Character Art

That tails reminded me of those deformed babies people post o.o

 

Making slow progress. It's still so much trial and error for me working in vector. But at least I'm learning. I'm sure it'll all click one day and then I'll be able to just churn stuff out .

Left, Vector; Middle, Concept; Right, Sprite:


Larger:

 

Sorry Vincent, edited the original post (a lot easier on the eyes!).

 

The beak is starting to look disturbingly realistic. You don't need to add that kind of details if they don't fit the cartoony nature of the artwork.

 

I think it looks cute.

 

I agree with this. It's just shaded well.

Sorry if this is a bother, but are there any freeware vector programs that aren't hard on resources?

edit: A little blended shading on the cucky picture might make it look a bit more like the other sprites, or at least adding the extra shades in between, and making that pinkish shade on it's white a little darker. It's hard to differentiate the whites of it's eyes with it's feather color, adding some of that lighter purple used in the darker areas of the picture around the rim of the eyes would help.

 

I was debating with myself over whether to keep it like that or not, but I decided it probably wouldn't be much of an issue when you can hardly see any detail at game size anyway (which doesn't bother me - it's good practice!). So I just decided to leave it and get on with the rest.

Yeah it's still got quite a bit of shading to do (all this for one frame heheh - still, I suppose the first is the most important)! I know the eye is quite hard to see at the moment. I haven't really given that part too much attention just yet, but I'll try to darken up the rim to separate it .

 

They're more fun than I thought they would be . It's like a whole different way of thinking compared to regular drawing. Okay, I'll see about the colour scheme once I'm happy with the shading. I was thinking everything looked a bit blueish and cold before, but that was probably more due to the fact it was bland and unshaded. So I'll change it back later.

 

Also, if it matters your version of the feet are a tad darker and less defined due to the lost contrast. And also, I would suggest also a few more steps to soften the shadows, particularly from the wing onto the tail, and the head onto the body. And the eye outline is missing. And so concludes my low-grazing nitpicking. Fix that, and along with the color scheme in general, and I feel that it would be promptly approved.

 

I think it's looking great so far! One thing that is bothering me is that there is a shadow on the top part of his back foot, instead of the bottom. Your lighting looks like it is coming from directly in front of the chicken, when really it should be coming from somewhere above where the camera would would be, up in the sky, if that makes any sense. Take a look at the lighting on other sprites to get a better idea.

 

I'm intending to add more steps to most of the shading. A lot of areas I haven't even begun to shade really. I've mainly been focusing on the head so far. Don't worry, I'll put more detail into it and soften it up .

Thanks! Ahhh I thought I might run into the lighting direction thing eventually. I wasn't really even thinking about it when I drew up the concept and I've just been basing my shading on that (whoops). The highlights would be the main problem right? I'll see what I can do about the shadow on the back foot.

 

You might also want to lighten up the tail, because until I looked at the sprite, I confused it with the opposite wing, and then add an opposite wing with the shades you're using now. I realize the sprites didn't originally show two wings, but I think it would look much better since we're able to do more detailed sprites.

Also, I did have a copy of Inkscape but it was outdated. Glad that was brought up because I completely forgot about it and it disappeared from the listings of programs. Thanks. (Google is shit for looking up programs, it wasn't like I asked without trying, I've been trying for months because my computer can't run Illustrator because it requires too much RAM.)

 

Adding the second wing could be an idea. I'll see how it looks.

 

Hope nobody minds, but I did a few things to the Tails example, if that counts as a mockup...



The obvious changes are his smile is cuter and the bands around his gloves aren't green anymore (They look green in most of his old art, but I think they're supposed to be black.) and his tailtip is straighter. Things you can't see on this format (because TinyPic won't take vector files :specialed are I got rid of some of the ten billion invisible / troublesome layers and somewhat fixed the stomach, but damn, are so many layers needed?

If I remember anything about using Illustrator, doesn't it have a mesh tool you can use for shading that doesn't require so many layers? It might make life easier. =P

 

The only thing I could say is that the tip of his ears still look a bit polygonal because of the sharp change in shade. Add a few more color steps all around and I think this tails frame may be ready!

 

I love that Tails chatacter art! His ears look kinda, well, odd. Maybe remove that little bevel thingy in his left ear, and add a tiny bit more color steps on his tails, shoes, head and body.

 

Actually, it's nowhere near ready... It looks great when you aren't working up-close, but it's severely unpolished, not to mention it's huge. Just trying to move around in my Inkscape window causes massive lag because of all the layers. I gave up trying to polish it after I saw what I had left to do. It's a great concept though since most will see it in bitmap form but it's probably going to save headaches just starting from scratch and following the concept as a reference than trying to make it workable.

Edit: By the way, that's not my drawing, it's the example art from the S2HD page, all I did was edit it a little bit and that's all.

I think I'll take a blind crack at the pecky since it hasn't been done yet, if nobody minds my meddling.

 

Volpino, glad to hear that you're looking for ways to contribute to the project I'd suggest taking a look at the current goals first though, as those are what we're looking to have done by June 1st.