AuthorTopic: GR#007 Yeti Project - Sprite Development  (Read 55073 times)

Offline st0ven

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #70 on: August 17, 2009, 04:18:50 pm
conceit: (weird calling you that, heh) -right on! i think that even keeping it simple, you have the most 'fur like' appearance even in minimal form out of all the takes so far. it feels very natural, still pixeled but has that painted look to it. I think your relatively low contrast really helps to keep this illusion.

I think plopping a sprite on the background illustrates something kindof important - even though snow is 'white', it would appear there isnt enough fo a contrast between any slops or valleys or any distinguishing traits about the snow in the foreground - which makes the main focus of the eye the tree layer which is the midground, and it looks unsettlingly empty between the mid layer and the sprite layer with all that dead 'white'ness.

id have liked to have taken my stab at it again knowing the character better now on this background as well to see what i could come up with, but i suppose theres little point after conceit's attempt.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #71 on: August 17, 2009, 04:40:35 pm
Steve...you never did get used to the new screename did ya? heh...I was kind of on a ego-destruction obsession at the time...sometimes I wish it was a lil more positive  :blind:

You really think my version is such a be all end all? well...I'm flattered
I obviously didnt because I kept working on it for a while :p...but the progress is so subjective even I dont know if it's any better at all. I tend to be on the slowpoke side like EvilEye here...and I think that may ruin things on many occasion...it's a matter of knowing when to let go..cause sometimes you want to achieve EVERY little idea that crosses your head and there's just no picture that can contain all that and still be cohesive....I know I've worked some pieces to utter fuglyness :P it's a matter of knowing when to let go, knowing when you're starting to lose your fresh and you're pouring more frustration than joy into the piece...

Offline EvilEye

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #72 on: August 17, 2009, 10:26:14 pm
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.

Wow, did I really insult the whole forum?

I know I meant to insult some of the forum...

Well regardless, I hereby issue an apology for the offending comments on my part. It seemed to me like some people were just posting flames or bragging, which is why I was saying they weren't helpful.

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



Interesting take conceit :y: Almost looks like a statue.

Still working on my own version.

Getting hard to judge the progress because of all the detail. I've done several makeovers only to throw them away. At this point it's hard to see what's a real improvement vs something that just makes it different.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #73 on: August 17, 2009, 11:10:13 pm
Uhm O_o spent about twice as much time on it.

Again....I think the old one was good enough to go...for the goals I had for it...I just felt like tinkering for the hell of it.


Evileye: I think that's a sign that it's time to stop working on it. if you're just making and scrapping versions over and over for no practical reason you're probably overthinking it...remember it's just an enemy sprite that has to look sufficiently good to represent it's adequate level of menace to the player and fit the themes of the game...no more. No need to be so picky on a simple enemy sprite, be this picky on the main character's design or the main gameplay mechanic or whatever.Forget what you wanted this sprite to become, this sprite becomes what it has to become...if you keep idealizing your original intention you'll end up with a mangled mess of inconsistency and end up frustrated anyway because art just doesnt turn out exactly like you want...and it doesnt even really matter that much...I find when I look back on pieces that I was this anal about I find them extremely neurotic and sort of nonsensical. You yourself said there's something you want to communicate that's "beyond the medium" wether that is the case or not we cant tell you, only you know exactly what you want and you feel you cant make that happen.....so just take it pretty close, make it give a sense of what you wanted to happen and let it go.

PS:
I know I said you should stop...but that's because I see you working directionless...I, as usual have a completely different direction I think you should take your sprite in....so I'm posting it here for the sake of education :p totally dont expect you to swallow this whole just chew it over and play with it in your mouth before you spit it out  ??? :crazy: hopefully it hits you like a bunch of coca leaves and next time you work on something you subconsciously follow my logic  :-\  :huh: :D

I fear that your use of that black terminator shade was rather killing the depth because it's so ubiquitous...you did improve a bit by darkening his right arm BUT now that you've started using white on his legs you went one step forward and two step backwards cause it has gotten even flatter...I believe if you want to keep working on this you should forget about that idealized texture you have in your head, you should fix the posture and the depth...your posture looks quite unnatural.

here's some ref....and check the YT video on the last post...look at how the gorillas handle themselves, specially their butt ;p
I think you lost A LOT of composition goodness on the translation to sprite and this is usually the case in Pxtion...he feels like he doesnt really know wether he's moving or resting or what, mostly I chalk it up to the back leg being so static...it just doesnt seem a pose a gorilla would assume when walking...also his stomach and just all of his torso looks like it's some weird impossible shape as if you're trying too hard to make his pecs and his belly look a certain whay while forgetting about making him a coherent 3d figure. Maybe you should make a little clay model of him and test out wether you can make a symetric belly and take a photograph that looks like what you have...I wouldnt bet for ya if you did.


it doesnt help that your lighting is making his butt seem as if it's on the same plane as the shoulder...you can look at my version for my idea of a good distribution of lighting in that ambient of ubiquitous  radiant light (maybe look at some polar bears which was what I had in mind).

