Amorphous's Pixel Art

[artisticdude]

Quick edit on the minotaur. One thing I'd try is changing up the hues in your palette... monochromatic colors (i.e., palettes that only vary in saturation and brightness rather than color) tend to read as being fairly flat. Adding a bit of hue-shifting to the palette will make it pop a bit more.

Your musculature overall is pretty nice, but I'd cut down on the separation between the pectorals and the shoulders a bit, and I'd also add some more volume to the pecs so that they don't look quite so much like plates.

His left (our right) elbow needs some foreshortening to read properly at that angle, so his left arm doesn't appear longer than his right. I fiddled with that a bit, but you'll probably have to play with the entire arm in order to get it right.

Re: the attack animation: Basically what Thrawn said above, especially about the hair. ATM the main thing that would help it would be to add more torso rotation like LordBob mentioned... and unfortunately, yes, that means you'll have to completely redraw some parts of the torso (which can be a pain, I know!). But since exaggeration is key in animation (particularly animation at this scale), the more movement you can fit into the motion, the better.

[Amorphous]

Thanks for the feedback, all!

The cape may be bland, but it goes with the hood - the tight waist of the chaoschaster_final.png clashes a bit with the big hood, at least in my opinion.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I'll mess around with that.

Quick edit on the minotaur.

Ahh, I've known for a while that my palette skills are bad, but there's nothing like having the facts shoved in your face to show you how bad you are. Thanks for the paint over.

Okay, on the subject of the animation; here's where I'm at right now. I've rotated the head in the last two windup frames, tried to make the hair flop around more (not sure how well that turned out), messed with the motion blur (definitely don't think this turned out well; I'm probably going to have to entirely redraw that bit), and also made a few tweaks here and there. I haven't addressed some of the more irksome crits yet, but I'll get to them eventually.

[Amorphous]

Okay, quick and messy update on the attack animation. Is this the general direction I should move in to address Thrawn's crit about the blur/sword, or am I completely misunderstanding his comment?

Also, a sketch for an idle animation. I can see that I'm going to have to up the overall movement, but right now my main concern is whether or not it's obvious what the character is doing. Answer spoiler'd just in case.

Spoiler:

She's supposed to be yawning.

[Speedbrain]

The motion blur is better. The hair could still use more movement, imho.
It's certainly improving, keep at it.

I think what the idle animation is doing is obvious. You should move ahead with it.

[Sleepwalker]

Quick and dirty edit. Whole body movement does a lot.

A deep slow breath-in and out would make the idle look more like a yawn.

[Amorphous]

Thanks for the feedback!

Quick and dirty edit. Whole body movement does a lot.

Indeed it does. Many thanks for the paint over! Up until now, I've been afraid of rotating much at all, so your edit is extremely useful.

The motion blur is better. The hair could still use more movement, imho.
It's certainly improving, keep at it.

Yeah, the hair's been bugging me. I'll need to fish up some reference and try again. And thanks.

Okay, few minor tweaks to the animation. Only really noticeable difference is the added rotation to the skirt/hips to go with Sleepwalker's torso rotation. I think this is basically ready for shading and cleanups, though.

Anything that needs to be fixed (besides the hair, blah)?

[Amorphous]

Animation is pretty exhausting stuff. I really have no idea how the mainline artists can get through all the work required to finish single animations, let alone dozens of them. Shading on the attack animation is coming along bit by bit, and I've been looking at reference for the idle, but I don't have anything worth posting yet. Until I finish the animations up, though, here're some base frames and long overdue edits.

The bottom two are attempts at really getting a hold of my palette usage and pixeling technique in general. Some inspiration for the peasant was stolen from the revised Elvish Shaman in art dev, and, yes, I am aware of how the fighter's outfit is 100% practical.

Also, working off of artisticdude's edit, a revised Minotaur, along with a fix for the sorcerer's waist based off doofus-01's critique.

