AuthorTopic: Looking for help on top down character  (Read 1987 times)

Offline 41ross

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Looking for help on top down character

on: January 14, 2021, 01:28:27 pm
Hi Guys. I'm new to pixel art and I feel like I'm stuck with this top down character.
So it should be a character base for all the characters in my little project. Here I already added hair and eyes so it look more character like.
I didn't want to use a dark color for the outline so I used colors from the shading for it. I'm not shure if that's the right way to do it. With this kind of outline the upper part looks ok, but legs look strange. Also the outline around the character is not constant. I tried to make the outline around the whole charater, but when I did it outside him he looked too thick and when I did it inside him he looked too thin. So I decided to make it only where it looked right for me. So is there any rules about outline? Should it be around the character or it's ok to do it the awy I did?
For the shading I used four colors because I wanted to keep it simple. Front and back views look kinda ok, but when I started working on side and diagonal views I've ran into a problem with hands and legs that are further from us. On the static poses maybe they look ok, but in the animation something looks wrong.
I tried to add more colors to the shading. I thought that it will help with his hands and legs that are further from us. I did a turnaround whith additional colors. It fixed the problem with the back hands and legs, now they are not too dark, but dark enough so during the animation they should be readable. But I think that with more shading colors it looks more blury and it will be harder to animate so I went back to using just four colors.
I did a 8 frame walk animation tests for all five views so you can see that something is wrong with the hands and legs that are further from us. I can see that something is wrong but right now I don't know what to fix at the first place because I don't have enough skills to clearly distinguish the problem.
Any feedback and tips how to imrove this character and his animation would help me a lot.
Thank you in advance.
P.S. Sorry for my english

Offline eliddell

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Re: Looking for help on top down character

Reply #1 on: January 18, 2021, 02:39:50 pm
Okay.  First of all, are you sure you've got the perspective right?  You describe this as "top-down", and I suspect you actually mean the traditional 3/4-ish view used in 2D JRPGs, but when I look at the art, it seems more side-on than it should be.  Or maybe it's just that I'm expecting chibi proportions.  If it looks okay in the context of your project, just ignore me.

Secondly, coloured outlines are fine, although multi-coloured outlines add to the amount of effort you need to animate (since any detail increases animation difficulty).  The purpose of an outline is to get the sprite to stand out against a background.  If it does that well enough, it doesn't matter whether you have a black outline, a coloured outline, or no outline at all.

I'm far from a master of animation, but I did notice a couple of things.  On the first frame of the forward diagonal animation, the far leg looks almost like it's sticking out to the side.  It's something about the shading, but I can't put my finger on it better than that.  Also, in the same animation, the hand of the near arm seems to come further across the torso than the far arm.  Part of that is perspective, though.  And he looks like he's looking slightly toward the camera, rather than straight ahead in the direction he's moving.

Side animation:  Feet seem to vary in size more than perspective+shifting weight would account for.  Highlight on the near leg is maybe a bit much.

Rear diagonal:  The legs here just are not quite right.  I get the impression that he's trying to move more "into the screen" than the angle of the head and torso suggest, and his legs should be getting tangled at the ankles and making him fall over.  Frame 4 in particular just makes him look off-balance.
If anything I've said here has been useful to you, please pay it forward by critting someone else.