GR#007 Yeti Project - Sprite Development

[Chris2balls]

Tried doing the fur, changed the pose slightly, to convey tension, which was already quite present with that heavy fist. I hope it helps, and I do apologise if it's quite sketchy (using graphics tab).

[Dex]

While your edit conveys fur fairly well, Chris, I find that the edit st0ven did above works the best in my opinion. It keeps a general anatomical shape without losing the fur texture EvilEye is trying to achieve. It also uses colors in a more appropriate way, I'd say.

This thread is quite the interesting discussion though. Many wonderful insights and critiques that can help not just one, but many.

I do believe, however, that you, EvilEye, should have gone about this a different way and instead of trying to prove it's NOT possible to pixel something impressively in an hour- you should have tried to prove that it IS! It seems as if you're trying to set a rule that says 'you can't pixel something worthwhile in an hour.' I dunno. I've still enjoyed your progress and your steps- this thread could be archived for the discussion much less the actual progression of the art.

[EvilEye]

Tried doing the fur, changed the pose slightly, to convey tension, which was already quite present with that heavy fist. I hope it helps, and I do apologise if it's quite sketchy (using graphics tab).

That's pretty good Chris. Loses a lot of the form though. Nice letters too

Ive read the thread thoroughly enough to follow what has been going on - i was really curious by the proposition of being able to make such a pixel piece rival that of the scaled down cg version.


 - initial block in and shape stage, id say about 30 minutes at this point to get here

i got home and was able to continue


 - adding more form and lighting details - fleshing out some fur texture in choice area. this took me out about another 25 minutes. Far from perfect - but i think from this stage, working on a deadline you could easily have this wrapped up in another 30 miinutes. it should be pretty near pixel perfect in 60 - arguably should rival the original piece in both form and detail as well.

I appreciate the edit.

I was intending to tackle it a much different way which could be the reason some people don't agree it would take so long.

Here is where I was intending to go with the fur ( and actually what I am working on now with my edit ):



The colors probably still need some tweaking. Palette tweaking is one of my weak points

As you can see, I may have bit off a little more then I can chew here, its going to take a lot of reworking. But it can be done I am pretty sure.

Helms edit actually surprised me a bit. I never thought of doing it quite that way. And it does look good. Too many 45 deg angles for my taste though.

I do think that there was a lot of frustration shown in this piece and i think this came mostly from an unsurety of form / anatomy - Ive read helms take on the situation and while i mildly do agree there seems to be a workflow issue here i think the main conflict is some insecurity over the form. for some reason this is less of an issue for your CG piece, but in the end i think that your pixel piece came out with more interesting shape and structure and i have to wonder if it is because there was more deliberate thought put into the piece in that medium.

If I had known beforehand I would be attempting something this precise I would have done a much better sketch and solidified my ideas a lot more.

The thing is, this was only supposed to be a common enemy. Now its the best looking sprite in the whole game

I made the lines and started to realize just how many flaws I was up against and fixing them was no easy task. Then I changed my mind quite a bit about how I wanted it to look. In the end I salvaged what I could and it came out a lot better.

Then of course the fact that I was trying to prove a point forced me to push the quality level up even higher, which demanded even more reworking.

I really enjoy this thread because it gives us things to talk about - some personal arguing aside (feels like the pixelation i used to know and love, heh) i think the subject matter is one of the more meaningful ones to be found around here in a while. I think these things should be questioned, in the end, many different people throw in their hand in the discussion and add their artistic pieces into the fold of discussion and it becomes a true community experience. Many people walk away from threads like these with a lot more to think about than the usual0 'help me' post (honestly, nothing against them at all, just want to see more of these types too).

I am glad you enjoyed the thread, I was beginning to think all I did was start a flame war. Apparently I came off as bragging to some people, which I might have done a little of admittedly, but I thought some people would be interested to see how someone with my style does a sprite, along with all the potential pitfalls you can run into. Most the sprites I see here are cartoony / anime style, so I figured it might be a bit of a change to show how a more ( traditional? / realistic? ) style sprite is done. Plus I wanted to show some people why I didn't want to pixel that sketch I showed in the OT / Creativity thread.

