GR#006 - Game Artin - Faces

[Helm]

For the record:


I didn't even at the time I was editing thought about the construction at such a formal level but it still seems reasonable enough.

[huZba]

You're stretching your perspective lines to meet you halfway, i read multiple intersections instead of one, but i do agree in my picture (its the same lines as the other two) i made it look unnecessarily bad in trying to figure out why it struck me as creepy when i first saw it(I'm still trusting my first impression on it, and i did get some second opinions on each of the edits, including mine). The issue is probably then with the facial angle and the form of the face that doesn't agree with the horizontal squishing of the far side and stretching of the near side of the face, among other things. The far eye + eyebrow are too small even with those perspective lines. I suggest the whole bunch heads to the creativity thread for some donald ducks and bugs bunnies as well as realistic faces.

Do you trust your taste with confidence on the matter btw? Not just anime stuffs, but cartoons too. Maybe you should go for something you've never really done before and see what comes of it.

[Helm]

I'm not sure what you mean about having confidence in one's taste, as tastes are something you just have, it's not a matter of whether you're feeling confident about them. I agree I should perhaps try a few cartoonish/anime-ish things for practise, but as far as the perspective guide above, I think it's in the safe. If anything the problems I see with my edit are relevant to the parts of the original I decided to keep to not go 'too far' with the edit as Doppleganger said it shouldn't. I'd have never done small shoulders or that sort of round head, personally. So whereas even my own version is not exactly to my taste, I tried to meet the anime-thing halfway.

[tocky]

huzba: I think you're claiming skewed perspecitive where generally no persective was intended. in dopp's original everything lines up horizontally and vertically, just that the jaw curves oddly, and most of the edits follow that. I don't know that anyone fixed the jaw (except you and evileye, who fixed it basically by starting a new portrait from scratch.) I guess it's generally a bad idea to claim that everybody else is wrong, people'll get defensive. Just state your case.

[Accident]

... haha, I personally agree that I was wrong. I just wanted to make her look female. Suppose I got carried away at her beauty? 

But even though my perspective is messed up, my comment about skin tones stand. 100%. :'D -south american bby-

[huZba]

@Helm. okay, yeah, i get what you were aiming for now. About taste, i mean confident that yours conforms to that of the target audience, since this is stuff that is targeting something with the portraits. That your view of something good in this style is also good for someone who stares at anime pictures many hours a day. I know from experience that the loudest and most opinionated gamers are a minority and many people would probably be fine with doppelgangers original too. Some stuff i consider completely attrocious hasn't gotten any negative feedback from a huge pool of users, but dipping that in forum of a games magazine and oh boy.....

@tocky. I was aware of stepping on everyones toes and thought it was actually a splendid idea. I show you guys what i see and in doing so get my own ideas challenged as well as yours. Regardless of me being right or wrong, someone stands to gain  .

[EvilEye]

Just for the record HuZba, I thought your edit was pretty good, probably the closest to Doppleganger's original intent

And how come sometimes your avatar is animated and sometimes it isn't. I've been staring at it for a few minutes now waiting for it to do that little air swoosh.

[Helm]

I don't think people should shy away from counteredits, we are all here to learn. Just as long as they don't mind the resulting dialogue.

huzba: yes I think my version is 'prettier' than the original, for what it's worth, even though it's walf-way to what I would actually do if it was my own game. I think if you asked a large gaming public which they found prettier a large percentage would go with don't know/don't care and a smaller group would go with mine. The don't know/don't care guy's opinions do not matter to us as people who want to get better at our craft.

[Doppleganger]

Wow! Lots of discussion going on! Everything going on is pretty enlightening, and I'm grateful for all the edits I've received on the female portrait.

El Huesudo II: I really like the end turn that you've done, and I don't think any of your comments are without merit. Initially I just used the font from my boss' mockup, copy and pasting the letters as I needed them. This was mostly done for speed when first starting my mock, but eventually I came across letters that I needed that were not in his mock. When I found out what font he used (verdana), it turned out that for some reason a non-aliased version of verdana didn't match his. I have no clue why. Either way, I ended up just pixeling whatever letters I needed. It's messy.

Everybody Else: Looking at all these edits, it is easy to see that I've got a lot of fundamental errors scattered in a bunch of places. Probably one of the most useful pieces of advice was to draw the portrait first and then scan it in. Something that I'll definitely be doing for the revisions. When drawing figures I will usually do that, but for some reason I just straight pixeled them this time around. Sometimes it's easier to just add and shave pixels until something looks good, but not so much this time. It was probably for that reason that she had lost her chin.

Currently I am working on finishing up the first drafts of the units, which I'll post up when they're done. After that, I will be getting to the portraits again. So all of you who've put in your own time to help, fret not, as your help will be reciprocated in my revisions soon.

[Doppleganger]

Sorry for the MASSIVE delay. It crossed my mind that in order for critique to be worth anything, I have to have some semblance of what I'm doing. So, I went ahead and studied my anatomy a bit.

We ended up outsourcing the avatar work to a Russian Arthouse (always a good idea  ), and they came up with avatars like this.


So, it became my task to fix these avatars up. And I came up with something like this.


Since that was only marginally better, I took it upon myself to have one more go, with a little bit more dedication and fervor. In the end I came up with this.


Overall, I'm quite happy with the progress that I've made. And glad that I will be able to do some justice to the avatars which could have uglified an otherwise awesome looking game.


(that avatar is soon to be outdated. Although the BG and clothes (also outsourced) are there to stay. For now at least.)

Here are how all of the units turned out.


And here's a pretty cool pic of a complete avatar with only the outfit being done by the Russians, and the nice background done by Inquisitor.

The BG and the outfit are both most likely NPA, although I can not vouch for them one way or the other.


Again, thanks for all the effort put into the edits and critique. They were not in vain. For it was your guys' doing that set this whole avatar fiasco into motion.