Hey, that very last one is looking better, mouth and all. Perhaps he should be a little fatter, though. Here's a fast and crude attempt at "fixing" some stuff: -Sligthy bigger belly. -Sligthly bigger muzzle. -Different position for the mouth. -Sligthly higher ear. -Just made the back of his head a bit smaller as well. -Also cleared the lower part of his eye a little, so it's not as noticeable and the eye looks a little bigger.
The 'fat' tails look doesn't help the piece much from where I'm standing; it's getting to the point where it resembles a bib. What Sciz did with the mouth is a keeper for sure. Great job picking up on that. I'm massively grateful that we have so many original Sonic experts on hand. At this point it's becoming difficult for me to spot the nuances from edit to edit, but you guys have done a fine job with it. Keep up the good work.
And there are no other ways for me to improve Tails art at this fast pace. Editing the vectors is now getting REALLY difficult due the size of the edits, (we are talking of alpha blended sigle pixels here) so please don't forget to specify ALL the details you changed, you'll save me many headaches! ^^
<!--quoteo(post=255561:date=Dec 11 2008, 10:20 PM:name=ICEknight)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ICEknight @ Dec 11 2008, 10:20 PM) -Sligthy bigger belly. -Sligthly bigger muzzle. -Different position for the mouth. -Sligthly higher ear. -Just made the back of his head a bit smaller as well. -Also cleared the lower part of his eye a little, so it's not as noticeable and the eye looks a little bigger.[/quote] ICEKnight, what have you done to poor Tails? Normally I *love* the changes you changes you make to the characters, but at this moment you've made Tails look obese - not 'cuddly' Could you please reduce his belly size to a more proportionate level, and his mouth back to what it was--- actually, could you just please remove all of those "improvements" to Tails altogether. Let me explain why.... I can understand the reason behind what you suggested, but the already artistically-altered Tails look makes his head look the wrong shape. His eye's 'area' is already taller than the sprite's, and moving Tails' ears upwards - coupled with making his muzzle larger AND the increased stomach - alters the proportions of his head & body to make it look like a kid that's just swallowed 10 bars of chocolate!
Expert? Nah, I do all of my research on the fly. All it takes is an eye for the fine details and a grasp on the fundamentals of art, which can be largely boiled down to time and public schooling, respectively. ;p If anyone around here can recreate our tiny raster changes in vectors, you're the one. I'm just now starting to play around with Illustrator, so I can only imagine what work it is to create a sprite like this from scratch, and then tweak every part and node at the whims of the board.
<!--quoteo(post=255614:date=Dec 11 2008, 07:37 PM:name=The Growler)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (The Growler @ Dec 11 2008, 07:37 PM) </a> [/quote]Do the mouth, belly, etc look wrong to you?
I prefer ICEknight's Tails, I know people are saying hes fat, but he is a chubby character, who I think up to this point was made in the vectors as being too thin.
Let's not forget this small detail of the skull (always present on Tails artworks and being edited out). Tails is such a cute character and we must consider all the original design options! ^^ Once the framing actually starts, it gets really hard to change. P.s. Just noticed that the left ear cannot be like I've drawn in the first place! It needs to be turned inwards a little and show more left ear border. (as in the original sprite) Working on it as we speak, please continue to discuss. EDIT: *Colors adjustment on shadowed parts will be put later!*
Whoops. I didn't actually mean to leave that edited on my revisions, just forgot to take it back out. That S-shape is there in a lot of the official art, but none of the in-game art or concept art, which is what I based my revisions on. Leave it in if you want, but it still seems a little odd. -The new ear is good, though it could use another shade of color to keep the stepping from being so obvious. -Drop the mouth by just one more pixel; the horizontal alignment is good but it still feels just a hair too high. -The shoes are still a little large, and the entire head still needs to move down and back just a little, as per my last edit.
I'm sure you all already have these images so I don't know why I'm doing this but it might help somebody somewhere. According to the official illustrations Tail's mouth always ends around the same place under the eye and around the middle of the face...part... But then again the official art always looked a bit different from the actual sprites, so I don't even know if official art would even be relevant to go by.
Took me a while to figure out just what you'd changed. The structure is good, it's pretty much just small alignment issues at this point. -Red line: The pupils have been like this forever and I just now noticed it, but they're not quite at the same height. His ears are a little off now too, but I don't know that it can be fixed without introducing other problems at this point. -Green lines: Moving his head down slightly was good, but it's still a little off center. If you compare where it should be relative to his shoes and chest, the HD version doesn't match up. -Blue line: The shoes are too big. In this image, it looks like they line up perfectly. But that shouldn't be the case, since his hair is too far forward in the first place. Work out where his head should be, and it'll be trivial to tell what size his shoes should be as well. Or you could just post the source .ai file, I've got plenty of time to waste on working out minuscule edits. ;p
Nice work with the ear! It's really getting there, little by little. That's actually what we're going by, now. The original sprite is less relevant since its proportions were a bit off. It won't look like in the artwork, then. However it might need to be put a little more forward. Open both in a browser, one after another, then press the "Back" and "Forward" buttons repeatedly...
Critiques: Shadow under the ear very iregular Gray shadowing on Tail Color Stepped You could use the white colors of the title screen The white fur inside the ear has color stepped shadowing Shoes should be at least 3 pixel smaller in height Tails should be a bit shorter The eyes could be a bit bigger The perspective used on the farther ear is not good The rest is nice for me.
I've almost finished the last Uber Sonic walking frame, so decided to post publically the source Tails Illustrator file for anyone to experiment any further.
But... The sprite is what was actually in the game. It's the thing that people have played with for 16 years. I can't get this logic. If we're going mainly by cover art and ignoring sprites, then Sonic is the wrong colour, and his spikes are different, and Eggman should, it seems, have a beard. Also, the Emerald Hill boss will have a spike rather than a drill.
