AA help

[brigadon]

Okay, I am having a little trouble with my hand antialiasing. I am doing game graphics, so I definitely need to have a light-colored AA to contrast with the backround, but my own attempts look...jagged. and a bit pillowshaded.
anyone have any crits that might help me?

[Saitus]

This piece has way to much dithering, it makes it look like sandpaper. The piece is small, so just straight contrasting colors should do fine. AA should be a color that matches the part you're AAing and the background, or in this case a lighter color as the BG will change. AA around the edges, not inside the piece or it will look like shading.

[bengo]

Bla:

I think the edit speaks for itself.

[Darien]

I definitely need to have a light-colored AA to contrast with the backround

I'm sorry, what do you mean by this?

[brigadon]

Bla:

I think the edit speaks for itself.

Umm, wow, that looks absolutely nothing like I was trying to do.
and how exactly is this supposed to help?

[brigadon]

I definitely need to have a light-colored AA to contrast with the backround

I'm sorry, what do you mean by this?

I am trying to make a character that looks...smoother, for a game. I am having trouble primarily with the jacket, trying to make it look like cotton instead of plastic, but with the 'floors' I have already made I think it would be best to have aa that brings the character into focus, something lighter but not a true outline.

[bengo]

Umm, wow, that looks absolutely nothing like I was trying to do.
and how exactly is this supposed to help?

It helps because it fixes almost alll the things you've done wrong.

On a piece like this, thats very small, you can't do much dithering but that doesn't matter because your piece right now is well, I'm not going to sugar-coat it, pretty bad at the moment. You have an odd light source, very undefined, you have many useless colors(Just a bad color scheme over-all, it doesn't seem like you've studied up on the color theory or anything related to color, I suggest you do so) and not enough contrast and some features distract and overwhelm the eye like for instance the giant yellow buttons, dithering and AAing is the last thing to worry about.


Now, let's fix this, shall we?

Why is your light source very odd(It seems like it would be coming from the top-left, but other light sources on the body are coming from different directions)?
Keep it all on top, that way its less work for you to do with the sprite. If you stick to a definitive light source, especially a overhead one, you're less likely to make the piece look like its pillow shaded.

Why is your color scheme bad?
Its mainly filled with very bright, super-saturated and low contrast colors, I would suggest checking out the color theory along with this tutorial: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm I would also look at other pixel art and see how coloring is done there(See how the hue and saturation changes as it gets darker/lighter). Not only this but according to you the background will be very bright so along with a bright character? You're trying to make him smooth, not difficult as hell to see. Learn to 'recycle' colors as well i.e. use a skin color that could also be a yellow button as the same color.

Why not dither so much?
You can't fit as much detail on smaller things, not only this but small things like this rely on contrast and other things, dithering doesn't help with that much because it makes things a lot smoother and makes two significant colors now blend and not be as significant.


I hope you actually listen to me and try to see what I did with the edit, if all of this is useless then I've basically wasted about a half-hour of my life on you.

[brigadon]

I appreciate the advice. I wasn't asking to get flamed.
The grey for the jacket looks quite washed out, and I plan to have 40+ different pirate 'outfits' available. This was actually intended to be for a brighter, more... low-fantasy, almost comic adventure. The bright golden buttons were actually part of the outfit that I used as my model.

I do like the idea of eliminating the dithering, don't get me wrong, and I appreciate the half hour it took you to compose your message. I don't, however, imagine it will be easy to change the entire focus of the figure, but I will certain take the advice in mind when I remake it.

actually the backgrounds are somewhat darker, for the most part. I just wanted to avoid actually having a white or yellow outline for the figure itself. Would grey be a good color to use as an outline?

And considering the 'bad' thing... this is the very first game figure I have ever tried to make myself, I understand that it looks amateur, but this and the spacecraft on the dodonpachi pages are the only sprited things I have made so far.

Prior to this, I have always modified other game graphics instead of making my own, but over the last two years of coding, storywriting, and recoloring I have learned that, in truth, there is no substitute for having your own graphics.

