[WIP] (Nudity) Female character base slightly elevated view (not 3/4 anymore)

[Rosse]

About banding. Well, maybe you can say that pixelart is about sharpness and put details even into subpixel-level. When you do banding, you increase the thickness of a line (or region) without adding information. This can be observed in the pelvis area (as Helm stated). You want to AA the cleft, but you have not enough contrast that the eye reads "antialiasing".

About contrast. You said that you don't want the sprite too dark, but contrast is needed that you can read volumes. Your greyscale image shows this pretty well I think. In 100% view it looks quite flat. I tried to "sculp" the figure with just three different values: light (surface points up), mid (surface points towards viewer) and dark (surface points down). The other three colors are outline, AA (from outline to dark) and background. The sprite isn't really dark by itself. I think I could make it even brighter without lossing much contrast (and thereby volume).

About skin colors. The colors I used here were colorpicked from wicked weasel (bikini shop with modelshots). Since they're from reality photographs they don't fit into a game without modifications but I hope you get some inspiration for alternative skincolor than the generic (cute?) piggy color.

[Beoran]

OK, I think I understood what was wrong about the pelvis. I was adding too much anti aliasing there, what with the triple line of the pelvace. I thought the triple line defined better, but, now I understand that the anti aliasing made the definition of the pelvis worse. In this edit, I also added more dramatic highlights similar to the ones in your edit, but asymmetrical for extra effect. I especially like your head highlight, I wonder how I never thought about that before. I did not change the face as per your edit because I think it changes the expression in a way I dislike. It may seem like too much anti aliasing, but it really helps in defining the face from the rest of the head, I think. I also didn't adopt your edit of the beasts completely because I think it makes them look too square.

As an aside, the image should be seen in a +- 2x magnification as that how it will be seen on the game screen (640x480 resolution).

I also made the contrasts of my color ramp somewhat stronger, and you can see in the grayscale that the contrasts are now better. But I did not change the hue, as I like this "piggy" color, and IMO, the other skin color looks too reddish to me. Maybe it's because I (think I) have some funny kind of color blindness where dark colors don't register. Maybe I'll just let the player set their character's palette the way they like it. :p

Edit: I just did some online tests and finally I found out that I have "Deuteranomaly" (nothing any doctor ever could tell me), that is, I can see all colors, but green less intensely so. That means that the skin colors you propose will look more red to me, because I don't see the green in them as intensely. That's also why I add more green (towards yellow) to make a skin hue.

[Helm]

You're progressing greatly, here's an edit and some thoughts.



* Can you see the two little 'horns' the shape of the head in ours gives her now? This is a matter of AAing the inside of a circle. See where I placed two darker pixels in the 'holes' to suggest a rounder shape?
* The shoulder highlights where too extensive, I think.
* I don't know how your eyes see it, but I made the highlight color pinker, perhaps it helps.
* You don't need to OUTLINE the underside of the breasts, shapes can be suggested with softer volumes as well. Look at mine and tell me if you have any problem reading the breasts as breasts too. Same for the pelvis area.
* It might be of use for you to know that the 'perfect breasts' posted above, are very probably silicone-based.
* The arms could use to be a couple of pixels longer.
* That line that connects the inner thighs, it's just so problematic at where the actual connection of the two legs is made as there is a HARSH jaggy there that suggest malformed flesh. Not only you need to aa that line on the inside of the sprite, but it's such a problem for me that I would just place the feet wider apart just to avoid having to deal with it altogether.

[skamocore]

based of Helm's edit:


*Helm, I think you made her a bit pre-pubescent with your edit. I tried adding a bit more definition around her breasts.
*I played around a bit with her knee/leg area, the shading there doesn't seem to resemble what a leg in that position would look like. I'm not sure that my version is a whole lot better, but I think you need to try defining the knees a bit more.
*Your current arms seem a bit jaggy

[Beoran]

Here's what I did with most of your suggestions. I didn't just copy them of course, I still like my face better, and I did the breasts, arms, neck and collar bone somewhat different.

• Yes, I can see the little horns I had on the top "corners" of he head. I already tried to AA them, and it helped somewhat, but apparently the AA pixels needed to be darker as like you did.
• Yes, I was going from too few to too many highlights there with the shoulders.
• I can definitely agree the pelvis is much better if I don't outline it completely. The breasts are a bit less pronounced when not outlined, but, more realistic. So, I'll go that way.
• I see your point, but I think it's humorous to speak about "silicon" breasts when we're talking about a game character that exists mainly "in silicon".
• I lengthened the arms by 1 pixel, like in your edit. Perhaps one more is in order, but I'm a bit tired now.
• I made two poses, one with open and one with closed legs. I'm not sure that the opened legs are better, though.

As for the color, I think that my perception of green is roughly 20% less than that of people of average color sight. If I correct your colors for my color blindness, by adding 20% to the green channel, then actually your colors are almost the same as my colors. I think I'll have to adjust my colors by removing about 20% from the green channel to make them look "right" for normal people. For now, I just slightly increased the saturation. 

Scamocore, you just posted your edit as I wrote this.  Will look into it tomorrow.

[ndchristie]

even with all the edits this is sill suffering from SSS ("seated while standing syndrome") which is actually a side-effect of underlying perspective issues combined with over-eager lighting on the thigh-to-shin difference.  What you've got here is pretty much a straight-on character with tall feet and low eyes rather than a character in 3/4ths, making her appear flat to the camera and therefor 45^o to the ground plane.  not much is going to help until that's resolved.

[Beoran]

Yes, well, I can see what you mean, but I don't quite see how I could solve it. I would appreciate an edit if you have some time to spare.
Edit:
Oh, and I forgot to mention explicitly, but the plan has slightly changed. I'm not doing pure 3/4 view anymore, the goal is now "sligthly" elevated, more like 1/2, or from a 45 degree angle...

[Ryumaru]

Id say take the lightest highlights away from the thigh's and feet. Also while the eyes are far down on the face, imo ( I might be the only one) the eyes till look like they are looking up at the player. Maybe bring the head down a pixel and/or make the eyes a a pixel shorter.

[Beoran]

Taking also some of scamocore's improvements, I've reduced, but not removed entirely, the highlights and shadows on the legs and the feet, and also on the stomach. As for the position of the eyes, the lower position does look more "correct", however, I like the slightly-looking-towards-t-the-player for psychologic and representative effect. I feel I can relate better   to a character who looks at me. Perhaps Helms point about allowing characters to remain characters,  is important here. I feel that, just like in a comic book, in a video game, realism is secondary to representation value. Actually, that's why I'm making my game in 2D to begin with. If I wanted realism, I'd go for a 3D game. That doesn't mean I should do my best to make the sprites look good, though. The player has to feel "hey, that could be me", not "that looks kind of ugly".

To give you an idea of what "the competition" in the free and open software world is doing, consider this snapshot of "The Mana World", a free MMORPG (that's quite fun to play already, and quite popular). I'll be glad if I can make sprites and tiles that are more beautiful and consistent than these:


Edit: some more fiddling with the legs and feet, made the feet smaller and the upper legs longer.  I'm unsure if this is better or not.

[Ryumaru]

Fair enough. In the latest edit I think that making the upper legs longer just makes it into a more ideal figure than a more "realistic" one. But the smaller feet might be good to implement. How much art will you be doing by yourself? If you keep all the art pixel art and don't use any of that ugly brushy stuff I know it will be more consistent and where your base is heading now, I can easily see your game surpassing that visually. :]