Hovering Guardian

[Dwibble]

Hey, I'm a new member to Pixelation, but I need some C&C on this.



I was thinking about adding legs, but I'm not sure if I want to.

[Olothontor]

The dramatic lighting is good, but without the Topic name I would have no clue what I was looking at. Perhaps some more telling features?

The sepia-tone thing is good, though, I like it.

[EyeCraft]

Hello, welcome to Pixelation .

Yes, what exactly is going on in this piece? My guess is theres a huge structure floating in the background, and sword planted in the ground infront of the viewer. A tip: when posting something, go into a little detail about what it is you want from the piece, the direction you want to take it, what lead you to do it, etc. Insights like this can really help critique.

This is a complicated subject to try and render. Lots of subtle curves, and what appears to be a shiny surface, combined with extreme scale differences and perspective. Just noting it.

Generally the rendering is arbitrary. The sword isn't too bad, but the garden structure is overrun with pillow shading. Try breaking it down into 3-dimensional primitives like boxes, cones, cylinders and spheres, pick where your light source is and then block in the shading. Since it appears to be shiny, you'll need to decide what kind of environment its in, since the shiny parts will be reflecting that.

Isolate the area where the sword overlaps the garden, so its clearer to make out the sword. Aerial perspective could help you with this.

In fact, I suggest being more drastic with your decision on the subject of the piece. Is the focus the sword, or the garden? What relevance is the sword to the garden? What relevance is the garden to the sword? If you want both, I'd think about rearranging the composition so each element has is own space to breathe and interact. I'm thinking of the garden on one side of the image, and the sword on the other:



Pixel-wise, lots of jaggies happening with the outline. You've got a lot of broken lines, with highlight broken by dark shadow, or vice-versa. It's really destroying the idea of a curvy, elegant structure.

Palette is good, I like it 

[Olothontor]

Ah. That's a sword. I saw something totally different there...

[Mathias]

Yes, I have no idea what I'm looking at here. Nothing is readable. Monster pillow-shadin' going on. Looks like a floating dragon thing firing a laser downward? (just read eyecraft's, it must be a sword then?)

Please explain all you can about this.

[EyeCraft]

Wow, now I realise I misread "guardian" as "garden" 

Well, that kind of threw my idea of what I was looking at out the window. Your piece makes more sense to me now. But it still needs a load of clarification before it can function.

[Dwibble]

Ah, sorry about not explaining it more. Eye Craft, that speed painting pretty much showed the way I was trying to portray it, but...well, I got a little lazy as you could tell. The main reason why the jagged edges look so, um, jagged, is because while working on this, I used a dark background, so the pixels that show up at the edges didn't show up on the dark background. I completely forgot about those after I converted into a .gif and posted it here. Just plain stupidity on my part there, sorry.  

As to the pillow shading, I kept playing around with that. I think I got the central part of it right, but it really shows in the shoulder armor. I'm still working on that.

Here's the original sprite sheet. The machine on the right was the Mammon Machine from Chrono Trigger. I didn't edit it in any way, just had it there as a curve reference.

[ndchristie]

I wouldn't say that the heart of that post is invalidated for a misreading. What it says is look at atmosphere, form, and lighting.  Take a look at these 2 similar-to-yours bosses from Crono Trigger and SD3, they have a very simple approach that they take all the way:



The lighting is overpronounced and frontalized, but this works for a boss like this, and the forms are well both in form and, for Giga Gaia, in depth.

What's nice about Square is the inconsistencies that help point out how and how not to go about things.  In a game like Bahamut Lagoon, you can have the min-hydra where the artist clearly doesn't understand what he's doing, what he's looking at, how the forms are being created, etc.  Then you have one of the crowning sprites in the game, the Grand Dragon.

 
(sorry for ugly source...It was the best I found)

[crab2selout.png]

eeek... those last two make me want to cry. I felt obligated to find a better source.

http://tsgk.captainn.net/?p=sheetinfo&t=254

EDIT:even better link

[god_is_evil]

I was lookin around and noticed your thread here.
so i did a edit and drew out the general steps i took in a attempt to aid you in your
pixel quest