And no, I have no formal schooling, I am trying very hard to learn color theory but I am a bit late into the game (I am 36) and all of my artistic experience has been black and white sketches and cartoons.

[sharprm]

The legs are too short.  Move the belt down too. If that is the max sprite height u can have, consider making the arms shorter etc.

Take a look at some monkey island sprites for ideas.

Not sure that characters in games need outlines, but i guess it depends on the game. What kind of a game is it? What kind of background are u making?

[brigadon]

QR

Is this any better?



I was trying for a bit bow and shortlegged. I wanted the person's topcoat boots and hat to be far more emphasized than their lower sections, the females tend to have longer legs and, I hope, a more attractive general form, but the enemies are supposed to look rather cute and kinda goofy.

color composition wise, the backgrounds look a lot like Secret of Mana 3. I am working to get more tiles made before I put up a composition, though.

[TrevoriuS]

Yes it is, but your boorts are too curvy on the sides and these pants need some realism by foldings. Also you need to shade the legs more round. Search for photo reference and try to learn from it. If you modify this with some effort I don't think much more critisism is needed at all.

[brigadon]

Okay, I have tried definitely to make the lightwork come from 10:45.
and I hope, Bengoshia, that you don't feel you have wasted a half an hour of your life on me.


Thanks for the advice, folks, I will put up more at a time, I don't have much option to work on this one anymore for the time being.
I will try to put them up as animations or multiple at a time. I really appreciate your help.

[bengo]

Better but still needs more contrast especially for the skin colors.

[BG]

a quick edit increesing contrast. Dunno if it helps.


I didn't do anything about it, but I think you should add one more shade of brown. You have one more collor to go (if you're gonna stick to the old 16 color rule) and I think the pants could actully need less contrast. Also, shouldn't his coat be visible behind his legs?

I like pirates so I can't wait to see more stuff.

[baccaman21]

Ha! another old timer born in 1971... join the club - there's not many of us post 30 on this forum...

Just out of interest... is this figure going to be:

a. animated?
b. in a top down 'game'?
c. in a side on 'game'?

You talk about 'floors' and wanting to outline the sprite (in grey  ) as well as a mention of some RPG game or other which leads me to suspect that it's a top down view...? I may be wrong?

Why? Well, the figure you have ATM isn't in that perspective plane and may look a peculiar in such a setting.

As for animation - well that's a whole world of hurt - especially if you're considering 40odd costumed characters? But then one has to factor in your intention...

OK, you've got me intrigued... Cartoon Adventure? Script writing... what is it you're trying to do exactly?  Knowing a bit more about the intended purpose will help with Critique, anything else is out of context and (I think the posts here already may have shown) are superfluous to your needs/requirements... particularly as many members on these boards tend to focus mainly on singular pieces without any further need for application.

There are a number of us here though who have a great deal of experience of what you're striving to achieve (i.e. Professional Game Developers) and knowing the bigger picture just helps fill in the blanks and ultimately gives a bit more insight into what you should and shouldn't be doing...

I appreciate you may not want to divulge too much detail, just an High level flavour is all that's required.

[mobichan]

<- OLD    NEW->

I added 3 more colors (don't know if you had intended it to have 16 max) and tried to illustrate where you would get the benefit of some cast shadows.  I also shaved pixels off the boots in some places to give them more shape and to define the heel/toe of the feet.  There are a few colors that can be consolidated overall (although I didn't do that in the edit).  You might try starting with 3 shades of each color (a light, medium and dark tone) to help keep things simple when you start.

Nice work so far. 

[brigadon]

Okay, details

Umm... It's Called Abaddon, a33% top-down game.

The figures are more-or-less straight-on, in the style of many of the older nintendo, playstation, and final fantasy games. i am using a custom version of Eclipse Evolution that Baron made for me since I am not a terribly good coder. I am also hoping(!) that my brother can actually lay hands on the PSP dev kit he's supposed to be getting as part of the business purchase agreement for his business' dissolution.

