't like the pants is because they are too big for her skinny short legs. Otherwise you could use some more contrast (hair) but it looks pretty good.

Offline kilenc

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #2 on: March 10, 2016, 04:07:28 pm
first things first, work on a more neutral background if possible, since due to colors influencing your perception of other colors such a bright green could influence the piece a lot more than you intend

otherwise, here are some thoughts:

i desaturated colors (you were working with 100% or 0% saturation a lot, which made colors very not friendly to the eye) and fixed some anatomy (my version is still very rough tho, i don't have a lot of time)

Offline lachrymose

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #3 on: March 10, 2016, 04:15:58 pm
I agree that the legs are the biggest issue here.

Offline dpixel

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #4 on: March 10, 2016, 04:46:10 pm
I'm with everyone here on the legs.  Also, seem like there's a lot of bling and such that is very hard to read for a sprite this size.
Quick edit with some ideas:

Offline walker

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #5 on: March 11, 2016, 04:03:37 am
This isn't much of an edit because I think its pretty good already.


Agree with legs though, changed them a bit. The middle demonstrates her figure a little more than colours do. I think the legs were too thin. Made them a bit thicker around thighs, tried to get a sense of the calves/knees also. Made them longer in general, which required the shorts to come up a bit. Made the shirt less draping and long to keep the midriff showing, which I assume is a style you want to keep.

The only other real problem was the contrast and the saturation. Tried to make them less of a smooth ramp (see Hue Shifting). I left the colours in there as a comparison so you can have a look.



Edit: Oh, and I added a mouth, I think the piece can handle it but that's your choice. Also I think flat black and flat white are a little overbearing. Experimented a little by removing all the greys as well, but I think grey pants would be fine. Even near black and near white would be cool but I thought I'd compare it to this.
« Last Edit: March 11, 2016, 04:07:11 am by walker »

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #6 on: March 11, 2016, 04:10:25 am
camera-left leg still looks a bit off at the knee, and those pants need a bit of work before they're looking right still. As they are they appear to be riding up the back a bunch, it'd probably help to flatten the bottom edge a bit so the curve isn't as extreme.

If you need a guide to work off, I recommend getting a copy of designdoll (http://terawell.net/terawell/).

It can help to have a solid reference to work from, and DD is the most solid build-a-ref program I've found so far.
« Last Edit: March 11, 2016, 04:12:48 am by MysteryMeat »
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Offline lachrymose

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #7 on: March 11, 2016, 02:50:25 pm
Another quick edit. Something I noticed about her bust is how large yet flat it looked. I think in this case a little redux is required.

Offline Rosier

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #8 on: March 13, 2016, 01:41:48 am


Messed a lot with the legs/shorts, along with a bit of color tweaking.  I really want to keep the very brightly colored hair, but I do agree that I went a bit too vibrant on the original, so I went with the slightly toned down version.

Offline kilenc

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #9 on: March 13, 2016, 01:52:36 am
a lot better, but i still think you have anatomy problems. i don't have time to make an edit, but i suggest looking at references for hands-on-hips poses (your girl lacks any obvious elbows, which make her arms seem really short), and for general proportions (your girl's legs are way too short, usually legs are around the size of the torso+head combined but from a glance you seem to have legs the length of torso only).

lachrymose's most recent edit seems to cover both these things pretty well, id look to that for inspiration

Offline wzl

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #10 on: March 13, 2016, 02:23:14 pm
I agree that there are anatomy problems as well as other minor issues with it, as already pointed out.



The bottom of the crotch is usually around the center line, and thats where the hands start. This will get your general size/proportions correct. as you can see in your version the centerline was at the belly button, elongating her torso far too much. You're going for a more stylized sprite, so you have a bit of leeway there, especially with oversized heads.
The long torso also had the effect that she looks like she pulled up her shoulders in a shrugging fashion, so i pulled the waist up and adjusted the chest.

Second i removed some gold details, as they dont really add to the piece, and kinda make it hard to see what exactly is going on there. If you want to go for some gold applications, you might want to consider what exactly it is, and do it in a very bold way. very delicate details will just create unwanted focus in areas that are not as important.

While we're at details, you added a little highlight on her neck. that highlight makes sense if you make a guy with a huge adams apple, which girls usually dont have, but even at this scale i'd leave it out, unless its a key feature of the character.

For the pose, when creating a character initially i will try to not hide her arms and hands, to get a feel for the whole character. Point in case: she seems to have a gold bracer on her right arm, which is partly obscured by her body, that however seems like an important design choice, so make sure it is visible.

for her hair shape, you added some frizzles to her ponytail, i imagine that you want to create a more wild and chaotic hair, but i dont think hair works like that. In that resolution, if you want to go for a wild style, do it more boldly, dont try to rely on miniscule details. I'm not great on hair shading so that looks a bit awkward, but i think you'll get the idea.

Another gripe i had was the color of the hair and gold, they blend in with the skintones so much that its hard to see where the boundaries are. i'm not sure if its smart to use the hair colors on the gold stuff, but i imagine you want to have some palette consistency going on, so i kept that. I increased the saturation and decreased the brightness of that gradient to make them differentiate more from the skin. if you want really bright yellow for hair, make sure your ramps work together.

Another idea would be to darken her skin, so there is still contrast going on. although i had to change the eye and gem color, as they blended in with the skins brown.

Also, out of curiousity, you still work on a highly saturated green background. Is there a reason for that?
It doesn't always make sense to work on a mid grey, especially if your character is placed in a specific environment, however it does help with percepting colors more as they are, since they interact heavily with the surrounding colors.


Offline Rosier

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #11 on: March 14, 2016, 12:11:14 am


Raised the waist to the same level as the edits, toyed with the shoulders, removed the excess gold bits (Though I might add them back later.  The part on the belt was supposed to flutter around in the wind, but that doesn't come across still), decided on shading (Mostly based on lachrymose's, albeit with wzl's yellows), and tamed the hair a bit.

I've put the main hand on her hip, but I left the other where it was because another part of the planned animation would be letting the ponytail down, which would involve raising both up and showing them off.  If this were just a still and nothing else, I'd have it be more visible. 


I work on that green mostly it's the default background color for my spriting program, so I've been using it pretty much since I've started to the point where I find it weird to use a different color.  I'll try to see if I can unlearn that and see if it helps a bit.

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Base for a Planned Animation [C+C]

Reply #12 on: March 14, 2016, 04:17:22 am
Nice work! Looking way better!
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
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