Commercial Critique Challenge: Demon's Crest

[Nitram]

Hey, I tried...

[Slainte]

Still a WIP, but some comments will be nice at this stage... I'm not that good with poses at this "big" size 
I think I'll be changing the weapon arm to the other one, as it will cover less effect of the sprite stance



Ok... updating with the current progress... overall size reduced

[Dhaos]

Snake and Adrias, you two got some kickass sprites going there. Love the huge demon arthur XD.

[sonic_reaper]

Well ... the fact that the protagonist from DC is naked inspired this ...

The two naked protagonists finally meet ... 



12 colors.  Uses the original GaG palette for Arthur.  Man the DC style is VERY similar to the Castlevania (SotN and RoB) style. I'm so used to it that this was a breeze.

And with Armor. Again Arthur's original palette (didn't use all the colors again).



Snake was kind of right about "pillow-shading".  It isn't so much that as it is the DC sprites use more colors than I feel is necessary.  At the same time however they use high contrast colors.

The jig is up indeed ...

[Turbo]

Nitram: looks ok, but the helmet looks improvised. Use reference for the helmet, and make one that can be easily recognized at this size, even if it's different from the original. I'd add a brighter color and add armour highlights here and there.

Slainte: i suggest making his pose a bit more dinamic - separate his arms from his torso, make his legs open more. The pose from the original game is quite stiff, so this wouldn't really be following that to the letter, but it would look better as the remake.

Sonic_reaper: i like everything about your sprites, except the colors on the naked arthur. He looks made of dirt, instead of skin. I'd pump up the oranges or the pinks on either the highlights or dark shades to convey more of a fleshy feel.

[Conzeit]

dont be so judgemental about the amount of colors they use SR, the fact you come from CV which has an  apparently similar but diferent technique doesnt mean that CD's is invalid, they have a reason to do what they do and there's not only one way to sprite.

first of all I dont think CV style is all that similar to this, honestly I dont think you got the style at all, what you did just looks like an oddly shaped and fuzzy CV sprite.

remember the DC sprites were meant to be displayed in CRT TVs, DC is superior to CV in portraying detail under blurring filters.

zoomed up all these shades might look a bit overachieving, but when you look at it in high res in original size, or in a blurry screen you can see how each pixel comes together to give a very good idea of the shape.

think of DC sprites as sprites that expand the theory of Selout from just an outlining theory into a shading theory, it's all the same principle and ideas but applied as a way to convery all of the detail in the sprite, I think DC sprites have a very deep intuitive understanding of AA theories.

That is also why I think this is mostly pointless, the ideas in DC are interesting because of how well they use AA ideas, but to really be able to take a deep look at this we'd need a drawing tool based on darkening/lightening color cycling, because practice is always behind intuitive understanding.

[sonic_reaper]

Turbo;

I know.  The palette came from the original Arthur.  That's an easy fix I won't bother with at the moment.

Ugh it's really late and I'm about to pass out but I can't ignore it when someone challenges my technique.  I will say that I agree with you.  However the problem with the palette is that it was drawn from the original Arthur.  And the contrast is asstastic.  Also the proportions on the head don't follow the DC style at all.  I will edit to more closely follow the style presented in DC.  However it won't require all that much tweaking at all, as you seem to think it would.



And now I shall proceed to pass out.

EDIT:  And yet again it still looks blurry in comparison to the original DC sprite when zoomed in.  I have failed.  Whatever.  I don't really care that much.  Was still a fun exercise.

[ndchristie]

I mostly agree with conceit, though i always have a good laugh when somebody uses words like "theory" and "principle" for things like selout and aa.  Both techniques just sound silly when words of such high implications are used to describe them .  Its like calling cross-hatching a theory, or scumbling a principle ^^

[sonic_reaper]

I understand completely what Conceit said in that DC uses anti-alias/sel-out techniques inside AND on the outline the sprite as opposed to just on the outline where it is normally used.  I think I too heavily outlined the sprite since the DC one looks much less softer and less "contained" standing next to mine.  It's very subtle though I must say and in a way difficult to capture.

I'm not sure if it's used exclusively though; as seen in the merchant here (although the other 3 sprites are done in the same style as the protagonist);

[Conzeit]

Ok...I have this relentless hallucination that somehow, this might be a little past due to post, but I am defying my mental demons in the spirit of good ole arthur here.

I dabbled a basic shape brushed-in version back when this started, and the PSP GnG game wasnt out, so I made his Namco X Capcom version armor (http://sdb.drshnaps.com/sheets/Misc/Misc/NamcoXCapcom/Arthur.png) , with a few tweaks for added arthur-ness.

first, I tried to make him expressive while watching from making him too cartoony, so I gave him a big bold black mouth, a pretty flat beard, and I gave him ACTUAL eyes, unlike those of any Demon Crest character, but to stay true with DC aesthetics, I still made them covered in shade and not the usual pure-white-glow-in-the-dark stereotype sprite eyes. Other than that, I also modified his NxC design by making his garbs more visible and brown rather than NxC's black, to make for some color variety, and I limited the accostumed DC shade for facial expressions and those sectins of his armor which according to NxC design are trimmed in black.

is it just me? now that I actually posted it I think I might have overdone the armor divisions and made Arthur here look like a bunch of gobbled up gray pieces...