(WIP) Check out this RPG Inventory

[Illio]

Hi everyone! I have this RPG inventory, which I have been working on for 3 days now. It is not for a game, just for practice. I want to get some critique on it and ask you for suggestions about how it can be improved. And I would like to know whether it is clear what is what here intuitively, without any description? Thank you in advance!

[TPoe]

I think if clarity is what you're going for you've nailed it.

There is one nitpick thing I would change if it were a real game screen though. I would be to just equip the items directly to the item slots on the bottom left. As far as I can tell there's no reason to have them in the rest of the inventory. I say this because you can already see them at the bottom left, so the screen space is already taken and I feel like it ruins the idea of the inventory slot being laid out in the order you would equip them on your body.

 Another addition I might make would be to maybe have a silhouette of a body behind the inventory just to make it clear what goes where when nothing is equipped.

[Illio]

Thank you! I will fix it.

[Illio]

Here are some changes I have applied to the inventory. I tried to do a silhouette, but it didn't end up looking well. So I decided just to go with simple names of body parts. This way, I believe, it must be clear what goes where. Also, just now I realised that I forgot to add some sort of currency into the picture. I would like to hear you think. And thank you, again!

[TPoe]

Looks really nice. I like the new cape item you've added too. Those arrows just make me wanna click and see whats on the next screen haha.

[eishiya]

I think it would be worth putting the work in to make a character visible in the equipment area. Even with labels, it doesn't read very well, and it would be a nightmare to fit text in if you ever decided to localise this game. Perhaps rather than a solid silhouette, a line drawing or even something more fully rendered could work? I think that could look nice if the inventory slots have a transparent background until they're filled. Perhaps rearranging that part of the screen could still help. For example, why are the rings below the legs rather than near the hands, why is the belt below the legs and now between the chest and legs? If you're going to go for a physical arrangement like this, I see no reason to keep the more accessory-like slots separate from the main slots.
Don't be afraid to arrange the equip slots in something other than a perfect grid, too!

The heavily patterned look you've got going on is interesting! Quite unusual, but still quite readable. I'd be interested to see what environments would look like in this style.
Unfortunately, although it fits the style, the menu text at the top is difficult to read because of all those little flourishes. If you want flourishes, I think bolder letters would be necessary to keep them from overwhelming the basic shapes of the letters.

[Mathias]

Cool man. You got a lot of work done here. Interesting practice project. A commendable effort for sure.

Just one comment, and it pertains to your pixeling style in general, really - I just think it looks incredibly noisy and over-detailed. Soooo many high-contrast tiny 1 pixel details everywhere.

While I dig the rich decorative nature of your design, the noisy tiny details everywhere seem to want to speak louder than the items and icons, in my opinion.

I play Diablo III and do love the visually rich ui style. Seems like all ARPG's these days are maintaining a highly graphical decorative ui/hud style and they tend to look great, but they're designed in a way that the graphical style adds to the experience without hurting usability (hopefully . . .).

Spoiler: Diablo III menu compilation image

^  Notice how the items and abilities, the important elements, have the most visual priority by being brighter and more saturated than the surrounding menu graphics/decoration.

I'm not suggesting a massive revision pass to this project, overhauling the entire thing. I'm sure you've already learned a ton, and this isn't for a game anyway.

I know you're a beginner. You're doing great so far.

---

I think eishiya made a good point about the player gear icons not needing to be in a grid.

[Illio]

Here's a quick update. I am working on a character silhouette right now and I want to get some critique on the anatomy. I am planning to add some armor after I get the anatomy right.

[TPoe]

I think you're off to a good start, the proportions just need a little bit of tweaking.

I think a good first step is to ditch the lines, start with a silhouette, it's much easier to see issues, and fix them in a silhouette. You can just sculpt away and add freely without worrying about messing up your other lines.



The second thing I want to mention is a little tip for drawing organic forms. Organic things, especially things with muscles and joints, usually follow a certain flowy pattern.
I often find that a good guide is to think of it as a curvy line, where each curve gets a little tighter towards the end, usually in a pattern of BIG Medium small. I've drawn the curves that I think of in the last frame of the gif.
The yellow curve is my way of getting the height proportions down, first curve is the head, always a good spot to start. So the head is the small, the chest is the Medium, and the legs follow suit and become the BIG. 



On the arms and legs you'll notice I've drawn 2 curves, when overlapped youll see theyre sort of off from one another. The flow of muscles follows this curve where it's sort of a balancing between inside and outside curves. For me, it's best to think of them in pairs of high and low curves. The green lines I've drawn represent the low curves, and the red the highs. If you look for example at the thigh, you'll see that the outside curve is way higher than the inside curve. Then as we go down to the knee it switches, so the inside knee is (it's not actually the knee it's a continuation of the quadriceps called the vastus medialis and the vastus lateralis), then switches again at the calf where the outside is once again higher.


Anatomy is definitely tricky. The way I draw bodies is a little bit of personal preference so don't take my example as gospel. The best example you can get though is a real human so feel free to pose and take pictures of yourself (there's also great websites with models for free, but often to get the pose you want it's best to take it yourself).

Edit: I should also mention that this applies to (I think) all body types/body sizes/genders.

[Illio]

Just wow! You, people, are so great and helpful professionals. And I can't even describe how thankful I am for you sacrificing your own time and effort to make others' pictures better. I know that my works are far from perfect, but you make them closer. Thank you!