And, finally, an update on the HC. It probably would have been smarter to wait until I was finish to post it, but I was getting frustrated fretting over problems that might not exist. Still haven't finished the sword, and the wings are still messy, but what I'm really worried about is the palette and the shading; maybe it's just from staring at it for too long, but the shading on the armor doesn't look very metal-y to my eyes.

Critique is very, very appreciated.

[doofus-01]

nd, finally, an update on the HC. It probably would have been smarter to wait until I was finish to post it, but I was getting frustrated fretting over problems that might not exist. Still haven't finished the sword, and the wings are still messy, but what I'm really worried about is the palette and the shading; maybe it's just from staring at it for too long, but the shading on the armor doesn't look very metal-y to my eyes.

Metal looks like plastic if you have too many mid-tones or just make it all bright. Use more dark pixels, and probably fewer total colors. I did a quick revision. Some parts are not much of an improvement, but hopefully you see what I mean. The helmet is probably the best illustration of it.

[Amorphous]

Holy wow, thank you! It burns my eyes to look at the original now that I've seen your edit. I gave it some general cleanup, and also tried to apply some subtle reflections to parts of the armor. I'm not sure about the reflections, though, I get the feeling that they might be a little unnecessary if they're even noticeable.

And, because I was still feeling the holiday spirit:

christmas_wraith.png (3.6 KiB) Viewed 22642 times

Even the undead have to celebrate now and then. This was a quick one, and the robe things floating around at the bottom look pretty bad, to my eyes. I think there might also be some perspective issues on the candy cane.

Anyhow, hope you all had a good time celebrating whatever you prefer to celebrate around this time of year.

[Amorphous]

Oh, jeez, it's been a long time since I posted in this thread.

Here's an update on the HC. Changed a lot of stuff since last time, obviously, but there's still a long ways to go in terms of polishing - the legs are really the only spots that I consider remotely done. Some aspects of the wings' anatomy are bugging me, and I think there might be a few perspective issues here and there.

Not looking for any other specific critique though - thoughts, anyone?

[doofus-01]

You're making admirable progress, Amorphous!

You're right, there are some things about the wings that seem off (the dark region on the edge of the far wing, for example) but in general, that sprite has become pretty good. I'd be wary of using such large images though; animation is increasingly difficult as the images get larger, and you'd probably want some minimal animations for an important unit. Also, there can be layering issues, causing glitches with terrain graphics, if the image is very large.

If you stick with the current wings, I'd make the sword arm longer and lower, and change the angle of the sword. Just my thoughts, not the gospel truth.

[Zerovirus]

You've definitely improved, but you're right- the perspective is somewhat off. You've got three choices here- reposition either of the wings, or basically redraw the central figure to have a more side-on angle and less of a frontal angle.

[Amorphous]

Hey, thanks a lot both of you! Sorry for the late reply. Progress is slow -- still not finished somehow; the usual.

I'd be wary of using such large images though; animation is increasingly difficult as the images get larger, and you'd probably want some minimal animations for an important unit. Also, there can be layering issues, causing glitches with terrain graphics, if the image is very large.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Animating him would be a pain, and glitching with the terrain graphics is another can of worms entirely. I guess I'm lucky I don't really have any specific use in mind for him.

You've got three choices here- reposition either of the wings, or basically redraw the central figure to have a more side-on angle and less of a frontal angle.

Thanks a lot for the paint over, made things a lot clearer! I figured the topmost was closest to my original intent, so that's what I went with.

So yeah, still not 100% there by any means; but I've once again reached the point where I'm worrying about every possible pixel, so feedback would be nice.

[Amorphous]

Progress. Sort of. Critique appreciated!

[doofus-01]

Critique appreciated!

My take is this: It looks like a frankenstein sprite (a caped knight pasted onto a pair of wings) because the cape is hanging like a tent, as if it were dragging on the ground. It would either be flowing around somehow or hanging straight down. A cape on a winged unit also seems like an odd choice, but maybe that's just opinion.