AuthorTopic: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art  (Read 40654 times)

Offline falz

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #60 on: January 29, 2020, 12:14:56 am
Thanks for the feedback :) Yes, it isn't necessary to keep the project 100% pixel art. I did some rework on the face and hair with what you said in mind. I think its a lot better but it isn't where I would want it, still

Offline Chonky Pixel

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #61 on: January 29, 2020, 10:22:12 am
Apologies, I wasn't very clear about the hair. When you change shade, it's a chance to reinforce the texture you're trying to convey. So the combination of tufty and smooth transitions are a bit confusing on the same object.

So keep your transitions tufty, but the tufts don't need to extend so far down the head as they did in the original. In fact, the brightest hair colour in the original was doing a great job and didn't extend very far at all.

And it can look better when the transitions are a bit more bunched up at the extremes of the gradient. This means a large area of hair will be represented by one colour and no texture, but you don't need to be afraid of that.

Texture can be conveyed with a small amount of detail in a sea of a single colour. With limited colours, this can look a lot better than trying to spread 4-5 colours evenly across a grad. If you're working in high res, the opposite may be true depending on the style. A grad can look good because you have millions of colours at your disposal. I suspect that in most cases you'll still concentrate areas of light and dark though.

A way to think about hair might be to imagine it as a solid lump of shiny, smooth material. Shade appropriately, and add a line of glint/highlight. Maybe another larger area of lesser highlight around it. And when I say 'shade appropriately' I mean finding a line to draw your shadow, effectively using two shades for 'lit' and 'shadow'.

Now you can rough up your highlights in the direction of the strands of hair. Like I say, your original highlight does this well. Do the same to the transition to shadow.

At this point you may want to think about the texture of the hair you want to convey. If it's dreads or a spikey Manga style you'll want to add shadows and/or lesser highlights to identify individual tufts. If it's curls you might want to pick out individual curls around your transitions and add highlights and shadows. If it's straight you may want to add shadows around the tips where the smooth hair breaks up into tufts. Unless it's recently cut and heavily styled hair, where you can get away with straight lines and minimal texture.

Here's something I found randomly that shows a few hair types.

https://www.hiclipart.com/free-transparent-background-png-clipart-tsshr

For the characters with long hair, there are few colours, and the highlights and shadows are kept relatively close to the tops and tips respectively. In most cases there are long areas with no texture or shading, and that's OK because the shading at the transitions carries it. The different transitions don't often come near to overlapping.

This is a good example because it also shows a character with hair that requires tuft-by-tuft shading as well. It looks like a similar way you might shade a palm tree or a pineapple for example. Looking at your character you may want to do that around the tuft at the right-hand side.

Looking at the above example, one thing I notice for long hair is that hair on the top of the head is lit, while on the side it's in shade. This feels natural if the light source is coming from above. In your case, the light hair carries on half way down the side of the head, and I'm struggling to think of a light source that would do that.

This is a lot of words. If I get a moment today I'll try an edit.

Offline Chonky Pixel

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #62 on: January 29, 2020, 01:33:22 pm


This is a really quick, rough edit. I'm sure you can refine it so it looks a lot better, if indeed you like the edits.

I'm pulling the texture of the hair down from the highlight at the top using the transitions between shades and a few clusters of light and shade. The colour bands don't extend too far away from the top or bottom of the hair and I'm trying to make sure each colour transition reinforces the hair shapes. I added some tufts, one on the side and a few at the bottom. With work they could look a lot more 3D but the idea of shading is there as a start.

I took the "reduction of unnecessary bands" idea across to the chest-plate. By making the transition harsh between light and shade, and reducing the size of the highlight, it looks shinier. A general rule is that the bigger the highlight, the less shiny. Also, hard lines defining shadow in the right context can come across as reflections on a shiny surface, as you get those hard changes in value on objects with a mirror-like surface, as with a reflection of land, horizon and sky.

I hope you find this useful. 
« Last Edit: January 29, 2020, 01:58:21 pm by Chonky Pixel »

Offline falz

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #63 on: January 29, 2020, 02:29:27 pm

Thank you for all the feedback, Chonk! Here is another revision. I think I see a little more what you mean. I used some more reference too. I'm having a hard time getting the armor to look good how it was so I changed the design a little

Offline Chonky Pixel

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #64 on: January 29, 2020, 05:09:23 pm
Yeah, that's really coming on! You've got some great hair shapes there and it definitely has body and shape, nicely done.

