Dixie's Internet Meme Era Art Thread

[shiremct]

The sprite isn't pillow-shaded (except maybe sorta the top of the hair,) tho it may appear that way in a few places due to low contrast. And the light is coming from the right direction, the upper right. More and darker outlines would most quickly help the sprite. Examples: Outlines around parts of the sword and darker outlines around the feet, etc. It's very good, btw, it just kinda washes out when viewed at 1:1, zoomed in, I see much much more quality in it.

In general, you want to increase the color contrast as everything kinda bleeds together. Of course "More contrast." doesn't really help with the 'how' and the 'why' so I'll try to offer some more specific suggestions.

Part of the problem is the darker colors you have used to outline it... the dark blues and the dark greys blend together to the eye. You have the right idea with the blue tints contrasting the greys for depth, just need a bit more seperation in their values and a darker shade of green-grey for outlining. It's true you normally don't want to outline in near jet-black but you will need to go closer to it for such dark clothing. Some of your middle-grey shades could be a touch lighter and it would still come off looking black/dark grey and would help solve the color bleed on the edges.
As an experimental suggestion ,maybe try making some of the middle shades a little closer to a true grey (less green) and see how that works... just take one middle shade and replace it with a greyer, slightly lighter one and see if it helps it pop. Blues and greens blend pretty easy, so a different color can further help stop the color bleed and improve the contrast and depth.

As mentioned, his right arm is a bit long and the weapon in his left hand needs better definition (outlines in places would help, but will drastically alter the shape, you'll have to play with it a bit i suspect, changing the shape and the shading.) It's clear what it is, but it doesn't look very good at present... too flat and too bright in general. Darker shades are what you want to work in here.

The Shading on the TC strips and bands is good in it's... words are escaping me here... the placement of the highlights is good, it just needs more contrast. TC is tricky and I'm very guilty of this myself, but you really gotta push the contrast on TC stuff to a higher level than other stuff because the shades in-game won't have the same level of contrast as the magenta shades you use drawing it... and your magenta shading needs a bit more contrast, so you wanna increase contrast there double-time, mostly by pushing mid and highlights to brighter shades. The placement of the highlights is great, just replace the lighter colors with even lighter shades; there is plenty of detail in them already that you currently wouldn't really be able to see in game or even on the unzoomed image... making the details you already have show up a bit more is what you want to do... I'm sorry I couldn't word that better, I hope you get what I mean tho. Oh, and with the brighter TC on his headband it will probably help a lot the issues you may have with his hair.

The sprite is really pretty good, the details and depth just bleed out a bit right now, but you've got a great start.

[Dixie]

Thanks a lot, people! Especially shiremct, a good load of advice.

Truth be told, I think the thing I suck the most at is probably designing colour palettes. Colour really isn't my realm. To correct the weapons, I inspired myself from the fencer's sabers. I also changed the angle of the left arm so it was easier to create an outlined yet still slim looking blade. I think both weapons look quite good, now. As for the clothes, my first palette was taken from mainline's assassin, which has a lot of pale grey, but which garbs still look black. I tried a first version with the same palette, but using more pale grey. I was generally satisfied with it, but tried another using some of inferno8's palette from Era of Magic's dark elves: they have a lot of black. I quite like the result, although you might argue it's blending too much. I also redid the hair in black, taking the palette yet again from the dark elves, and made the eyes huh... asian. Ninjas are asians, after all. I also gave a slight yellow hue to the skin, although it is subtle all by itself.

What do you think?

[artisticdude]

Very nice, especially from scratch. There are a few things I'd like to mention, however. His right leg seems rather short compared to his left, and his right foot is three times the size of his left. His right arm seems to bend like a stick of licorice, as though there were no elbow. The left arm definitely has an elbow, but the forearm is too short and the upper arm is too long. Other than that, the whole sprite seems rather window-flattened, meaning it looks like he is arranged in one plane rather than 3d space. Foreshortening helps a lot in this area. Just something you might want to experiment with.

