AuthorTopic: [WIP] A Scary Situation  (Read 7404 times)

Offline lollige

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[WIP] A Scary Situation

on: October 01, 2008, 08:42:10 am
I am creating a mockup for a dA challenge. The contest gives me a max of 20 colors, max 250x250 px and it has to be as spooky as possible.

Its far from finished, and all your idea's/critiques/edits/whatever can still be changed in the image :).
Please tell me what you think of it :)

Offline Rosse

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #1 on: October 01, 2008, 10:36:22 am
Good start lollige. Currently I'm not sure why he's scared. Is it because of the, uhm, monster in the background? Or the unstable looking bridge? Or the black cube?

I think first I would change the player to a rear view, heading against the monster. This would be good because you don't have to show his emotion in the small character sprite and you can focus on the portrait in the textbox. Further the monster in the background doesn't look scary at all currently. A few suggestion to make it look more scary: Give it twisted horns, less wide head (less round), more bony, bigger nose (boar nose?), sharp teeth, ears. The mimic is unclear right now too. Maybe you find a reference from a movie or something alike.

A small other issue. The perspective of the boards of the hanging bridge are wrong. Currently it looks like the bridge makes a curve which is impossible with that kind of bridge. Look out that all boards are aligned to one single vanishing point (maybe somwhere outside the right border).

The last thing. The perspective / viewpoint doesn't really support a scary mood. Helm made a good post about this in Arachne's Trioculi Thread. Maybe you want to lower the horizon after reading it. Give it a try.

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #2 on: October 01, 2008, 02:41:41 pm
Thank you for your reply Rosse!
The character is supposed to be scared of the monster in the background. It is some sort of mix between a bull and the devil who suddenly rises up from the depths. The character was heading to this spooky castle (which is now only a cube) but suddenly get stopped by the monster. That is the story :p

Changing the characters direction is a good idea, and I will do that. Also I will try my best on the bridge, but that will most likely be quite hard. It has to have some sort of a hanging shape too right?
Well I wanted to redo it anyway, I did this without any helping lines nor an idea of where the horizon would be.
Lowering the horizon looks great in helms edit. Ill guess I will do that too. seems I have some work on that.
The monster will get the curly horns and the bigger nose (thanks for the suggestions :D)

Again, thanks for the useful comments you made, I will try to use your ideas as good as I can :)

EDIT:

I don't really know what to do with the demon any more... :(
« Last Edit: October 02, 2008, 12:01:04 pm by lollige »

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #3 on: October 07, 2008, 07:38:39 am
Again an update:


Changed colors + some other things. I don't really know what to do with the body of the 'devil', and the small portrait :(.
When I was changing colors I noticed I had only 6 o.O, thats quite good and less than I expected!  :crazy:
« Last Edit: October 07, 2008, 11:25:41 am by lollige »

Offline Rosse

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #4 on: October 07, 2008, 01:23:20 pm
Did you ever played Monkey Island 1? If not, please don't mind the text ;)

I really have no idea what I'm doing here. I just doodled around randomly. I'm not sure if it goes in the direction you want but I hope you find some inspiration to continue this image.

Offline rabidbaboy

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #5 on: October 07, 2008, 02:41:15 pm

Dunno. Looks too much like my character.

You really should start with roughs rather than detailing (aa and dithering) before you're done conceptualizing.
"Baboy" is Filipino for pig.

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #6 on: October 07, 2008, 07:40:32 pm
Whoa rosse, thats awesome!

However, knowing that I can never do it as cool as you did without copying the idea exactly is impossible, I will indeed not go into this direction, but it sure inspires me! I think I can find something to do with the body now, and I will enlarge the face (I was very proud of the face detail before.. :|.. Compare face version 1 and version 2. I felt like it was ok on version 1, but thanks to you I modified the horns, and later the whole face and I never made something so good out of it.)

The bridge looks really cool this way. Ill see if I can do it that way too :)
Thanks a lot for your great edit!

@rabidaboy: Thank you for your edit. I indeed have had to redo some aa and dithering before, but I felt I was done conceptualizing before too. And I did not do that much right? except for the horizon, which is easy to create and the stones, which will most likely not get modified too much anymore.
The pig looks nice, but its not really what I am going for I think.


