AuthorTopic: Need Advise!  (Read 1564 times)

Offline alfari0n

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Need Advise!

on: December 04, 2016, 11:33:47 am
How can I improve this?
a) how can I detail pants and coat? dethering or shading?
b) drawing a proper variant of the sword (for future walking cycle animation)? I plan to make a character to move in 8 directions.

I am considered to give a character a source of magic light,but I have no idea of drawing that on a beltof his.
c) any suggestions of drawing a lantern that main character can hold/ on a belt? or in his arm?

Ready to hear your critics and opinion ,also would love to hear what can be added to the character. Any suggestions and help for Improvign the character!
Here are two variants of the char I drew
First One:

Second :

Animation:


« Last Edit: December 05, 2016, 08:15:26 pm by alfari0n »

Offline pistachio

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Re: Need Advise!

Reply #1 on: December 07, 2016, 10:23:44 am
Thought this could be a cool design, so I gave this a shot while I have a few minutes.

IDK whats up with the mixed resolution on these. Unless you have a very good reason for it that's something you want to avoid in all future pixels. Clean it up completely at 2x or just go 1x. The color ramps in the sprite are pretty mono, also too low contrast and you're using more colors than you need. These are pretty common beginner mistakes but pretty easy fixes.
Don't worry about the dithering yet, pretty sure it needs less, not more (see below).


Here I cut the colors down to 10, and brought the contrast up. Also used flatter areas of color (bigger "clusters", see jacket fur), a more contrasty palette in the first place makes this step more efficient and readable. You'll find both are also way easier to manage for animations. Zoom in and compare these. If you want to learn some of the reasoning behind clusters and are up for a longer read, see this post too.

BTW there are cases when these things do not come down purely to style and it doesn't matter if it's at 1x or 2x. Value contrast and simplification are fundamental design principles that bring the character/asset/whatever out or push it into the background. Sword & Sworcery/Hyper Light Drifter etc. etc. etc.... used contrast extensively even within a flatter style similar to what you might be emulating, so they look unique even within those constraints. Use dithering, etc. after you get the sprite looking good.


Here is how I handled the walking animation. See that it's a lot easier to tell what is moving with higher contrast built into the palette. There is some follow-thru here, but there could be more.


Here's how I would handle your lighting suggestions. 2 variants, quickly done.
This gets pretty tricky to animate when doing variations. Consider painting in the light source (if your program has layers and 8-bit alpha support) and indexing down from that for each frame if you're on a time budget. Just be aware that it could be considered a "cheat" and frowned upon by some guys, but whatever gets the job done faster works for me.

Some brief backstory might also help clarify the design, and let you/us know what should go where.

Keep it up man, looking forward to seeing something in the Animation subforum later ;)
« Last Edit: December 07, 2016, 10:36:41 am by pistachio »

Offline alfari0n

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Re: Need Advise!

Reply #2 on: December 07, 2016, 11:51:26 am
WoW! Thanks man! Really appreciate your help! I thought no one would ever reply to my post!
I will begin from a short story for those,who might be interested.
Currently there is more story about character and I was more concentrated on quests and describing the world in words.Now I took the brush to achieve my goals in making an RPG.
The Character is a Bastard of a slavic king.The king has two Sons and a bastard. Sons where well educated in foreign counties.Bastard was borught up as a soldier in one of the far outpost of the Empire.He likes to fight, he is a swordsman and good  rifleman/gunner. He is smart and crafty.To win a fight he will do everything,he is not proud of it,but he sometimes he uses dirty tricks to win in the fight. He likes Ale and carries at least one bottle of it  on his belt. Girls like him,but he doesn't like that attention,he thinks that people around might know that he is a bastard and that might change their attitude to him. But all that he has is only his achievments.
I guess this is enough to describe the character for now.
Anyway I am very thankful for helping me! I am a working on my  skills! Though I am only in the beggining of my journey!