AuthorTopic: Robot girl  (Read 3695 times)

Offline Applefatdotgov

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Robot girl

on: July 19, 2019, 05:20:39 pm
So I've gotten myself back into pixel art as of recent and I've been doing a bunch of new things (Of which you can see here since it's all the same project)
But my recent one has been bugging me. Namely, the way I handled the arms on it.

Something just feels off about them and i just can't quite place the issue.
(also worth noting I'm working within Sega Genesis limitations for the palette and color count used. I'll have to for the project if it stays in it's current form)

I'd post the reference of the character but it's particularly NSFW, so I'll link it for everyone's safety https://twitter.com/Pochincoff/status/1135393452642856960
« Last Edit: July 19, 2019, 05:42:38 pm by Applefatdotgov »

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Robot girl

Reply #1 on: July 22, 2019, 04:08:26 am


Quick redline to showcase the proportion and strange arm-bending going on that's making the arms look so funky.

shoulder-to-elbow lengths are wildly different, forearms both are somewhat lengthy in comparison to the rest of the arms, and the one held up to her face has an odd curve to it.
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Offline Chris2balls

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Re: Robot girl

Reply #2 on: July 22, 2019, 02:30:40 pm
I remember seeing this!

Some of your use of colour is a bit funky, the highlighting especially: it doesn't grade tonally that well (jump from purple to blue, blue is darker than the purple but should be lighter); the dark blue shade followed by the dark yellow make it difficult to read the body suit.

Here's my edit:

I kept the dark blue on the body suit, but I made the dark yellow dark cyan, to make it a secondary light source. Hope it helps or give you ideas on how to use this tricky palette!
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Offline Applefatdotgov

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Re: Robot girl

Reply #3 on: July 24, 2019, 05:58:23 am
MysteryMeat: Oh, i thought I had that set up in the sketch phase, but I guess when i pixeled the actual elbow in I set it way too high. The wrists I just sorta figured 'okay, that doesn't look like it can bend, so i guess the wrist would be UNDER the metal bit?' It's a gamble with the structure, but it's not super damaging I think.

Chris2balls: ...uhhh, what's going on exactly? it just looks like you took the darkest shade and jacked it really high for some reason. looks really awkward.
Part of the reason for these color choices is because I'm working with the genesis palette limitations, and my choices are a BIT slim. The red tones i used with the grays were pretty much necessary as much as I hate to admit it. that and she already kinda has a reddish gray to her anyway. I could probably cut down on the amount of shades I used though.

Offline daramon

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Re: Robot girl

Reply #4 on: July 24, 2019, 08:41:51 am
"Chris2balls: ...uhhh, what's going on exactly?"

The clue is in the comment: it's a secondary light source. It probably needs finessing, but it's a trick to make something look more shiny, or at least more embedded in a scene.

In real life things aren't just lit from the primary light source. There's a lower level of ambient light that objects will reflect. For example, if you have a sphere on a table and a light source above left, you'll get light reflecting from the sphere, but also light reflecting from the table onto the sphere, then from the sphere. This secondary light will only show in dark areas where it isn't overwhelmed by the primary source, so in this case bottom-right. And it'll be colored by, in this case, the table.

For outdoor scenes it's normally blue to represent the sky.

Owlboy used the hell out of this effect:

https://i2.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/019.jpg

Here's a sphere with a (somewhat boring) secondary light source:

https://cms-assets.tutsplus.com/uploads/users/108/posts/19997/image/color-fundamentals-value-15.png

And the article about light that it came from if you're interested:

https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/improve-your-artwork-by-learning-to-see-light-and-shadow--cms-20282
« Last Edit: July 24, 2019, 08:50:55 am by daramon »

Offline Applefatdotgov

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Re: Robot girl

Reply #5 on: July 31, 2019, 07:48:43 pm


I made some changes, but I didn't go nearly as far as you did. I DID manage to cut two shades off in the process atleast, and it looks better for it.
There's some oddities to her that I've noticed from all the art of her Pochincoff has drawn of Orca, namely her body is actually a gel covering mechanical parts. she's not really shown as having that much anymore, but i get the feeling that's for ease of drawing her more than anything. You don't get that metal sheen effect with translucient surfaces, especially anything thicker than a glass pane. You instead get something more like this: https://i.imgur.com/YDrbzxS.png (nsfw)
As such I went for a much sharper rim-light effect with one of the darker tones as the bleed, rather than to just plaster a lighter shade across huge swathes of it without reason. (I already was doing rim-lighting but apparently it was too subtle.)

Offline daramon

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Re: Robot girl

Reply #6 on: August 02, 2019, 04:22:22 pm
The changes are subtle, but I can see you've got some more consistent gradients in there now. Good work.