[Dixie]

Hmm, yeah, you are right about the arms and the foots. I'll have to correct that. About the right leg, it's supposed to be bent, knee pointing towards us. I concede it may not give itself away

About the window-flattened thing: well, maybe the pose helps create that effect to some extent, although I maybe wouldn't have noticed it that much by myself. I'm not sure what you mean by "foreshortening", though. Shortening what's in front, or shortening what's farer? I'm not exactly sure how I'd pull that off, especially with that pose.

On another note, I've been working on one of the Shinobi's level ups: the Nokizaru. Also from scratch. I vastly prefer this method, I feel less restrained than with franckensteins. And franckensteins bored me to death, anyway, they're hardly as creative. Anyway, I think it is much better than its predecessor, the Shinobi, althoug it may suffer from the apparently shorter right leg syndrome too, and perhaps window-flattenedness?

Nokizaru.png (5.97 KiB) Viewed 5512 times

EDIT:
Some corrections on the Shinobi, with regard to the arms and feet.

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[Frogger5]

Both of them are flat. More contrast. Weapons are looking much better. The top guy's stance is rather unbalanced though. I also looks like he's trying to dance.
Apart from that good job.

[Dixie]

Well... I know I have a hard time with contrast and colours. This is really not my realm. Although the palette I chose may be partly to blame, too, but... I dunno. I'll let them as is for the time being and maybe will work some more on them eventually.

Btw, about the Nokizaru stance: maybe it is that much too dynamic and would fit better a defense animation. When I tried to pose myself and drew it on paper, it was less dramatic, but I must have unbalanced the sprite too much.

Also: the third level, the Kisho:

kisho.png (6.14 KiB) Viewed 5465 times

I know, the stance is really unbalanced and all, but hey, it's a 3rd level ninja, he has to have epic balance and can probably swordfight a bunch of goons on an iron wire, standing on a single hand, all the while eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. Also, maybe the ribbons are a bit too much, it almost looks like some kinda ghost... I'll let him ripen, too. I knew this one and its predecessors are not perfect, but... Anyway.

Thanks for your comments, people

EDIT:
There, some more ninjas. They're level 2 through 4 of another of the Shinobi's branch. Got the sword, hat and legs from hmm... somewhere else (the ancient silver and golden warriors from Era of magic's Kharos faction, actually) I was not too sure about the capes at first, but I think it turned out ok. Do they look as flat as the previous ones? I tried to go with more contrast and stuff...

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chunin.png (6.62 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

jonin.png (6.88 KiB) Viewed 5436 times

[dipseydoodle]

Yeah, I'm back. I need a bit longer of a break though and I'll start the sprites back up.

[Dixie]

Hey, no problem Dipsey, take your time I really liked you units, btw, although they were better with the fix Aura made, imo. So, don't hesitate to contribute any other Also, I dunno how your own project are faring code-wise, but if you're ever stuck and need help, the deal still holds

On another note, here's this morning work (ok, ok, not only this morning, I started some of it last evening)

First and foremost, I reconsidered some of what you guys said and reworked nokizaru's and kisho's legs. I might rework shinobi's too, sometime:

Stance (legs) fixed

nokizaru.png (5.92 KiB) Viewed 5415 times

Thickened the legs for more stability

kisho.png (6.08 KiB) Viewed 5415 times

And here are three new units, lv1 kusa, lv2 rappa and lv3 koran. For those with a good memory, these are the new sprites I've made to replace those all-tc franckenstein you can see at the start of the thread. I think they fare rather well in the comparison Any opinions?

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rappa.png (5.98 KiB) Viewed 5415 times

koran.png (6.22 KiB) Viewed 5415 times

EDIT: now that I see them here, I think my sandals are not optimum, although I'm not sure how to fix that. Also, Kisho's right foot might be a bit small...