Again, thanks for both of your edits, ill see what I can do with it :)
Lollige

PS: I don't know the game (except for its name) but I do know the text (of course).. Too famous ;)


EDIT:

While I was showing this to someone else on her pc, we decided that this would solve all the problems:



 ;D ;D ;D
« Last Edit: October 08, 2008, 07:31:04 am by lollige »

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #7 on: October 08, 2008, 09:01:03 am
There's a bit of a style clash there I think. The demon is sort of realistic, the ghosts are mario/pacman style and the avatar is like middle ground anime-ish. The avatar in itself is the scariest looking element. Also, I think you should concentrate on a single element and making it the focal point of the horror, rather than going for more ghosts = more scary -approach.

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #8 on: October 08, 2008, 10:06:49 am
I think you are right. I do have an idea where I am focussing on (the big monster), the last lots of ghosts image is just a joke of course ;)
However, working with the monster as most important is quite hard, because its a dark monster on a dark background. One of the things I like in Rosses version is that your eyes are immediately directed to the monster, but this is not what I was aiming on.

About the style thing: The bridge will be redone in rosses style, wich will make it a bit more realistic. But do you have any suggestions on how to get the avatar and the ghosts more realistic with the colors that are currently in use? I think I do have some ideas on how I can modify the castle, but for the rest.....


I could also remove all of the ghosts, but than you will have even more empty space.. :(

Thank you for your reply JJ Naas :)


EDIT:

I have not had much time to work on it, and I also can not work on it in the weekend :(. Luckily I have vacation next week, so it WILL be finished soon :)

« Last Edit: October 10, 2008, 08:58:06 am by lollige »

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #9 on: October 13, 2008, 12:56:51 pm
I believe its finished  ;D, do you do so too? :-\



and just for fun:


Offline rabidbaboy

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #10 on: October 13, 2008, 01:51:34 pm
I don't know why you kept the demon that way. You could've edited it still.
It doesn't add to the scariness.
"Baboy" is Filipino for pig.

Offline huZba

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #11 on: October 13, 2008, 02:38:02 pm
I'd change a lot of things and change them a lot i would. BUT working on a completely new piece will be more fun for you i think and probably more efficient too. I'll just list a few things you could consider.
-You plotted perspective for the bridge, but didn't continue it to include the castle, it's now really out of place. Add the perspective to the castle too.
-The camera angle and placement doesn't contribute to the theme. It would be far more efficient if the camera was looking up to the monster at a similar level as your character. In the future pay attention to the camera in your scene. Is it with your character or overlooking him and so forth.
-Your character doesn't seem that scared really, especially the smaller one. Act scared yourself and see how your body reacts. Shoulders go up and your chin might go to your chest if you're sort of hiding or in this case the head would look up with the mouth open. For the portrait you really should think what's inside the head. There's just two big pieces moving so it's not that hard. A little practice will make your heads way better.
-Now for the demon guy. Can you think of things that makes a character scary? I'm sure you can. Study WHY rosse's and rabid's demons look so malicious. Rosse's character has interest in the puny human, there's a lot of intent in the body language. Rabid's face makes it look sort of crazy with the asymmetric facial expression.

In a nutshell, try to be your character, study your own body language, look at other people how they emote and so on. In general it's healthy to keep asking "why" about things. Why do things look the way you do, why does a malicious monster look like it means business.
You should do a few studies of people, a few of landscapes and then make a picture similar to this in concept, but with all your newfound skills. Post whatever you study next in early stages so people can guide you through the whole process and give some pointers on things other than pixel-rendering.

Oh and, do have fun while pixelling  ;D

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #12 on: October 13, 2008, 03:14:11 pm
Rabidaboy: I kept it this way because even tough it is far from perfect for this scene, I am still quite proud of it and I don't want to totally discard it and have the risk that a new monster can even become worse/look a lot like the old monster.

huZba:
Thank you for your very useful reply :). I agree with you, and will take these tips with me to my next work, since this will be more fun for me indeed :).
I will change the castle, since now that you said it, I see it looks indeed very weird myself, and it looks very possible to change it. Of course the character and the portrait of him should not be to hard too, but I am not too motivated to put my hands on those again, since I experimented with higher shoulders indeed, but it was not a succes. (long sentence  :huh:)

Thanks again for your comments. Halloween has not even started yet, so maybe they will come in use in a short while too :)
Ill start working on the castle now and then call it finished

Lollige

Offline lollige

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Re: [WIP] A Scary Situation

Reply #13 on: October 16, 2008, 10:46:56 pm
finished :)

the castles perspective has been redone :)

I present you: A scary situation