AuthorTopic: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.16  (Read 46490 times)

Offline Shrike

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.6

Reply #20 on: March 05, 2009, 12:34:14 am
Woah, looks like you're getting loads of critique!  Good, good good.  Sorry I wasn't up to date.

I'm not reading through all of these awesome crits yet, but here some critique and an edit on your latest:

Edit:

Crits:
Well, I like your progress.  But you have, in my opinion, too few colors.  For a polished look, at my skill level, I needed a few more.  I also did hue shifting!  Big, important thing.  That means that, even though he's an orange-yellow cat, instead of going brown for the shading, I went a very red direction instead.  It makes it more interesting and keeps people interested.  Also, I gave him more of a stomach, and since he's been rotated we can see that area between his front legs, it's something, it's his belly.  So I drew it there.  You've still got a few side-view things hanging around, look at my edit.  Also, I shaded the neck to show it's depth.  Other stuff, just examine my edit.  Very nice progress, and listen to all the good points given.  Later!
Shrike

EDIT
Big, important thing I forgot.  drop the outlines.  IMHO, it's cluttering it up and hindering your drawing space and drawing the eye too much.  So yeah, that's my opinion.

Offline Kcilc

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.6

Reply #21 on: March 05, 2009, 05:06:59 am
But you have, in my opinion, too few colors.  For a polished look, at my skill level, I needed a few more.
I hate to disagree, but this is absolutely not true. If you can't polish something with four colors, you're not going to be able to polish it with ten. It might look harsh with just four, but that's not the main point of polish. The way I see it, when you polish something, you just go through your piece and remove any unneeded details or stray pixels to keep the piece clean and readable. Color control is an invaluable skill to learn as a pixel artist (or at least, so I've read), and I think that wouldn't be such a good idea to add extra colors to his piece.

Big, important thing I forgot.  drop the outlines.  IMHO, it's cluttering it up and hindering your drawing space and drawing the eye too much.  So yeah, that's my opinion.
I can't help but notice how ironic this statement is; you say the outlines clutter up his piece, but you fail to mention that the stripes you added, while they do add a nice touch, end up cluttering the sprite much more than an outline does, and IMHO push the sprite towards the background. It is good to break away from outlines to improve your ability to make priorities stand out, but when you're making the main character for a game, an outline might be the only thing that can stop your character from blending into the background; there are many ways to get something to stand out, like contrasting hues, simplicity against detail, and stuff like that, but when you've got a lot of things and colors going on in the background, even these can't keep your sprite away from the background.

As for your update, it's looking a million times better. There are still a few anatomical parts that are off, but shrike caught most of them. One thing nobody has mentioned yet, though, is that your cat's ears don't look connected to its head; one way to fix this would to just get rid of the outline separating the bottoms of its ears and head. The lightest shade needs to be even lighter than it is right now to really make a difference on your sprite, and I don't think that the shading on its head works; a cat's head is a little bit like a ball, and the only time the highlight should hug the edge of a surface is when the light source is behind the object, and, as the rest of your piece suggests, this isn't the case. Pretend the ears cast a little bit if a shadow onto the head, and try to shade the top of its head so that it looks more like a ball.

Another thing I notice with the shading right now is that it's too uniform for something as complex as a cat. Your highlight seems to hug the entire edge of your cat which is not good. Let's take Laser Kitty's back leg for instance; it sticks out past Laser's body, and so the highlight would extend down his leg a little bit. Since Laser's body would be slightly obscured by his(?) leg, the part right by the highlight on his leg would be darker than the surrounding area. This is only one place where the light gets jumbled up, and I'll let you figure out how to do the rest of the shading on him.
If you need more guidance, check these out;
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Offline xhunterko

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.7

Reply #22 on: March 09, 2009, 03:49:20 am
Note to self, re-read before tweaking work.

Left: Some new colors added and changed shading position.
Right: Is this what you mean by hue shifting?


Still having trouble with head. Colors not looking right. I'll have to check some more of that info before I tweak again Kcilc.

Better, worse, your opinions please.
(Otherwise known as CnC*.)



*(Do I really have to type some form of CnC every time? Or do I just need to ask for opinions?)

Offline bengo

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.7

Reply #23 on: March 09, 2009, 05:37:44 am

Here's my edit, here's some hue shifting for you, the darkest is in the purples while the lightest is in the yellows, hue shifting helps a lot when it comes to small pieces, since it helps contrast more. I did one with stripes and one without, it kind of feels like it doesn't even have fur when there's no stripes but here it is for comparison anyway. Make sure you define your light-source, know where your source of light is coming from, in this its coming from the top. Its okay to use reference, never be afraid to, just google up some cats and that will help greatly. I hope I've helped, good luck with your piece. Oh, another thing you want to take into account is the color theory, to sum up red/orange/yellow = warm, green/blue/purple = cold, also consider what color your light source is, we can assume this is coming from the sun and as we know the sun gives off a yellow-ish tint.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2009, 06:05:48 am by bengoshia »

Offline Terley

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.7

Reply #24 on: March 09, 2009, 05:21:53 pm
sorry..
« Last Edit: March 11, 2009, 11:27:47 pm by Terley »
I've not got anything interesting to type here..

Offline xhunterko

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.8

Reply #25 on: March 10, 2009, 03:27:02 am


@Terley: Erm...erm...uh...Nvm.  :-[

Was gonna say something but I didn't want to sound ungrateful*. Anyways. I thought everyone was tired of just kitty so I worked more on his natural habitat. I tweaked the ground tile a good bit. Color mostly. Then I added a second, larger cloud for more variety. (Going to add maybe another one.) I worked on the fish, added a flower, and a pine tree! Not sure if I have that one right but it looks okay. As for the cat, I think you can see what I changed. I may have to change the shading a bit on the back legs after seeing it in the environment. I tried to touch the sky shrike but couldn't get something to work. The water's okay now I think.  That's pretty much it for now. Did bout 4-5+ hours on it today. Forgot when I started.

Your thoughts, please?
« Last Edit: March 11, 2009, 11:11:38 pm by xhunterko »

Offline Terley

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.8

Reply #26 on: March 11, 2009, 12:30:31 am
what?  ???
I've not got anything interesting to type here..

Offline tehwexxl0rz

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.8

Reply #27 on: March 11, 2009, 04:38:21 am
xhunterko, that was pretty rude. There's a LOT you could learn from Terley's edit. He didn't have to take the time to draw it for you and explain his techniques in such detail; he was doing you a favor. So even if you don't like the edit, be respectful and appreciative.
« Last Edit: March 11, 2009, 04:40:35 am by tehwexxl0rz »

Offline Dr D

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.8

Reply #28 on: March 11, 2009, 06:06:22 am
If you have good intentions, there is always a way to say something without offending anybody. Unless the person you are trying to talk to is either not understanding, stupid, or a jerk, as well.

Offline Helm

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Re: Catch As Cat Can Mockup.8

Reply #29 on: March 11, 2009, 08:11:18 am
xhunterco, if you are not respectful for the critique that you're getting, then perhaps you don't deserve help. Remember people here take time out of their day for completely no compensation to give you their in-depth thoughts on your art. There's nothing that annoys me more than to see that being unappreciated.