Salis posted:

A monster from Earthbound but I can't quite remember if that's the right game.

Shoehead posted:

Let's all do trees!

Scut posted:

Shoehead your pieces seem to be solidly progressing but I feel like the oversize hands don't lend towards a balanced silhouette. I think they would be easier to exaggerate in a higher resolution, but when you are working in so few pixels that small increase of scale can really throw off proportions.

Scut posted:

And to contribute to the thread; a floaty platform and a laser trap.
I feel like I might revise the platform. It's supposed to have an energy field at the bottom but I think the overall feeling of weight is too high?

Salis posted:

Here's my first attempt at a tree. Obviously need practice. Plus I'm not sure if it matches the overrall style of the tiles in the game so far. But I'm open to critique / suggestions.

soapydishwater posted:

I think you can get rid of the bulkiness of the platforms by just cutting out the middle part and tacking the bottom back on, something like this-




I think your problems here are twofold- the form and shape of the tree and its leaves are not very well defined, and the shading doesn't give off any sort of depth and is very flat, because you have used only 3 colors.

What I mean by the first part is that it seems like, using your leaves for an example, you drew in a lumpy sort of circle as an outline, and then you tried to give it volume by drawing on top of the outline. This results in it looking flat, because your shading is shaped by the outline instead of vice versa. In addition, this makes it seem to me like you aren't sure where to put darker/lighter shades. Here's a visual example to show what I mean:



1. First, make some circles, or any simple shape really, in the general shape of your branches. Try to imagine them as spheres, clumping together and overlapping each other.

2. Fill them in with your middle hue or base color.

3. Smooth out the outlines of your shapes between each other to make them look more natural. You can also mess with going outside/inside the lines here, too.

4. Lower the transparency of your outline, and shade accordingly. Once again, imagine the circles as spheres clumped together, sometimes in front of or behind each other.

5. Clean up your outline (if you want it)

Now, you might notice that the end product is still pretty funny looking.

-One color for light and dark creates a very shiny and flat appearance.

-We stuck to our outline too much, so the different shapes stand out very obviously and made it look unnatural.

We can fix this by adding more colors in between the darkest color and the lightest color, and by making our original shapes less distinct and more connected to each other.

Obligatory picture:



So, what I did here was start with a flat middle color, and added darker and darker colors from the middle, and then lighter colors from the middle, all according to our outline. Then, I made the transitions between light and dark less uniform. Finally, using our base color, I added "bridges" between the original shapes and then redid the shading there in order to make it look more natural.

So, we end up with something that looks more tree like, by using more colors and shading in a less uniform way, and by using basic shapes to "build out" the final outline and shading, instead of making an outline first and working off of that.

I could get into the workings of picking colors and shades, but this post is already long enough. I hope this helps.

(Also, if you need anything clarified, go ahead and ask. When I write anything long it tends to turn into gobbledygook by the end )

Shoehead posted:

Let's all do trees!

the chaos engine posted:

Made a tiling background type thing I'm super happy with though!



The wooden beams are WIP, I'm not pleased with the highlights but without them they look really flat and if I do them uninterrupted it looks really shiny.

the chaos engine posted:

soapydishwater posted:

Try knots or irregularities in the wood?

quiggy posted:

I dunno, I like this one. Looks very Dr. Seussish.

Orzo posted:

chaos engine...are you working on a game these days?

Shoehead posted:

Old hand/new hand. Whaddya think?

Scut posted:

That's a real improvement in my opinion. How do you feel about the change?

Here are a few more tweaks I would make:


I tried adjusting the hand ever so slightly to make it appear a little more canted towards the viewer, as well as introducing some shadow into the crook of the arm so that the pose appears more natural. I made a slight change to the foot to make it less puffy.

I know the black outline is a whole other element that you might not feel comfortable with messing with at this stage, but I wanted to illustrate how varying the darkness of that outline can give all sorts of methods for adding shadow and character to form without actually altering the outline.

Red Mike posted:

And yes, tree-talk in here is what got me to draw trees, and following the earlier guide badly got me that humongous ms-paint-circle tree.

Clockwork Cupcake posted:

Digital Fingers posted:

I think we should do more "Lets all make a _____". We're all learning so much about trees.
I felt like I was cheating with my first "tree" so I did good sized cherry blossom.

But first bottles:

And I hate them all- expect the little black one.

Lets try again:

And again the black one is the only one I kinda like. I'll just come back to this a little later when I stop hating bottles so much.

Tree:



I started with ovals but quickly had to edit them down to almost nothing since these types of trees really don't have a lot of roundness or much of a "full" look to them. Looking at it now it's too thin and I should have had a layer of darker foliage behind it.

I've got to practice some normal style trees. Blossoms are bullshit.

soapydishwater posted:

I think you can get rid of the bulkiness of the platforms by just cutting out the middle part and tacking the bottom back on, something like this-

DicktheCat posted:

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but his legs are a little wonky. I think it's the right foot that's making it look a little strange, maybe turning it to be a little more forward would fix the issue? Otherwise, aside from being an incredibly uncomfortable-looking way to stand, it's okay.

It's a pretty nice character as far as design and stylization goes. His hair and wraps would be really pretty in motion, if a bitch to animate.

E: his shadow. It's too uniformly dithered. Also just being black-and white make 'em boggle my eyes. Add a few shades of grey, and make it more sparse near the edges/heavier right under him. His other shadows-the ones directly on him, look pretty good to my eyes, but I know a lot less than most folks in this thread.

Robohobobro posted:

Thanks for the tree tutorial, that's great stuff! I oughta give it a go one o' these days.

I did another larger sprite:



Feedback and such greatly welcomed, mostly technique-wise: shading is still something of an unclear area for me.

.TakaM posted:

AntiPseudonym posted:

Your animation is always so smooth.

Robohobobro posted:

Did some tweaking with the sprite. I tried turning both of the legs inward a bit, it still feels kiiiinda off but I think it's at least an improvement. Did some minor cosmetic tweaks too. I probably won't try animating this just yet, I should probably start out with simpler sprites, since I have zero experience with animating sprites and such.

.TakaM posted:

Thanks dude, I think it's really important for a swimming animation to look smooth and to not have it suddenly jump when changing directions etc.
Finished his upwards swimming today

I should have his downward swimming finished tomorrow. We're gonna have the engine rotate the sprites when changing between directions so you don't have to wait for the animation to finish before a manually made transition can happen.

korusan posted:

I need a bit of help working out the perspective and lighting/shading on this:



It's for a title screen so I want it to look as good as possible using the colours I limited myself to. The left arm looks wonky to me, like it's too long or something. Something seems off. Can anybody help me or show me what I'm doing wrong?

korusan posted:

Did a bit of pose rework. Trying to do shading and figuring up how to cover up the fact that he doesn't...really have legs. Thanks soapydishwater, is this an improvement?

.TakaM posted:

Thanks dude, I think it's really important for a swimming animation to look smooth and to not have it suddenly jump when changing directions etc.
Finished his upwards swimming today

I should have his downward swimming finished tomorrow. We're gonna have the engine rotate the sprites when changing between directions so you don't have to wait for the animation to finish before a manually made transition can happen.

Chipp Zanuff posted:

Anyone got any tutorials for creating human sprites? I'm having difficulty getting a decent human body and any tutorials linked would be welcome.

systran posted:

This is great animation but I have an issue with how fat the black line gets when he is at the most erect part of his pose. It's especially noticeable when you watch the smaller thumbnail; you see a big black line suddenly appear and it pulls the eye straight toward it. I would soften up the outline or at least modify the pose so that this doesn't happen.