 Personally I believe in your first steps you should completely forget the sketch, first step is blocking out a sillouethe and pay attention to the basic shapes both negative and positive, just creating some interesting composition with a good dynamic feeling and fitting posture for the character. After that you block in with some 3-4 shades (I intented to post this step but I wrote over it) if everything is in it's own plane and it's got good volume stick to that general plan of lighting for the rest of your time on the piece. Otherwise you end up in lighting hell reworking each little knick knack in the sprite because you are indecisive about having a distinct lightness zone for each part OR making everything super clear and detailedv
(I noticed you are there because you just darkened that right arm even though that meant sacrificing some detail....you're not satisfied with your original lighting plan) it's like making a development hell out of a single sprite.

Once you have that blocked out add some buffer shades for the sake of texturing and proper coloring...but dont go batshit obsessive about it....just give a general sense of fur or whatever texture you have, the player doesnt really care wether you achieved the fluffy fur or the 50's fur and really when you're further into the project neither will you.

Aside from that I'd just tell you to integrate the guy into the game...I remember you have posted a few sprites before (I dont know if for the same project) and I think they each had a style that was fairly independent from the style of the last one...I believe you could get away with making this guy practically white by making him polar-ish(which is obviously what I would go for) just for the sake of integrating him with that pure white background...Ultimately it's your place to decide how much he should stick to the general atmosphere of the game and how much he should be tailored to this specifical BG but make sure you are thinking of him as a small part of the entire game and you are not overly focusing on some ideal quality you had in your head while drawing him.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2009, 12:35:18 am by Conceit »

Offline miscdude

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #74 on: August 20, 2009, 03:03:09 am
I'm very happy about your newest changes. It looks like you finally broke those nasty formed outlines to actually make it look like fur and it looks far better. I believe the clumps work better than individual hairs given his surroundings, because if you look carefully at the polar bear reference you can see that the hairs are less fizzy and open(?) which is likely caused by snow/water.

Offline EvilEye

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #75 on: August 20, 2009, 05:43:51 pm

Evileye: I think that's a sign that it's time to stop working on it. if you're just making and scrapping versions over and over for no practical reason you're probably overthinking it...

The same thought had crossed my mind... I am almost done though, not to worry :y:



Well? What you think?

Offline snowsoft

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #76 on: August 20, 2009, 06:45:11 pm
This whole thread has been awesome.

EvilEye, the yeti looks great, but that fur on his chest looks strange to me. The placement of the black on the left side gives it an appearance of the fur coming out of a hole in his chest almost.

A quick edit to show what I mean.


The black being moved to the left feels and looks more consistent with the lighting you have going on, in my opinion.
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Offline big brother

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #77 on: August 20, 2009, 07:50:01 pm
Is this sprite going to be animated?

Offline EvilEye

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #78 on: August 20, 2009, 09:03:50 pm
This whole thread has been awesome.

EvilEye, the yeti looks great, but that fur on his chest looks strange to me. The placement of the black on the left side gives it an appearance of the fur coming out of a hole in his chest almost.

A quick edit to show what I mean.


The black being moved to the left feels and looks more consistent with the lighting you have going on, in my opinion.

Its difficult to tell but I think you're right.

Is this sprite going to be animated?

:lol: :yell: :blind:

No, all the sprites are static in the battlemode.

What do you think big brother? Is that back leg too messy or does it look ok to you?
« Last Edit: August 20, 2009, 09:06:06 pm by EvilEye »

Offline xhunterko

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Re: [WIP] The Yeti project

Reply #79 on: August 20, 2009, 10:22:55 pm
I'm not big brother, and certainly no where near this good. But! It does look a little messy to me. In fact, it even looks incomplete. Compare the lighting on the top (middle?) of the leg. Shading it a bit more like the center of the main arm perhaps might be a better choice. Right now it looks like he has a hole in his leg. Plus, it appears that there is two light sources for that section, which is a bit confusing. Otherwise, excellent improvement over the original I'd say.

Small off topic bit, highlight to see: Whenever I think of yeti or bigfoot, I always think back to that old movie, "Hairy and the Hendersons".