Paper Mario animations

[captainkakarot64]

This looks much better now

[E-Man]

Glad I got it right! How about this one then? As expected, the original is on the left.

[captainkakarot64]

This is also a good improvement

[E-Man]

Glad I'm on the right track! Anyway, I just finished the corrected shading for the head.



By the way, what I'm going to describe is very important because it determines whether or not I have a lot of work cut out for me. You see, when I did my stream today, Kosheh (or at least some guy posing has him who may or my not be Helmo) said I needed to give the hair highlight more hue shifting. I gave it a try, but I'm not happy with the results. Not only does it promise me a lot more work recoloring those bits (the recoloring itself isn't hard, but locating all the countless layers over multiple files for both Mario and Luigi is), but I find the highlight popping out like that very distracting to the eye. You think I should go with it, or keep it as it is?

[Kosheh]

before continuing,

You see, when I did my stream today, Kosheh (or at least some guy posing has him who may or my not be Helmo)

can confirm it's not me. I'm playing Fantasy Life right now and not watchign a stream lol. Is it "Kosheh the Great" again? That guy who keeps "pretending to be me"?

Glad I'm on the right track! Anyway, I just finished the corrected shading for the head.



By the way, what I'm going to describe is very important because it determines whether or not I have a lot of work cut out for me or not.

You do realize this invalidates the entire paragraph, and says "Well, it's important because if he's right then I have to do a lot of work and I don't like doing a lot of work"

This thing's your baby - if it turns out that this hueshifting is the bee's knees, then you'll no doubt HAVE to edit all of the Luigi sprites (and probably Mario) to match and you shouldn't feel that bad about it 'cos once you finish it, the end product (your animation series) will look much, much better as a result (which...truthfully isn't even all that bad. You're using Photoshop, just use "Match Color" or "Replace Color" on each layer and repeat it on each layer)

Which, by the way, I do like the newer left "hueshifted" hair color. It's a little more "radiant" and gives it a bit of a unique, stylistic glow

[E-Man]

Yes, it was Kosheh the Great again. Since I know you have a habit of teasing a little bit, my first assumption was that you used the screen name for laughs. Over time, though, my other viewers and I were a little less certain. Thanks for confirming that it wasn't you.


As for the other bit, I didn't mean for my original post to sound that way to you. To be honest, I don't mind doing long, hard work (otherwise, I wouldn't even be doing a tedious animation project). It's just that I'm concerned about the idea of using the time I would be using to create more characters on the tedious process of correcting a detail that might actually make the sheet look worse. Since it was pretty much unanimous that the hair looks better with the changed highlight, I was willing to pull it off.



Mario is next.

[Filler]

Luigi's eyes are too short, along with his nose being too big, makes up for a cramped face. Also, his feet are placed too inside his body.

[E-Man]

I don't know about the feet or the eyes, but the nose is the result of the critiques given to me by Virt. Since he's a good artist, I have good confidence that it is fine as it is.

[Filler]

This was the only proper Luigi pic I found. Notice how is face is less cramped, and that his legs are semi-disconnected? A-lot of people using the PM rigs don't do this for some reason.

[E-Man]

I think I see what you mean. The thing is, though, a big part of this project is to try to recreate these characters without actually tracing them. Otherwise, I would have just use the actual sprite rips instead (with maybe some touchups).

As for that bit about the feet, it is to avoid that awkward space between the torso and the back part of the front foot.



See what I mean?

[E-Man]

There we go! I gave Mario his new hair highlights. Do you like them?

[E-Man]

From the lack of any additional comments, I take it that both Paper Mario and Luigi are fine and I have nothing to worry about! Now then, it's time to move onto the Koopas. Before I make any major progress though, how about reviewing what I have to make sure nothing looks too bad in terms of the shape of the parts and the colors?



Also, I'd like to draw your attention to this. The Koopa on the bottom left has the bottom of the neck is alined in a way that hides that little black space that was originally between the neck and the color. As for the head on the bottom right, the pupils are arranged differently to make the eyes look less cross-eyed. Do you like these variations better?

[E-Man]

To pass the time for any feedback on what I have so far for my Koopas, I went ahead with the first bit of progress for my Goomba characters.



I know the base sketch is very messy and hardly looks like that final product, but it's all part of kicking the habit of broken scratching. Plus, if I don't end up redrawing it, I will clean it up. By the way, I wasn't too happy with the size of the Goomba sketch on the left because it looks a bit too big in my taste. To me, I always imagined Goombas to be slightly larger than the size of an average house cat, so the one on the right is closer to the scale I have in mind. As for the red arrow you see near a set of colors, it is pointing out the same color but the top set has all its darker values desaturated, while the ones in the bottom set are saturated. Which ones should I use? Also, in case you're wondering, the color bubble on the way bottom is meant to be an alternate outline for the saturated set, but the only difference is that I desaturated it instead.

What are your thoughts on all this?

[E-Man]

I want to wait on any additional feedback regarding the size before I make any new progress on the Goomba, so I made some new Koopa progress in the meantime.



I haven't started on any new parts for the Koopa yet, but I did sketch out parts for two different Koopa characters (Parakarry and Dry Bones) and the enemy variation of a Koopa Troopa in the Paper Mario games (the variation with the cool shades). How did I do on those rough sketches? By the way, you know when I was asking about the neck and the eyes? Well, "Kosheh" told me that the alternate neck placement is good, while I can leave the pupils as they are since he liked how they looked "doofy."

Oh! Also, you see how I made a red sketch curve over the beak of the Koopa? I was thinking of making a variation to show a frown since the normal one is perfect if the Koop is happy. How about it?

[Filler]

The nose holes on the Koopa's beak are too far up.

Just take a look at the PM 64 Koopea.



The beak is also incorrect. It's a curved inwards line on PM64. Here, it's a curved outwards.