Author Topic: Art feedback  (Read 51231 times)

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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #75 on: August 19, 2016, 09:09:39 PM »
Did some changes while referencing Roger's body from SQ1VGA. Hopefully his skeleton looks a little more anatomically correct now (spine aligns with neck and feet) and he's not as fat. I think this makes his head appear a little more correctly proportioned. If I move his nose up it meets his eyes, though, which looks very wrong. As it is his eyes, mouth, and hairline are aligned to his front view so the positions I think are the best they can be...or maybe I should just remove the nose and mouth altogether like SQ1VGA's Roger. Although, my sprite is larger and demands more details as a result.

Before (right) and after (left).
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Offline troflip

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #76 on: August 19, 2016, 09:18:03 PM »
I was thinking more like this:

But I'm not sure if that's any better than what you have already.
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #77 on: August 19, 2016, 09:21:19 PM »
Like I said, his eyes are aligned with his front view. I see what you mean, though. His head does seem a bit large, but the dimensions are at such a point that the pixels are too large to shrink it without it looking too small and too small to remove that much detail anyway. Check out the Indy FOA sprites they're more or less the same.

How about this?
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #78 on: August 19, 2016, 09:30:36 PM »
Or this following your example. Maybe it is better and the alignment doesn't matter...here's all 3 side by side.
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Offline troflip

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #79 on: August 20, 2016, 03:23:16 AM »
Well without the nose it looks pretty weird. I agree with you that the head really wants to be halfway in between the two sizes to look good :-). One second I think the middle looks better, then I think the right one looks better! I'm not sure what to suggest...

[edit:]maybe if you make the head wider, it would look ok? dunno..
« Last Edit: August 20, 2016, 12:17:37 PM by troflip »
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Offline Paladinlover

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #80 on: August 22, 2016, 03:34:18 PM »
I think the one on the left overall is good. I don't know if the nose is really that necessary on the character on that one sprite, but I think it's excellent overall.

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #81 on: August 22, 2016, 06:08:36 PM »
I showed it around on Twitter and I got three responses all with votes for my original version in the middle. Two of them by artists (one a pixel artist). So I'll take that to heart as professional opinion and stick with it for now. If this ends up in a game I'll see how it looks later on. Thanks for the feedback though, guys.
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Offline claudehuggins

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #82 on: August 28, 2016, 05:16:21 PM »
My main weakness with backgrounds is indoor rooms. I feel confident drawing bushes and the like, but furniture will always confuse me. Does anyone have any tips for drawing indoor locations?

Included an outdoor and indoor room from my game to illustrate the point. I drew inspiration from LSL for the outdoor bits, and have studied the art from SQ3 as well, but it hasn't really improved my furniture/clutter skills.
A while ago, at a block party I found myself socially trapped at, I thought to myself: I need a t-shirt that says, "I'd rather be programming".

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #83 on: August 28, 2016, 05:33:32 PM »
Not bad. More often than not you'll find that it's the lighting/shading that affects the realism factor more than the geography and shape of things. Pick the spot(s) where the light source(s) is(/are) coming from and draw in your shaded areas accordingly to the best of oyur abilities. Take special note especially of Sierra bg's and how they incorporate shading. IMO that's the best way to do it. Even an unrealistically shaped and disproportionate object can look good or even real with the right shading. Google some shading tips and then try to apply it to your EGA backgrounds. There are some neat dithering tricks you can take advantage of between two colours for some good shading that can portray lighting and colour in interesting ways you never thought of. But try to avoid flat colours on everything. That's what can make otherwise good things look like a child's drawing. And try not to outline every object with black.

I'm not an artist. This is just what I've tried to learn on my own. My advice may only be scratching the surface...or there may be something even better you can do. In my experience, though, shading is everything.

Even for your outdoor image there, you can put shadows of those bushes underneath it. And even a small shadow of the curb on the pavement, depending on where the sun is coming from.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2016, 05:36:16 PM by MusicallyInspired »
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Offline troflip

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #84 on: August 28, 2016, 10:16:46 PM »
For indoor scenes you're going to need a good understanding of perspective so that squarish objects are nicely aligned. I think that's why the desk and bookcase look strangely-shaped. The bookcase, for instance:

  • has shelves that appear wider in back than in front
  • the shelf guards (? the thing in front of the shelf) "shrink" at different rates as they recede

... the mat has a strange shape too. I think all these problems would be fixed with proper perspective (1-point perspective in this case).

The walls close to the camera look too tall too (maybe it's a tall room though, I dunno :-) )

What would probably help is drawing the image out on paper first, take a photo of it, and then use that as a tracing guide in SCI Companion. I always draw the scene several times on paper first until it looks like I want.

Your outside scene looks a lot better (especially the bushes are nice), probably because perspective doesn't matter as much with more organic things like plants. But... there are still some obvious issues:

  • The sidewalk chunks are different widths
  • The yellow road paint doesn't use perspective lines like the sidewalk chunks do
  • The sewer... is that supposed to be a sewer? I'm not sure what you're going for there.

The grass in the cracks is a nice touch.
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Offline troflip

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #85 on: August 28, 2016, 10:38:09 PM »
I think for indoor scenes, LB1 is a really good one to study. Both for proper use of perspective, and great lighting.


You can see that the lines in the room mostly all vanish to a single point. But they aren't perfect, the right side of the carper doesn't quite line up correctly. It's close enough that you don't really notice though.

Whereas in your image, the perspective lines are kind of going everywhere (they don't meet at a single point)
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Offline Kawa

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #86 on: August 28, 2016, 10:45:33 PM »
The beauty of vector art: you can draw those perspective guidelines first, do the actual room art, and remove the guides utterly. Noone'd know they were ever there.

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #87 on: August 28, 2016, 11:23:18 PM »
Yes, I can't believe I forgot to mention the vanishing point. That has helped me tremendously in drawing my own rooms. Do that.
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Offline claudehuggins

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #88 on: August 29, 2016, 11:20:31 AM »
Thank you all very much! I did a quick trace-over sketch using perspective techniques and it already looks way better. I'm on a cell phone right now but when I get internet again I'll post a re-draw. :)

And yeah, the thing in the outdoor scene is meant to be a drain. I wasn't sure how to do it, and frankly I can remove it since it isn't crucial to a puzzle or anything. I just put it there for added detail.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2016, 11:23:13 AM by claudehuggins »
A while ago, at a block party I found myself socially trapped at, I thought to myself: I need a t-shirt that says, "I'd rather be programming".

Offline claudehuggins

Re: Art feedback
« Reply #89 on: August 29, 2016, 05:51:12 PM »
I decided to give my redraw a different color scheme as the bright colors didn't really suit the scene, so I did more browns. Sorry for the cell phone photo, but I'm really happy with how this came out in relation to the old one. Higher quality will be posted when I have internet
A while ago, at a block party I found myself socially trapped at, I thought to myself: I need a t-shirt that says, "I'd rather be programming".


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