Demon Slayer

[MadToaster]

Hey guys, been lurking a bit and I feel like pushing pixels again. This is a render of a character for a game I'm putting together for fun.  Any c+c would be great.

Some progress shots.



An initial quick sketch to set down the basic design first and keep things from going all over the place in the render.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v196/madtoaster/slayer.jpg

Edit:
Looking forward to learning from you guys. Neat to see that Pixelation is back up. 

[pkmays]

Upped contrast and saturation on cape highlights. Added a color to highlight armor. Added another color that serves as a shade for the skin and as a highlight for the hair.

Added folds on cape, removed the thing sticking out of his back as I couldn't figure out what perpose it serves.

Redrew hair based on your sketch. Shading came out kinda meh.

[Grindie]

I actually quite like the simple shaded version better. Reminds me of that Batman The Animated Series game on the SNES. I love the style of the sprite too.

[im9today]

You forgot (?) the skull capeholder dealy he had in the sketch. I like the helm design, very neat. Of course PK's edit rox, but I think that would be much harder to animate so I wouldn't add as many folds in the fabric.

[Helm]

I think that edit is very solid and helpful. Any sort of style has something going for it. Out of this World was made out of vectors, so not much shading was going on, obviously easier to animate, and it was that game's style.

Madtoaster has been making sparse pixel art designs for a while. Even if he ends up with sleek and simple for the game he's making, he would probably benefit from trying to push the pixel art skills more anyway just for learning purposes.

Flatness, straight ramps, few colors are what you use, I'd like to see attempts at more rendered and full-colored stuff.

[vellan]

i think finding a nice median between the ultra-simplistic and the more complex would result in more character in the art.

right now it seems kinda vacant. even adding a few more colors, a touch of shading and more visible light source would do it wonders.

it looks good...but i think it could have more character

[The B.O.B.]

Meh, I'd keep this simple. This, to me at least, would seem a lot much more approachable in a flat shaded style. I'd just ditch the dark outlines on the character all together.


   For easier animation, I think flat shading, almost vectoring, also might be a little more easier for a game. I tried adding the skull place holder, and the orange sword. Also, an alpha blending animation( I think that's what you call it) with the different colored flames on the sword would do nicely.
   I don't know what exact style you're going for, but from what I've seen you can do with digital, I'm sure this shouldn't be a problem for you. By the way, I totally did not know that you were the same madtoaster from Punaji. Total mindjob!...

[MadToaster]

BOB - Hey Bob, small world. :p Thanks for the edit, I was worrying over the tone of the contour but i think getting rid of it looks nice. The sword is in a separate sprite because it spins and floats around the character in the game prototype right now. It has a neat polygonal soul calibur swoosh.

vellan - I agree completely about striving for a middle ground. I have so much respect for Helm's illustrative command of the medium but my personal taste has tended toward the graphical.

Helm - Hey Helm! hehe, bad habits die hard. I glossed over pixel academics before but I want to become more rounded out now. I've heard the phrase color ramping before but could you explain it or point out a webpage?

im9today - About the skull, i thought it made the tiny sprite look too busy. I"m thinking of iterating on the design a few more times because it's still fuzzy in my head and honestly i don't know what he's wearing under the cape yet.

Grindle - Yeah, it's hard to say what looks best really. I've found that with platformer type games, I  like the idea of little paper dolls running around than something more solid and realistic.

pkmays - Thanks for the edit. I'm not sure about the thing sticking out either. I had it in my head that maybe he was wearing a scarf but again it's an issue of vague design. I'm gonna play with it more with paper and pencil.

[vellan]

i quite like BOB's edit, to the cape especially. gives it more volume while keeping it simple

[Helm]

Hey madtoaster. A straight ramp, is a ramp which has a few colors, anything from 2 to 32 which are all varied in terms of LIGHTNESS, but the same in HUE and SATURATION. This wastes a lot of near-shades that could be unified on a sprite, and also looks very boring and lifeless. Hand-edit every shade you use, play with its saturation and hue, try to repesent more color and warmth or coldness according to the design you're going for. It doesn't have to be THREE SHADES FOR FACE, FIVE FOR CLOTHES. It can be, two shades for face, 3 for clothes, one desaturaded dark blue for both face and clothes, blue from eye eyes highlight on the clothes, that extra gray can be dithered on the pants for a dirt effect, so on.

I've seen your CG work over at punaji and for all they other merits, it seems you haven't given colors much thought in that field either. Half of pixel art is being smart with your colors.

[ptoing]

But the same in HUE and SATURATION.

Saturation can, but does not necessarily change. It's more than anything about hue.

[MadToaster]

The way I have it figured, form reads first from contour and value.  The whole thing about hue in terms of warm/cold seems to make sense also.

I'm not sure about saturation at all though, is there any rhyme or reason as to how you can go about picking good saturation? I've seen it go all over the place in the tone progression of a lot of video game sprites. Like it will max out in the highlight, dry up and pickup towards the core then dip off again. Then in the same game on another character it might have a completely different saturation progression. They'll both look fine to me but I have no idea what principles they're using to decide.

[Helm]

shadows are less saturated usually, highlights in natural light are more. It's all about what the lightsource is, and what the material is.

Read and absorb: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

[Ryumaru]

on saturation, i usually up the saturation in the shadows because it can bring out the sprite from the bg more and just as well imo as a black outline.

[Rox]

on saturation, i usually up the saturation in the shadows because it can bring out the sprite from the bg more and just as well imo as a black outline.

Same here. It's not really "right", but a more saturated color looks darker to the eye, so I tend to up the saturation on things like dark blue shades.

[Helm]

It's common enough, I do it. The darkest shade before black usually is very high sat for me, but that's just a spriting trick. Madtoaster should learn color theory and he'll end up finding little tricks that work for him specifically anyway.

[MadToaster]

Yeah, I agree with you completely about doing your fundamentals first. There was a period of time where I was doing nothing but gesture and figure study. I think the best thing I took from it is how likeness is more in the big shapes and proportions than tight details.

But color is so strange I've found a ton of books that will talk for pages about contour drawing, perspective, chiaroscuro and such but then their discussion of color theory all goes like this.

1.  color wheel
2.
3. profit

Thanks for that link to Prom's tutorial. I didn't know he was so focused on theory like this. good stuff.

[Helm]

1.  color wheel
2.
3. profit

I know exactly what you mean. There's lots of schools in terms of color theory though. Might want to look into impressionist and expressionist art history for schemes of coloring that were based on highly scientifically arbiterate theories, but provided for interesting art nonetheless.