[Dixie]

Well, some more double posting, but at almost 12 ours interval, I shouldn't be getting a ticket

So here's today's work: the two last ninja lines and a serf (reworked peasant).I also corrected a bunch of stuff in various places, like Kisho's foot. I'll only be lacking the five samurai units and the four monks, but I'm a bit fed up so tomorrow will probably be "sprite-break".

new ninja tree.png (43.61 KiB) Viewed 5386 times

So, I'm not sure I have much thought to offer on all those sprites. Maybe the Iga-Mono and level ups are a little less creative/interesting sprites... Shinobi could perhaps have some fixes, like giving him larger pants to fit his level ups. Compared to mainline, I think my sprites have slightly big heads. Maybe they're somewhat taller than average, if only a little... Monomi's and Kancho's hair look a bit funny. Iga-Mono and Yohei (and even Fuunji, to some extent) are maybe bit frail, compared to the others (thinner torsos). And well, I don,t really know if my sprites still look as flat. I feel like they're good, but maybe I just fail to see it. And I dunno about textures, I'm at a total loss when you guys talk about that

Still, they may not be perfect, up to mainline or whatever, but I'm still pretty proud. I think they look good, for someone who never he'd sprite anything decent like four or five days ago Comments welcome as usual

[Midnight_Carnival]

I like them.
They are not in the cannonical Wesnoth style, but that doesn't bother me. Some of your units may look a little funny fighting against, say an Archmage, or a Skeleton Archer, but I don't think you will have those in your campaign, so it doesn't matter.

I would reccomend however that you look at the Windsong Era. It has a number of... generically oriental looking units.
One more thing, your dragonball looking guys with spiky hair have these floating sphere things. They look ok, but I would do something about the shadows they cast (I mean the shpere things), somehow they don't look right to me. Perhpas even omit them?
-I may steal some of your sprites and turn them into something you will never recognise.
good luck.

[AtemTheLightning]

The Yohei's whip is all one colour, and looks flat.

[Dixie]

Ok for the spheres' shadows, I might remove them, they're not really essential. And I already looked at the windsong, I even picked up a few elements (rather: inspirations) from them. They use a lot of semi-transparent pixels, though, and I don't really master these. And wesnoth style... Even if I dearly wanted to, I'm not sure I could even be nearing the style. Actually, those are my best try by a long shot. Anyway, I mostly just want decent-looking, original (unique) sprites for my era, it ain't necessarily meant to be a showcase for my awesome spriting skills

The Yohei's whip is all one colour, and looks flat.

Well actually it's supposed to be a spinning nunchaku probably not as obvious if not animated, I guess... How can a whip be shaped like that, anyway? It's true that's it's not shaded much, though, I wasn't sure how to pull it off.

[Frogger5]

If it's an action line, it's probably best you don't shade it.

[Midnight_Carnival]

They use a lot of semi-transparent pixels, though, and I don't really master these. And wesnoth style... Even if I dearly wanted to, I'm not sure I could even be nearing the style. Actually, those are my best try by a long shot. Anyway, I mostly just want decent-looking, original (unique) sprites for my era, it ain't necessarily meant to be a showcase for my awesome spriting skills

I was not asking you to draw things that looked like windsong, nor was I telling you to make your sprites look more like the cannoincal Wesnoth sprites. But I would like to know which graphics program you're using, I have used Photoshop, but I prefer Gimp, however I have it on reasonably good authority that there is precious little to choose between the two. Using Gimp, controling the degree of transparency of pixels is really easy. Select areas you want to be transparent, cut them out, paste them on a new level and just pull the opacity bar, or whatever they call it from 100% to a lower value, around 60% is good for shadows, and I'd use 75-80% for areas which appear transparent due to vigorous movement (like parts of the spinning nunchaku). There are other ways of doing such things in the Gimp, and I'm sure there wouldn't be so many ongoing Gimp vs Photoshop wars if Photoshop could not do this or something similar...

But I thought your spinning nunchaku ninjas were ok.

As I have said, the beauty of Wesnoth is that as long as all your sprites are done in a similar style you don't need to worry how they look compared to sprites not included in your campaign.

[Dixie]

So I'd like to finish the ninja faction (at least a first version for all the units, anyway), and those last few ones are hard on me. I don't feel abusively inspired, either. Anyway, here's what I have: a somewhat cheap-looking rocket cart (it took me almost the whole afternoon just to do this, man!), a sumo and some more-or-less cheap franckensteins/paint-overs for the martial artist/monk/sensei (the original units were so cool, I couldn't get myself to draw something even a tenth as nice, so I opted for this solution)

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