The VG Resource

more like just lazy.

the reason I do discourage sprite edits(splices, recolors and all that shit)lies in this very thread: you do things following the sprite base, but you clearly have no idea what you are doing and why you should or shouldn't do it.

those thick outlines simply dont work on the sprite because the spirte itself its too small and the blakc outlines just "eat" the sprite(by eat i mean they hold such a huge contrast they end being too distracting, obliterating the rest of the colors and taking all the focus from the viewer.) they work on your reference because its size, and also because the color value used on that one makes it way more subtle and it does blend more accurately with the rest of the colors of the sprite.

but that its not important because you still need to fix the anatomy. it makes no sense to work around the palette right now because if the sprite's basic shapes arent set properly you'll just end skiping any steps you can't deal with for the sake of just "doing progress".

(12-22-2010, 04:11 PM)47948201 Wrote: [ -> ]@Tachikoma: Yeah, I know, but that wasn't much of a thing to look at for this. I'm not quite that incompetent, just busy.

Did you just read the first two pages or something? There's quite a lot there, and there's pages of semi-realistic figures towards the end - more importantly, it goes into how to establish form, which you need to apply to everything you will ever draw or sprite. Ever.

And, hey, there's nothing stopping you from looking at real people and using that to understand proportions, either. There's about 7 billion to choose from, so you've got a pretty broad reference pool.

There's no magic quick fix or tutorial that will instantly make you understand the proportions of a figure, or how to effectively stylise your work, or how to choose colours, or anything with art. You learn by working at it, and working at it procedurally. A lot. You work and work and work and work until your hands are malformed claws and then you keep going.

If you're not prepared to put in the hard graft and learn what you're doing, then give up. Give up right now. There's only so much that we can do to help if you can't be bothered to help yourself.

@Fuchikoma: Anatomy, yes, duly noted. I dunno what you guys do during Winter, but there's not a whole lot of time to do spriting 'round here. Hopefully That'll get better now that it's the 26th.

@Tachikoma: Nope, read the whole thing. With the drawing cubes and then rounding them out, right? Or was that something else...?

But hmm, it's interesting to be on this side of this conversation XP

Anyway, you're not getting rid of me quite that easily. The whole reason I came here is that I am willing to practice towards getting better--after all, if that wasn't the plan, I might as well have just gone and practiced on my own--but there are obviously going to be mistakes that I'll miss, and that's okay. That's why you can go back and do it again. I know there's no "magic quick fix", but I only see that as more of a reason to stick around. Besides, we all know the internet has enough bad art already.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm going to go see if I can't do something productive.

...All right, then, I'll admit I cheated a little for the skeleton here. I took a photograph and shrunk it down, then drew out where it made sense for the skeleton to be. Outlined, referring to the picture, and then did a few other things. I changed the shape of the head and added some little markings for where the elbows and knees.

The new style is a tad bigger than the previous one, but I figure that'll leave me more room for detail work-

If there are any glaring problems in anatomy or physics, now would be a good time to point them out, I suppose. I think the next step should be to give one color worth of shading to what I've got, adding clothes and facial details, then add stuff like clothes, then finish off the shading. How's that sounding?

Of course, if you guys think this post is basically made of complete rubbish, I'll take critique on that sort of stuff, too

EDIT: I just realized how hypocritical part of this post must sound given that I erased the boxes while making the outline XD

not to sound harsh on this, again, but how incompetent one has to be to not be able to draw a simple stick figure but instead take a photograph of a skeleton, resize it, trace it to make a simple stick figure.

its not about having it done, but actually tu understand why and how it has to be done.
wich means reading this link
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2080605/Figure-Drawing-Basics
wich was posted on the previous page. read that, it has a lot of info and explanations and you might learn stuff by reading it and get a basic idea of anatomy and how do stick figures(and therefore, skeletons) help you plan your character's presentation and development later on.

take your time, you're not in a hurry, we're all busy with our lifes but thats not an exucse to not do things properly.

Wow I can see you really paid a lot of time reading the tutorial I linked and paying attention to it
which is precisely why none of the limbs are jointed, you haven't bothered to establish the ribcage and its depth, and you haven't drawn the pelvis in, or established any sort of form whatsoever.

Read the link. Read it thoroughly and actually do the exercises. Like I said before (and Fuchikoma's saying, too); it's not just about drawing in a skeleton, it's about drawing in a skeleton that actually informs your later drawing and makes sense. There's no point taking the extra time to draw stick figures if it isn't actually doing anything to make you think about structure. Hell, for all I know you drew out that sprite and then just overlaid the "skeleton" onto it, because you're not paying attention to what the skeleton is actually for.

I think it's been made painstakingly clear how to improve here. I don't think the "I don't have enough time" excuse is ever gonna fly if you're spending time on a spriting board. The link that has been posted about figure drawing basics is extremely helpful and it's simply the best way of drawing accurate/believable poses. Even exaggerated characters have to follow the core principles of weight distribution and anatomy.

for example:

Notice how, despite their exaggerated proportions and messy linework, the two characters give a feeling of weight?

there are various ways that a person stands; regardless of their mood, gender, and overall body shape, they all distribute their weight. A study of anatomy will help one understand how the pieces of a person fit together, but without an understanding of weight distribution and the simple understanding of gravity, a well drawn/sprited structure of anatomically correct parts can suffer from a poor understanding of how the parts are effected by, and handle, gravity.

You and your work are all spliced up. At least your improving 47948201. Now let's see some shading on the body.

8675309.

[checked the rules and you cant warn for a bad post so yeah, continue -Fuchikoma]

Thought y'finally got rid of me, eh? Well, sorry to burst the multitude of bubbles that happen to be here, but...

The exercise DOES say I'm supposed to show these to people eventually, and I'd probably seem like such a hypocrite if I posted again without having something good...

Well, depending on your definition of good-
http://i.imgur.com/SN2H5.png
So yeah, this is what I've been doing in what spare time I've had. Not much to show, but I figured there wouldn't be a bad place to ask what people think the sticks are doing.

(On that note, I don't exactly see how having a life equates to being lazy, but I'll leave that one where it is)

Don't freehand so much, try to get better at pixelling your lines (this isn't in response to your stick figures but the doodles you posted earlier)

Well the doodles don't matter anymore, I guess. Maybe I'll keep the palettes (because I totally didn't just use MSPaint default colors for almost everything) but I may as well delete those files. The sticks are what matter now...

But I wonder... Should I be making smaller sticks? Like, so it's easier to avoid stuff like spaghetti-arm and double-foot?

No. What you need to do is take some more CARE in drawing your stick figures. Here are two stick figures in a fighting pose which I drew just now. One of them I took a few seconds drawing and wasn't paying attention to anatomy or anything such as that. The second took me about a minute (not much of a time difference), but takes into account limb joints, weight, pose and form. Now compare them. Which is a better pose model?

http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/1664/...arison.png


Oh, and by the way, yours look more like the first one. Even the ones with the body blocking on them look more like the first one because they don't take into account how the human body is structured or have any real point apart from having a rectangle drawn over the stickman. It means a lot more than that.

droppin' this atm so I can give C+C later



EDIT: yeah, the most impactant change I did on your sprite is anatomy. It's been explained several times now so I won't even tell what I did; just take a look and you should know, if you read the tutorials offered here.

Also, the hair has volume. The way you did her hair looked like it was black paint on her forehead; Making the hair a lil' more detached and not directly painted on skull really helps giving the character a better head shape.

The shading is another important thing; although I rushed it and only shaded a few parts, you can see that the shaded parts convey volume more than your attempt. Study it too.