Template body top-down view

[EyesUnclouded]

Hello,

I need help with these template bodies that I'm doing. They are for an RPG which has a top down view. I have trouble finding the right perspective or rather adjust the bodies to look like the right perspective. At the moment it looks too much like a front view. I provided an example with different objects so that you can see what it should look like.

The woman kinda fits better than the man. It is a difficult view that does not really exist in real life because too much of the front is shown to justify a true view from above but i need to find the right balance between front and top view.





I appreciate your advice!

[eishiya]

Viewed from this angle, characters would look almost "chibi" with all the foreshortening. You're showing too much of the legs and abdomens, and not enough of the tops of their heads and shoulders. The reason it looks like a front view is because it is a front-view, just one you squished. Bodies are 3D, and in this view we should be seeing the tops of things. For example, the overly-defined abs on the man are drawn as if they're from the front, they're not curving around the body. The man's pecs aren't overlapping any part of his body as they should, etc. Think about bodies as 3D forms. They have bits that stick out and parts that go into the body. This means that things can look quite different in 3/4 view.

I recommend giving Loomis's Figure Drawing book a read, I'm sure you can find a PDF online for free, those books are long out of print. I think there are even some examples in them that are quite close to RPG view, just upside down. Most importantly though, he talks about the important parts that get "distorted", and that's what you need to learn. Actually read that book, don't just look for the relevant section and diagrams.

[EyesUnclouded]

I agree that there isn't enough foreshortening. Especially the abs and the legs are too much drawn like a front view. Also i guess the head needs to move more into the body, i mean over the shoulders. But I don't want to foreshorten the bodies too much. The original characters that belong to the tileset (it's an rpgmaker tileset) don't look that different but I admit that mine look more like a front view. I tried to make the bodies more defined and not go for the chibi look. I edited the man with more foreshortening (too much and the proportions are still off) as an example of how I don't want it to look.

[eishiya]

The super-foreshortened man example isn't appropriate for 3/4 view anyway. What you want it something in the middle between those two versions.

The original RPGM caracters are in an appropriate view, but they're also chibi, so if you try to reproduce their proportions just by shifting the perspective on your characters, you'll end up with something that doesn't match the 3/4 world.
Part of the issue though, is those other assets you're using aren't all 3/4 view either xP That clock, for example, is a travesty xP RPGM's default graphics are a bit thrown together and aren't all in the same projection and scale. So, you may want to create a few simple assets of your own to use as a guide for your characters to make sure it all works together.

Perhaps instead of diving into details like you are, play with silhouettes first. That will let you iterate with different views faster, as well as help you make sure the characters read well at a glance no matter what they're wearing. The way you're colouring/shading them is also working against the foreshortening you're trying to do, so working with silhouettes will help you get a good starting point for the colouring, which people can then critique separately.

[MysteryMeat]

whipped this up in designdoll, figured I could better illustrate my idea visually than trying to describe it in words.