The VG Resource

This is my barbarian caveman guy:


I'm messing around trying to shade him



Your opinions I value on this topic, master jedi's.

Edit:
He kinda had boobies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_anatomy

Learn it.

.... This is the sprite form result of practicing it for a little, actually.

What exactly is off, because I figured some proportion exaggeration was okay in sprites?

There isn't just exaggeration here, it's just plain wrong.

Arms do not connect half way down your chest, people have shoulders, legs do not work that way, feet are not that small and/or hands are not that big. Even if you want to exaggerate proportions, you should at least keep it roughly similar to human. It's very hard to successfully exaggerate without making it look awkward and wrong, and even if you try, you need to keep it consistent (for example, you have exaggerated hands, but very small feet, making your sprite look unbalanced. It is possible to pull this off, but it's much more difficult and it needs to be a LOT more obvious. For this style, you want to exaggerate extremities if anything at all, which means big hands AND big feet). I recommend starting with something closer to actual human proportions, then moving to exaggeration when you get a little better.

Ah, tell me more about this caveman, Altrez.

Why is he posing this way? Why does he have these proportions?

He reminds me of Rahan.

I've actually never heard of Rahan, but he does look like him.

I wanted to practice some sprite sized anatomy and a goofy roaring caveman or barbarian was the first thing that came to mind.

Anyway I have some stuff to do today, but tomorrow I'll be sketching out arms, shoulders and other things Hoeloe mentioned from refs, and then I'll apply it and update him.

I made an edit for his anatomy:

I brought his shoulders more or less level with his head, tried to break the symmetry, etc.
I gave him a silly expression, but if you want to give the impression he's roaring, remember that it's not only his mouth that changes in the process.
Oh and I added an SD version: the bigger, the more important the element is to the expressivity of the sprite, take Touhou for example.

Changed his face, added big shoulders, forearms closer/longer, chest higher, bigger torso, new legs, changed hands and feet.

Going to tinker with this more, thoughts always appreciated.

you could consider giving it a hip so his legs would not look like two random tentacles coming out of his torso.

?

Trying to make some better fingalings too.

the leg placement is totally awkward. If I was going to scare someone with my arms raised, I wouldn't be with my legs straight, with one foot pointing the victim and another sideways.

New leg pose, different feet.

I think that his body is too thin at his six-pack, it's almost looking girly. Notice how Chris' example isn't thin at that point.

also one thing you need to consider is sprite depth. For example, when making that pose, people will hunch their back a little, lunging his arms and head forward. This makes his stomach behind them, so the chest will cast a shadow on his stomach (that is, his stomach will be darker due to beng behind the man's own body). His legs look better, but arch them a little more and make it so it looks like he's taking a step forward (one leg is in front of another). You will have to redraw some of his legs and the back one needs to be shaded a little more stronger due to being behind.