I have been working on the scripting for about a year, primarily in quests, storyline issues etc. I have a friend of mine that is doing some of the flash sequences, but she is a 'regular artist' and has neither the interest nor the time for pixel pushing. the majority of the outfits are already designed and I have done concept art of a large portion of the creatures.

It is 'technically' an MMO. but the eclipse engine is not terribly robust for multiplayer, so the realistic maximum number of players at one time is around 20 or so... if it gets any bigger than that, well...I don't know.

There is no seperate combat screen. all combats happen in real-time and the character sprites were expanded from 32x48 to 32x64 in hopes that that would increase the appeal of characters that you have to look at ALL the time. The problem is that instead of smooth transitions from tile to tile, eclipse moves 'choppy' (ie, hop from 32x32 tile with no transition between them) admittedly a problem, but i think Baron might be willing to address it if he thinks there's profit in it for him


We had a pixel artist, but he was moody. He started to do a standard 'japanese chibi' style, and then I found out that every single 'original artwork' that he sent me was actually a recolor of someone else's work. Well, to make a long story short, my job was pretty much done, I am a fair to middling artist, and I pick up technique quickly, and I have a bit of time. So I decided I would go ahead and run the graphicswork while the code is still getting patched into place.

But I know I have a long way to go before I  can turn out professional-quality graphics. so I threw together something of the style that we wish to use although it may not actually make it into the game, and asked for help in hopes that some of the things I didn't understand or cannot apply very well. I learn by doing, not by reading or listening or tutorials.

I think I am improving quickly, and my speed is fairly good once I understand the basics intuitively. So I do appreciate the critiques immensely.

Any other questions?

[brigadon]

More Details:

colors are an issue primarily because of load times and graphics memory. Since the game uses an interpreted language, it's going to be slow going for a lot of figures anyway, so special effects and so forth need to be kept, if possible, to low numbers, low colors, and a high amount of visual appeal and reusability for each rendered entity.

The good thing, however, is that the engine is capable of rendering up to 12 layers, so layering can add a lot of 'uniqueness' to the images used. outlines, multilayered backgrounds, spell 'auras', status effect graphics, emoticons, etc. will all be handled on their own, seperate layers.

The actual 'hard cap' on the colors is 16 bit, but in the interests of saving memory, we are trying to stay within 8 bit colors. that means that some of the figures are going to use signifigantly less than 16 colors if it can be achieved attractively.

[baccaman21]

fx with alpha?

[brigadon]

Nope

[philipptr]

quick edit, pretty similar to BG's edit, but a bit more extreme I guess. If the sprite is used on bright background, or on a small display like the psp ones, you might not want to go that dark with the blue tones to be able to make details more readable but otherwise I think these saturated dark blue tones work pretty well with this sprite.

[brigadon]

Think the unsaturated or hypersaturated would work better for a DS?

[Jad]

Eh, not very hypersaturated but with good contrast? I think?

The DS has a backlight so too saturated colors will not be needed.

Anyways, I thought I'd make an edit for the heck of it. Trying to bring it to a semi-top-perspective instead of straight-on-forward.



I've upped about all colours I think, but the 16 colour count is intact and unchanged.

It seems that I accidentally worked from BG:s edit so sorry for that.

Anyways, the first one is BG:s (I should've used yours, my mistake), the second one is me trying to fix the straight lines breaking perspective.

The third one is my take on the character, I didn't really intend to go this far with it, since i...

made the fourth one first as an example of how I'd construct his body before adding stuff onto it, so that I'd have a grasp of the perspective, etc. before starting with the details. (also, an accent of contraposto is never bad)

Then I couldn't help myself and just started adding stuff. It's not very polished though >

The small red lines are simply how one should think when translating cylindrical shapes to a perspective viewed a bit from the top. And his whole body is mainly made up of cylinders so thinking with cylinders is good (:

Anyways, good luck.