Hieros Gamos, Fakemon and More

[water dog]

There are obviously Pokemon that are meant to NOT be organic. And even at that point they shift the paradigm to the point that nothing looks organic. gear - gigigear breaks the mold becuase of it's eyes but i'd say that's where that all stops. probopass has a mustache but it's actually magnetic shavings under his nose.

if you are wanting to go in the direction of a completely inorganic pokemon, then it also can't be based off a constructed item. inorganic pokemon come form man made items, obviously, but i doubt that a whole entire zepplin, roughly the size of my house, could morph into a straight up pokemon.

i can understand your steampunk theme but what it looks more like to me is a "gag" pokemon. try to integrate your theme into the design more.

another thing, the crits here are fine, we are pointing you in the right direction, it's your job -- not ours -- to fix it with the new perspective

[megaMasquerain]

Okay so considering all the shit I've gotten for calling these fakemon I've invented my own game world for them to inhabit. This also means I can design stuff that's more complex and crap.
I'll have something coming up soon but for now.. well, have nothing.

EDIT: actually have this edit of an old "fakemon"



And munky, see, the kind of crit you gave was useful. shit like "THESE AIN'T POKEMON" isn't. But whatever, at this point that's just beating a dead horse.

[Gwen]

We all have given solid critique, don't even go there, that's just immature man. :/

[megaMasquerain]

We all have given solid critique, don't even go there, that's just immature man. :/

I was mostly commenting on Fuchikoma's last post. Wasn't trying to imply anything about anyone else.

[Delicious]

Why must everything be pokemon related to you? You're a good enough artist to just move on from that and create your own stuff, rather calling everything a fakemon... Don't you think?

Anyways, the whole "my own game world" idea sounds like a step in the right direction.

[Neslug]

Just as Delicious said, the most major gripe people have had with your sprites is not that they're drawn poorly, it's because you insist on calling them fakemon. There's a certain unwritten rule that if you call them fakemon you are also expected to imitate Gamefreak's designs and characterization believably. If you're not, then what is the point? You might as well call them Cartoony Monsters or something. There'll also be less arguing over the designs because you're not promising to deliver something everyone has a different vision of. It is very difficult to imitate the style, that's why I think there are so few good fakemon artists out there.

[Chutzpar]

Something that you're missing in general - but also with regards to making them look like pokémon - is a good sense of shape.

Shape in character design is a bit of a bugger, because it is RIDICULOUSLY important for creating appealing characters, but it's a bit difficult to explain. The main thing to keep in mind is keeping a striking silhouette that isn't too "busy" and is distinctive. Good examples of that are early Disney (less so the more they produce, it seems), Team Fortress 2 (VERY MUCH SO) and, happily enough for you, Pokémon.

Remember those "Who's that Pokémon" things from the show? It wasn't just youthful obsessiveness that made them easy to identify, it was good silhouette design.

So, first, the easy part, is making sure anything you design has a strong, distinctive shape. There's a nice example here, from Aladdin that hopefully illustrates what I mean about distinctive shapes.
And here's a very nice article on CGSociety about general design ideas from Team Fortress 2 - the second page is what mostly focuses on the idea of character silhouettes, so if you're not interested in more general game design, skip there.

As regards getting the shape to look 'right' as a Pokémon, that's a little trickier. I honestly don't know what to suggest, beyond just studying the silhouettes of existing pokemon, and also trying to look at the shapes that they're constructed from. Break them down into simpler shapes, and look at how those shapes are used to construct the characters, and how the relative weights and proportions of each shape used are designed.

Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure a lot of the Pokémon designs actually take hints from classic cartoons like The Looney Toons and old Disney- unlike the human characters in the shows/games, the monsters have a really, really strong sense of shape and construction that makes each one look distinctive.

That said, I'm going to echo what others have said here and question why you're so stuck on fakemon. These work really well as more general monster designs, why get hung up on them being fakemon at all?

---

Although even if you DO ditch the fakemon thing
STILL READ WHAT I POSTED ABOUT SILHOUETTES. It is important regardless of what kind of character you're designing.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

emma.

i like some of your work, i like your experiments with colour and design. i think other people do too, and for this reason they are giving you attention and criticism. if what we're saying frustrates or annoys you, take a breath. if you've had almost three pages of arguing over what's pokémon and what isn't, it's because there a quite a few members here who have some experience in that domain (unfortunately i'm not so welp) and who are ready to share their knowledge. it's a shame that you take what they do badly, really.
i want to see you progress, i don't want you giving up on doing human anatomy or fakemons, but on the contrary, carry on. it's not because you can't manage to do something that you have to stop, you have to find the motivation to continue until you succeed.
an underlying issue in your work is the banding which is created in narrow areas, where you try to hug too many shades next to each other. another is the shape of the shading itself. anyway i'll illustrate what i'm trying to tell you in an edit soon, until then, keep posting!

[megaMasquerain]

Okay so people seem to think I was being sarcastic with my last post, I'm not!

A lot of my friends think branching off from Pokemon is a good idea and I do as well. I was afraid I wouldn't get a lot of recognition or have places to post my work but I figure I have here, PJ, Pixelation, game dev communities and such, so there's really no shortage of places to post.

I'm creating my own idea for a game called Hieros Gamos that's heavily based off of the old Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 and 2 and steeped in alchemy lore. Regardless of whether the "game" gets made of not, hey, I'm free from the constrains of Pokemon design.

Tachikoma, what you said is really interesting - so I should silhouette my monsters and try to make them appealing/recognizable?

Chris2Balls, do I know you? I'm fine with people calling me by my name but I don't get people who I've apparently just met doing so usually!


As a note to everyone here: I get frustrated a lot with critique and sometimes it's hard for me to take it. But I appreciate the time and effort you're putting into helping me get better. Really I do! It was your inspiration that got me to drop the fakemon label and for that I'm grateful.

[Chutzpar]

Yeah, working in silhouette is a very good idea! You might want to start with doing loose sketches or something (pixelled or with a pencil, whatever works) to get a rough idea of shape, then work in silhouette.
Ordinarily I'd say "work small when you're silhouetting", but I guess that's a little redundant when we're talking about sprites anyway :V

Once you've got a silhouette down you can start blocking in basic colours, again keeping it fairly loose and tightening it up / refining it once you've got the basic shapes of each colour settled.

Eventually you probably won't have to work in silhouette very often because your sense of shape will just naturally get stronger. Just make sure you revisit the method every now and then to re-establish it in your brain C:

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

no, we don't know each other, but i thought calling you by your name might make a difference.
i'd like to hear more of this project of yours!

[megaMasquerain]

Tachikoma, working in silhouette is actually a nice breather from my normal modus operati. I sketched out a monster design, made a silhouette version and a "colored silhouette" out of the original sketch lines.

Sketch, Silhouette, Colored Silhouette in that order


From the silhouette I can already see a few small issues (position of the front legs, our right side of the mane) but I wanted to see what you guys thought.

(Before anyone asks, it's a manticore.)

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

as you can tell from the silhouette, it still lacks definition, as in some things are still rather blob-like.

[megaMasquerain]

Had to thin the neck down a bit, as well. Still some errors especially in the fur.

[megaMasquerain]

Sorry for the double post but I have some new stuff!


Decided to take a crack at a backsprite. The anatomy is probably totally wonky even in silhouette form.

And here's a heavy WIP mockup of what Hieros Gamos' battle screen would look like:


Bassicore's silhouette has been smoothed out in the mockup, so it's different than the one above this post.

This is my first time doing a mockup so critique is especially important!

EDIT: Fixed the HUD with some critique from a friend