GR#006 - Game Artin - Faces

[ndchristie]

Looking good, although i think that the terrain is too busy and over-relies on those battle-scars.

If you look at these random references from somewhere in google-mapped france and vermont, you'll see that pouplated temperate regions tend to have pretty smooth grass.

Now, if those blasts are where your tank has fired and tiles which have yet to be attacked show up as smooth as before, that's both a different matter and sweet .

[Doppleganger]

I absolutely agree with you, and one of the last disconcerting things about the in-game image (aside from the avatars) was specifically what you have mentioned. It has always been my intention to revisit the grass terrain, but time has not been in my favor, unfortunately.

Another thing that I wanted to explore was tileable forest and mountain terrain, and if possible, subtiles that would make it possible to connect forest tiles to mountain tiles and mountain tiles to sea tiles, etc...

None of that is necessarily out of the question but, it is definitely something that would have to be done in my own free time. Which, is actually very minimal at the moment, for the shear number of projects we have going on right now is, more or less, unheard of. Especially when you consider that I am the lead artist for all of them. Specific numbers range at 5-6 projecst at the moment, with artistic help available for maybe one or two at most.

But, doing the sort of work that would make variable terrain, based on actions taken upon it, a possibility, might be worth it if I could reflect that effort back to the coders.

[Fuzzyleaves]

Back to the female, if you make her eyes smaller, like Accident did she seems older, that's what the anime ppl do... 

edit: also I was reading where it explains the plains... It doesn't make sense

I THINK it should say;
 Plains: fast (maybe) movement, and provides minimal cover against enemy attacks.

re-edit: Also your vehicles, when most of them face you, they seem to have a small lip around the opening, and yet there is no evidence of that lip at any other direction, does anyone else see that?

[ndchristie]

re-edit:[/b] Also your vehicles, when most of them face you, they seem to have a small lip around the opening, and yet there is no evidence of that lip at any other direction, does anyone else see that?

that to me looks like a trick to make the barrel look nicer rather than an actual lip.  I don't think the casual eye would consider it an actual change in size.  Could be wrong though...

[Stefano]

Doppleganger,

I know you declared this thread finished and I also know that enough has been said about anatomy.
But just because this is an awesome thread, I did an edit anyway, just to show you a few more ways to use anatomy on your male character.

swaping:


final product:


Apart from the anatomy part I have absolutely nothing to add!
Awesome mockup my friend.

[Doppleganger]

@Fuzzyleaves:
Adarias is right, in the fact that it is a trick/technique to make the barrel more appealing. In the south-facing sprites, the barrel is slightly widened near the tip to portray a certain amount of depth. As the barrel is in the air and pointed toward the viewer. Just a simple mechanic to get a little more perspective out of an otherwise rigid point of view.

@Stefano:
Thanks for the edit, man. I see what you've done, and definitely appreciate the changes. I think the eyes in your edit suffer from a lack of eyelashes, or rather, a darker color to represent eyelashes. Which kind of gives them this albino/simpleton/stoned kind of expression. But, the placement and sizing are on point for sure. I like what you've done to the mouth. That's akin to what I was hoping to achieve, but I couldn't quite get it before. Aside from deviating a bit from the facial planes I devised, I gather that you just applied general smoothing and polish to the piece, which I can definitely take some pointers from in future scenarios. In the end, it's a very good edit, although I do feel that it strays away from the simple and precise shading of the original. Something that has been put into effect because these avatars will actually be constructed via layers of the individual pieces that make up the face.

I'm not actually done with this game, as I've got a fair amount of avatars to clean up yet. In addition to formulating a decent base for the female characters. I'm currently on a new project atm, so my time to do such is limited, but I'll most likely post progress as it comes. Something I hope to learn from this is properly portraying racial characteristics. One, for the learning experience, and two, so that all players of this game are afforded facial features that acknowledge their place in humanity. I'm sure that it's pretty easy to be subjective about how good or accurate those characteristics are, so I don't think I'm quite done with this topic yet.