Character Sprites (Posing/Color Practice)

[Rosier]

Title pretty much says it all.  It's practice with making characters look different from one another aside from just color placement.

[MysteryMeat]

Try playing with different body shapes and proportions, the poses showcase differing personalities but right now they all have samey silhouettes.
it's not ALWAYS a good metric, but usally if you can make a design all black and have trouble differing it from another you should probably take another shot at that design.


Note how when you black out the designs on your characters here, it becomes a bit hard to tell who is who between the two left characters. The height difference on the third helps to differentiate him, however.

while this is usually more of a western cartooning thing, it's a principle that's applicable to just about any medium i feel.

one animated series that does this well even with 'realistic' proportions is Avatar: the Last Airbender, usually through the use of accessories and varied props.


Note how you can clearly differentiate the characters here based on the shape of their outlines, that's the important bit to take away from this ramble.


[edit x7 combo, cripes I had more to say on this than I thought]

[MAVW]

I'll jump in what MysteryMeat said just to add the recent video extra credits did about pose design, it's really interesting.

Expressing the character's personality through posing will help a lot too, the Avatar example also displays that very well.

[Rosier]

So what I'm getting is give everyone hats...

But in all seriousness, I edited the two.  Blue is supposed to be really tall, but really skinny.  Red is supposed to be pretty tall, but a lot broader, so hopefully the edit communicates that.  Otherwise changed Red's hair to have two defined spikes, and it be really long. 


Also Pink is there.

[MysteryMeat]

I'd say slim down blue's pants some to emphasise his legs more and differentiate them visually from Red's.
The hair changes definitely help.
They're still pretty close in height though, it might help to straighten blue's stance some?

[Rosier]

Straightened up Blue's stance even though I'll probably give them more defined idles later on, played with Red's hair because I thought it looked a bit unclean, and added Tan because short.

That black thing on her shirt is intended to be a bow of sorts, but I feel that isn't super clear.  Otherwise I had trouble sizing her because of how small she is compared to the rest.

[Rosier]

Been working on these with help from a different forum and wound up with these.

A lot of the shading's been reworked obviously, plus a lot put into colors to stray away from flat grays.

[MysteryMeat]

Looks ages better! Only remaining critique I got is that some of the characters seem to have weird chins, it might help to push the mouths left on small brown horned girl and tall blue a bit to make the face more solid looking. As it is it looks a bit deformed, I'm only really noticing it on those two though.

[Rosier]

Looks ages better! Only remaining critique I got is that some of the characters seem to have weird chins, it might help to push the mouths left on small brown horned girl and tall blue a bit to make the face more solid looking. As it is it looks a bit deformed, I'm only really noticing it on those two though.

I find that a bit weird to say, considering Red is the only one with a unique face...  It did look like their mouths were weird on second glance, though.

Also, probably should mention that these are edited by another person.  My last "draft" I guess were these down here, and the ones above were another person doing their take of the shading and a few minor changes:


Basically a lesson in me trying to figure out what to do with black.  They didn't like how I used the lighter gray for highlights with Red's pants being the marquis example, so this was me trying out another type before they did their edit.

[MysteryMeat]

Here, I did some slight tweaking to show what I meant.

It might help a bunch to look up some proportions guides and do some figure drawings to get a better grasp on your anatomy, you got some good startings here but practice always helps.
Quickposes is a good place to start with figure drawings.

[Rosier]

Making the mouth three wide seems like it makes them a bit derpy, but I see what you mean.


I didn't use the site, but freehanded this as practice.  The character is facing towards another one and saying something like, "Hey, over here!"
Both colors of shirt as practice, but I also tried to keep in line with his proportions.  He has the same proportions as the one above, but I think I might have made his chest too broad.

[MysteryMeat]

Looks MUCH better now, yeah! Good work!
I did notice one other thing though, I think you have a problem with torsos being a bit long or legs too short. legs are usually a bit longer than the torso and in most of the characters here that seems to be the inverse. It's most notable in small brown girl, these are doing pretty solid otherwise.

[Rosier]

Looks MUCH better now, yeah! Good work!
I did notice one other thing though, I think you have a problem with torsos being a bit long or legs too short. legs are usually a bit longer than the torso and in most of the characters here that seems to be the inverse. It's most notable in small brown girl, these are doing pretty solid otherwise.

The problem is that I just really like the look of tunics...  Everyone's waist is at their belt, and everyone sans Yellow has some form of trim that's under it, which may make it look like their legs are short. 

Going off the thing that the legs should be as tall as the head and torso combined, then all of them have proper foot to waist leg ratio...
Except Brown, you're totally right...