Be careful about introducing noise to the image. Single pixels or short line segments are more likely to be producing noise rather than providing information. I would get rid of the solo pixels and the line segment a bit above them and replace them all with clusters more like the one above the line segment (top left of the hair) or even clusters that are bigger than that. These glints are an opportunity to reinforce your hair shapes and can suggest texture in areas that would otherwise be blank.

With a single pixel you can't suggest any kind of texture. With a cluster you can shape it to lead the eye in a direction or reinforce the detail of your material surface. With hair, they should obviously be longer than they are wide and point in the direction the hair is going. Getting good cluster shapes is one of those important keys to getting pixel art right, as I am starting to discover.

You can place them a bit further down to help break up the big shadow a bit.

Talking of clusters, you could tidy up the shapes in the hair highlights too. This is a bit of a "final sweep" thing, but you can just go over each cluster of pixels of the same shade and make sure it's a "nice" shape. Reduce jaggies where it doesn't damage the overall impression of the image, remove orphan pixels where you can (although attached by a corner still counts as attached), round corners where rounded shapes are required, make things pointy where they need to be pointy, and so on.

With the new breast-plate, I would just get rid of that dark outline between the top (bright) section and the leftmost section. Let the two colours butt up against each other, then introduce a thin line of a brighter shade to act as the glint that suggests metal. It probably doesn't need to go the whole way across and it can maybe thicken towards the point.

Those block colours suggest a matte surface, so have a look at some tutorials on drawing chrome or reflective metal to see if you can pick up some ideas for making it shine. Unless you *want* a matte look of course.

I kinda preferred the overall shape of the original breast-plate tbh, and the curve meant there was a bit more scope to do metal effects. With careful placement of highlights you could make that shape sing... the new one looks a bit small and out-of-place at the moment.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2020, 05:17:54 pm by Chonky Pixel »

Offline falz

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #65 on: January 30, 2020, 02:26:45 pm
 :D

you convinced me to try the original armor again. It looks better. Plus some final touch ups
(edit) another. One more!
« Last Edit: January 31, 2020, 05:45:19 pm by falz »

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #66 on: January 30, 2020, 03:46:03 pm
honestly, I think that armor plate looks significantly worse. Doesn't have a solid form to it, why does it spike up on the right? why is the shape so indistinct?

The whole sprite I think suffers a lack of construction, however. Case in point, why does his sleeve have such a rubbery texture to it? what exactly is going on with his shoulder? his neck looks awfully thick for how slim the shoulders are!

Etc etc etc.

You might be best served redrawing this with construction in mind.
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Offline falz

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #67 on: January 30, 2020, 04:43:06 pm
What exactly do you mean with 'construction'?

Offline Chonky Pixel

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #68 on: January 31, 2020, 03:32:19 pm
I can only guess, but it sounds like MysteryMeat doesn't like the way your character works in the 3D space you're drawing.

With lower-res imagery, it can be easy to correct. It's just nudging a few pixels. However, with this many pixels around the place, fixing anatomy or 3D issues can be a task.

The idea of "construction" makes me think of "construction lines", so in this case, I guess it would mean working out the anatomy of the character, drawing it in as an outline, and getting all that right before starting on the shapes of things like the cloth (still as an outline), the breastplate, hair and so on. *Then* shading.

That sounds like a lot of work, and I know my anatomy skills are non-existent. There's this which might help a little:

https://justsketch.me/

Or "magic poser" for mobile, but I haven't tested that.

That won't help with the cloth or the breastplate though.

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Re: [Feedback] [CC] Bolero: Fantasy Tactics, pixel art

Reply #69 on: February 01, 2020, 06:55:01 pm
Hi,

Great progress and great criticism so far!

Here's my edit of your portrait:

- straightened the eyes
- gave more volume to nose by adding shadows (side, bottom)
- spread out the shoulders to make his chest feel less squashed
- made the arms spread out more, to make them less rigid
- gave more definition to the hair with a darker green

Hope it helps! :) Let me know if you have any questions.
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