I hope the discussion doesnt die out!

Well the flames might start flying again and we could get another few pages

Oh i have almost forgot - i made a quick video of some timelapse progress from midpoint to end point (at least the hour long end point). uploaded the video for you lads to view if you find it curious.

www.spriteart.com/edit/ape_avi.avi

Thanks, I'll have a look

*Just remembered, in case anyone is curious, here is the background this sprite will be on*

[Dr D]

Nice, but where does the Yeti's purple backlighting come in at? It doesn't seem to make any sense as far as I can tell. You'd probably be better off losing it completely or changing it to a blue tone.

I do enjoy the way you were intending to go with the fur, though.

[#36005A]

Just a speculative observation here, but I think the purple backlighting may have come from the bright/fully-saturated pink that EvilEye has been using for his working background. Notice how Opacus' edit edges away from the purple side and more towards the green side of blue (working on dark green) and st0ven's edit gives the yeti a low-saturation yellow backlight (working on gray).

If his background isn't going to change much, I suggest you start working on a background color that's closer to the actual background he'll appear on, if that's possible.

[Dr D]

That's a very interesting observation, and I bet there is some truth to it.

It interests me to know about how our mind subconsciously works, especially whilst one is creating art.

[Helm]

I am glad you enjoyed the thread, I was beginning to think all I did was start a flame war. Apparently I came off as bragging to some people, which I might have done a little of admittedly, but I thought some people would be interested to see how someone with my style does a sprite, along with all the potential pitfalls you can run into.

Of course it is interesting, this thread is, as noted, full of interesting aspects of character creation, and I'd love to see you post more walkthroughs to how you make your art.

However if you've realized a few problems of communication you have induced what would be best in my opinion is if you also came with some apology. Besides insulting me personally with your flippancy and constant unfounded assumptions of braggery (even if I couldn't make a good piece at this size in an hour, that could be a miscalculation on my part and not an attempt to impress anyone... who do I have to impress? I've worked commercially on piece-completion estimation rates where these miscalculations on the side of extra speed actually would cost me money, heh) - while I was trying to help you, no less - you kinda uh, insulted the whole forum a few times with those remarks about how 'nobody has given me decent crits yet'. I mean, even if that's the case and critique you received wasn't usable/useful to you, and I agree this can happen, especially when someone is pixelling at a certain level and is very set in his mind about what he's trying to achieve, people went out of their way, spent their free time to help you, it's a really proactive thing, a wonderful thing in my opinion, and it always deserves respect. Even when help is not useful, it should be appreciated, don't just tell people 'nope, this doesn't help!'.

I don't mean to start more arguing with this, quite the opposite. Any of my hurt feelings have been mended by the inbetween time and also because the resulting art looks good and that reaffirms the positive use of Pixelation no matter the bickering, so I don't really need you to tell me anything, but the rest of the forum, man... Like that line about 'how it was worth it because it riled a few people up', that's straight up trolling.

[Scribblette]

^
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My ASCII sucks. That aside, new shagginess looks appropriately spectacular. Kudos.

Hoping to get some time this week to give it my own little shot.

[Chris2balls]

I think there should be more contrast between the spikes of fur, especially on his head/hump. I'm not sure about that black outline...
In my edit I tried to draw the player's attention on mainly the torso and arms, and shading everything superfluous such as the legs and rump black (more or less), upping the contrast in this aspect. However, after seeing your background I can't see this working as the light seems pretty ambient. But with a white background like that, my idea for fur AAing can work (minus that black outline )!
Waiting for more (and possibly a feature in the news box).

[Conzeit]

Well O_O  couldnt resist and took my own stab at this...I kept the pallete pretty minimal...and focused mostly on integrating to the bg.
I didnt clock it but it was atleast 2 hours and 15 mins..maybe half an hour more.That's without counting the time I took to sip up all the ref I could...on that note...here's some walking gorillas =) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZItE4FQU784&feature=related
 The reason for the small pallete is I wanted to make it reasonably animateable at first...but then I just went a litle too fur happy for that :p

EDIT: whoops...I had promissed a ref but I didnt post it ...bad form :p