[MysteryMeat]

in that case it might be how low-hanging the crotch on everyone's pants are.

if your balls hang low, if they dangle to-and-fro...~

[Rosier]

in that case it might be how low-hanging the crotch on everyone's pants are.

if your balls hang low, if they dangle to-and-fro...~

Well...  Yeah that makes sense.

Messed with that, plus messed with Brown so that's she's properly proportioned.

Anything regarding the wave?

[MysteryMeat]

VASTLY improved! Great stuff! As for the wave, same crit as you just acted on, crotch be dangly yo. Also, it looks more like the kamina point (vvv) than a wave, would help to remove detail from it I think. Get rid of that line in the middle, and maybe try repositioning the pointer to be sorta like \||| instead of like |||| to create the distinction instead.

[Rosier]

Pretty easy fix there. I feel like the arms might not be 100% proportionally accurate, though, but I'm not sure.

[MysteryMeat]

You're right! It's the upper arm, it's way too short compared to the forearm.
Remember, arms are divided very nearly in half at the elbow, you can see this for yourself by bending your arm up against itself to meet your hand at your shoulder.
It'd be an easy fix though, just try and shift the elbow up until it looks about equal.
Forearms ARE actually a bit shorter than the upper arm from shoulder to elbow, with the wrist coming about an inch short of the top of my shoulder personally as a point of measurement, but the hand is big enough that this wouldn't be noticeable to someone not well-versed in anatomy.

[Rosier]

Noted.  I knew it looked off.

[32]

Mostly proportional issues. Especially the leg to torso ratio MysteryMeat pointed out. Draw them without the tunic first and then add it otherwise you'll always have an issue.

Your heads are also very round, try giving them jaws. I didn't touch the colours but I'd highly suggest less contrast. Or at least to be consistent with the colour range. The shirt is far darker than the pants hair and skin.

Keep it up

[Rosier]

I fixed up the torso, arm, and leg a little bit, but I really don't care for how your head edit looks.  I gave mine a bit more of a jaw, but I don't like how stretched the face looks and how off the hair looks.  And I kept the position because that's what I was going for. 


And in other news, I redid an older sprite from a while back:
from
http://previews.123rf.com/images/auremar/auremar1205/auremar120501582/13561350-Woman-sitting-in-chair-Stock-Photo-legs-crossed-beautiful.jpg 

A few design updates later, I wound up with the two above.  The idea is that she's using magic to create the box and the thing off of her hand and sort of flourish. 

The left image has the character wearing black wrappings around her breasts, hands, and legs, a large pink sash, and white shorts.
The right has her wearing a black button up with a bow, white shorts, a stocking and shoes. 
The assymetry is because ~animeeeeee~, but also conveniently made differentiating the legs easier.

In addition to exploring outfits and hairstyles, I'm again wondering about anatomy and shading. I hopefully kept the proportions consistent with each other, but I'm still far from perfect.

[eishiya]

Her front leg seems to be attached in the wrong place. Remember, there's a single bone from the hip to the knee, it shouldn't bend. If I'm mistaking the way the skirt falls for a bend in the leg, then that's still something to work on.

[Rosier]

So a bit more like that?  I shrunk the pants back to be more behind the leg like in the picture, hopefully making them looking a bit more natural.

[MysteryMeat]

I think it might help a bunch to do some art studies on the pelvis and torso area, her leg's kind of popping off her there.
Here's a reference picture to work from in the same sort of pose.



As for anatomy stuff, try gesture drawing on websites like quickposes.com or just google image search some stock photos and try to emulate what you see as best as possible. Less clothing is better, as the point is to study the musculature and skeletal structure so you can better replicate it on your own.

[Rosier]

So that was totally my reference and I linked it when I posted :p.  I think it was also my reference for the original sprite I made almost a year ago, too.



Tried to better differentiate the legs from the pants by following the shapes of the legs a bit more.  It's the part touching the seat that's confusing me, but I think I got it a bit better here.



Predictably, Red should be next, and he conviently has a habit of tearing off his shirt.  I'll keep the less clothes in mind when I make one for him.

[BatElite]

I've tried to fix her left leg, and messed with her right one as well. As far as I know the front of the upper leg is straight from hip to knee.
I suspect you haven't taken into account the different angle between your ref and the position the character takes. As a result her right upper leg is too short.

[Rosier]

Rounded out the pants a tiny bit, but otherwise I see what you fixed.



How do ab?

Torso shape and broadness I'm okay with, but I tried a few different ab looks and went for one that was less messy.

[Rosier]

Another remake, this time of a remake, and more practice with anatomy. I'm happy with how the clothes versions turned out, but I'm still uncertain on the body version.