Gallery of One's Failures

[homunculus]

@Amorphous:

In your version, I see you like to align things to the surface of the screen (right hand and both shoulders). Does the cyclops even know there is the screen, so that he should align the right hand like that, and bring the left shoulder forward?

You might want to shift his upper body a pixel or so to (our) right, it looks like he's leaning back a tad too much. Otherwise, nice improvements. [...]

I think this is a good suggestion, though I would follow it only partially (leave the left shoulder where it is), which I hope would give the upper body more volume.
And I wouldn't worry about legs right now, except than make them a pixel longer, and counter that east-to-west gradient shading by bringing the brighter spot slightly towards the viewer.
This may be just me, though, because I never looked at the legs except than to notice that I liked the pose of the legs, and that in the later images the gradient like shading appeared which was not present in the first image where I think the legs were better.

[Amorphous]

Yeah, I think I agree with homunculus on both of those points, especially regarding the shading on the legs.

@homunculus:

If I'm understanding you right, you're saying that those spots are facing too frontally towards the screen. I can definitely see that on his left shoulder, but I'm not so sure about the other places. But, anyway, thanks for pointing it out, I'll definitely keep that in mind.

[homunculus]

[...] give the upper body more volume. [...]

I try to explain this possibly cryptic remark, if you would bear with me, because it is going to sound sarcastic.
The sarcasm is really because if you don't notice a problem in a drawing, it may look reasonably ok.
But once you do notice the flaw in the drawing, it will start to look like something like this: http://www.mylittleempire.ie/wp-content ... estino.jpg.

Taking into account the progress you have made in just two months, and the apparent ease of picking up the center line, I think there is no reason to hold back the volume explanation.

Say, we have a human (no idea about copyright, just something on google):

frontView.jpg (2.81 KiB) Viewed 5240 times

Then, we get a partial side view by resizing horizontally:

partialSideView.jpg (2.06 KiB) Viewed 5240 times

And then, we make the upper body lean back by skewing:

partialSideViewLeaningBack.jpg (2.17 KiB) Viewed 5240 times

The problem here is that the body has no volume, if we would want a complete side view of the body, it would look like this:

sideViewOfBody.jpg (1.05 KiB) Viewed 5240 times

If you did it by hand on the cyclops, I feel sorry for you.
But really drawing the volume of a rotated body is related to taking account the center line.
I think if you can do both of those things your sprites will look quite good in the context of other Wesnoth sprites.

(Some other people also have this volume problem with rotation, I hope they see this explanation)

[Alternatic]

Well, no offence, but I just don't understand what you are trying to point out. It might be just my bad english, but try to explain it more, if possible, please. Do you mean that he is wierdly rotated? Or that his stance is bad in any way? I just don't know what you mean...

Here I just edited your previously uploaded cyclops

Cyclops.png (2.18 KiB) Viewed 5218 times

Sorry man I am a little stupid

[Piko555]

He propably meant that you should redraw the part of cyclop which is leaned back instead of 'skewing' it.
I personally think the sprite looks good, but it's a good tip for future ones.

[homunculus]

@Piko555: I didn't check, but I doubt he used skew. I think it is more likely that he did it by hand, as some guy who was drawing demons some while back did a similar thing by hand.

@Alternatic: Well, if you have this situation that the body at partial side view appears to be like a picture on a postcard, what do you do?
The body has some thickness, so I would start by bringing the center of chest forward.

In the cyclops case it was easier to achieve the same a bit differently, but the principle of it was that in the case of partial side view, the chest is slightly to the right in the picture, and the shoulders are slightly to the left (relative to the center of the chest).
This is because the center of the chest is more forward than the shoulders, the same way as the boulder in front should appear more to the right in the picture.

The "volumeless skew" effect in the previous cyclops was caused by the right shoulder being stretched too much to the left in the picture, and the left shoulder being too much visible (should have been more behind the body).

It is no mysteriuos secret really, and I guess you would start noticing it from practice yourself soon enough.
So there is no desperate need to explain it theoretically, if it doesn't seem clear at the moment.

[Alternatic]

Ok, now I get it! It looks like if I drew it on a piece of paper, than rotated and bent the paper and drew what I saw. I'll try to get rid of it. I probably have to change the chest and the legs at least a bit.

God, now I can't stop noticing it when you pointed it out.

But thanks anyways...

[Midnight_Carnival]

Being highly lazy I think you could possibly get away with just changing the legs?

[Alternatic]

Well, some edits were made, but I'm still not entirely satisfied with it . Is it at least heading the right direction?

Cyclops.png (2.18 KiB) Viewed 5071 times

By the way: How do you put the attachments in the white box?

Edit: Hmmm, when I look at it some time after I drew it, I realise I haven't changed it much. Can someone please help me with it? Please? I'd love to give it some motion but I have to get it done first and I don't want to have it unfinished .

[homunculus]

Hmmm, when I look at it some time after I drew it, I realise I haven't changed it much.

lol, as far as i understand, although making some effort causes progress, there is usually not much you can learn from endlessly redrawing just one sprite.

what do you want to achieve, something like this?

[Alternatic]

I don't really understand what was your point than homunculus, but whatever...

I was working and thinking again and I decided that the cyclops is final for now but he is too powerful for level one so I did a smaller/weaker version of him. He might be too weak so there is a possibility of having one unit between those two .

Cyclops.png (3.07 KiB) Viewed 4976 times

Tell me YOUR opinions and what to improve please!

[Piko555]

His right arm (the one which is holding a stone) is very unnatural. It's far too long. And the legs... Whoah, these are very bad, in both term of shading and placement. I suggest to redraw them.

[Alternatic]

Hello there!

I've did some work on the cyclopes here and there and now I'll probably give the third level a try.

Cyclops.png (3.06 KiB) Viewed 4915 times

I redid the level two's toes again and also the level one's right arm and reshaded it's legs.

@Piko
Well, I thought I did a really good job with the legs but If I get some more experienced dislikes I'll consider changing them than.

[Piko555]

I'm not sure was rediding the toes a good thing. Imo they look better when are visible. Anyway... I changed a bit the 1st lvl of cyclops. It's what I was thinking when saying the arm needs to get changed. Worked on the legs a bit too, not sure are they better now:

My version of them.

Untitled.png (2 KiB) Viewed 4872 times

[Alternatic]

Yeah, you're right. You did exactly what I did after I posted the old ones. I just have to rework level two's right toes and also level one's right leg.