AuthorTopic: Battlecruiser and Frigate  (Read 6277 times)

Offline Olothontor

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Battlecruiser and Frigate

on: December 23, 2009, 07:27:02 pm
The unbeatable team. They have a vaguely Homeworld feel to them that I did not intend for. Still, here they are. I intend on drawing this out into a whole series of ships, a full navy, if you will, so please feel free to C&C.

Also, this is my first time doing anything in perspective, so please don't kill me if I did it wrong.



Also, the palette originated from the Dodonpachi Challenge Thread, it is not mine. The ships themselves, however, are original.

*EDIT* Messing with marking color, changed it to a generic Earth Force blue.



*EDIT2* Can't decide... what do you guys think?

« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 08:05:48 pm by Olothontor »
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline Pawige

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #1 on: December 23, 2009, 08:06:18 pm
I would suggest you have another look at CrazyMLC's edit in your last thread. He did an excellent job conveying the major forms of the ship and giving it some depth. At the moment these two are pretty flat looking. Make sure you block out the basic shape before you get into any detailing, and also make sure the details don't overpower the original form. Notice in Crazy's edit the way it's still interesting to look at even with very little detail:



These two new ones are an improvement, but there's more contrast between the details and the overall shape than there is between the different surfaces of the ship (side, top, so on) and so the little greebles overwhelm the big picture and it just starts looking messy.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Also, I'd say that for neatness' sake next time, when you post something so similar and so soon after the last post, just put it in your previous one.

Offline Olothontor

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #2 on: December 23, 2009, 08:08:02 pm
I think I understand you. I'll see what I can do.

I was trying to go for very thin ships here, Perhaps if I thicken them you might see what I did...

But until then, perhaps I could milk someone for advice on how to make thin things look good in perspective? My point of view may be a bit biased, because I can see their shape and definition perfectly.

*EDIT* Yet another update. Took one of the cruisers and widened it a bit. Also began experimenting with stylistic fins.



*EDIT2* Here comes another one. I figured out why the look so thin... the shading on their lower plating didn't match up with the bay opening at the front of the ship. Fixed that.


« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 08:48:47 pm by Olothontor »
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline Pawige

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #3 on: December 23, 2009, 08:49:02 pm
It's just not reading very well at the moment. This is what I'm seeing:



But if that's what you're aiming for, it doesn't show very well from underneath all the little details you've put on because they are overpowering the shading of the ship as a whole.

Offline Olothontor

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #4 on: December 23, 2009, 08:56:55 pm
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline CrazyMLC

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #5 on: December 23, 2009, 09:13:33 pm
There isn't much shading overall, to be honest. Whe white sections are just areas that are painted white, correct?

Offline Olothontor

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #6 on: December 23, 2009, 09:16:29 pm
That is the intention, yes.

*EDIT* Here, here! I fixed it, I think. Let's see what you think:



You're gonna wanna look at the orange cruiser, nothing else has changed.

*EDIT2* I'm sorry if all of these edits are annoying...

But I just finished up a bit more shading.

« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 09:35:55 pm by Olothontor »
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline CrazyMLC

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #7 on: December 23, 2009, 09:40:08 pm
Excellent points, supergoat.

Another useful point to be made about bitmap INGAME graphics is that they hardly ever miss an apportunity to pronounce dents and general volumetric shifts on objects, with contrasting highlights. For the longest time when I was starting out with pixel art, since I came from a comic art background where we usually shade from pure white light ( white paper ) to pure dark ( full ink ) I was having trouble convincingly suggesting volumes in pixel art. I did everything right, in theory. The stuff I drew were lightsourced, the colours were ok, the shapes registered well in general. After going back to studying Speedball II and Cadaver and the like, I realized what I was doing wrong, or rather, not doing much of: I was working from a middle shade, towards darkness, and that was it. If there were brighter spots, they were on large areas, where a lot of direct light would hit. I practically had no idea of the power of highlight, especially of the sharp type. A sharp highlight is that which might go two or even more steps up from the body of colour it's highlighting, on colour ramp, and which usually is extra accented by darker pixels than the body of colour around it too.

Let's say I was trying to draw some cracks on a dented metal wall, right? (zoom in on these)



This would be the old helm. Technically, this is not wrong. There's variations of lightness, there's the information that cracks are there, but it looks dull and lifeless. Studying bitmap brothers I understood that anywhere where's an edge, there's highlight! Obivously this has a lot to do with what type of material you're trying to shade, but in pixel art, especially game art, clarity is important, so this effect should be overstressed a bit.




Likeso. For every contour, an edge highlight. But this isn't all I learnt by the bitmap brothers. I also learnt the importance of pushing the contrast far more than you would in other media, to travel the complete range from pure black to pure white. Now, they don't do this as much as I do (my usage has evolved for other reasons to be even more harsh) but the theory's there, and it's more to do with the needs of game art than it's to do with realistic representation of reality. Again, this is about clarity and how fast the eye can proccess information and detail. Where there's EDGE, which in gameplay can possibly mean unreachable area and the like, you need to give the brain the tools to work out what it's looking at fast. So more sharpening and contrast is good.

Another thing that the brothers taught me was the importance of the traditional 75%, 50% and 25% ordered dithers as means to suggest texture and inter-shade buffering. Now my examples use 16 shades of gray which is insanely rich for this sort of stuff, but if I were to use say, 5 shades between black and white, by doing bodies of ordered dither, I would be able to fake and convey both rougher terrain, and more importantly, an extra 5 lightness levels between my original 6, and if I used 25% and 75% patterns, 24 different lightness levels between pure black and pure white, using only 5 colour slots. This is a great strength to have, and the brothers put it to use constantly.



Offline Olothontor

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #8 on: December 23, 2009, 09:42:15 pm
Hmm. Look up. I did just that, after a fashion, although I admit mine is much more subtle.
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa

Offline CrazyMLC

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Re: Battlecruiser and Frigate

Reply #9 on: December 23, 2009, 10:06:16 pm
Pixeling isn't a subtle art. ;)