[Help] How to make Water/Ice/Bubble Effects?

[Midday-Mew]

How do I sprite water/ice/bubble effects? Like, how do I shade a bubble, or sprite a bubble being popped, or draw/sprite water effects, or draw/sprite ice effects? I don't get it....I see people make awesome artworks of water/ice/bubble effects all the time and I've never been able to figure it out. Fire effects I understand, same with electricity. Clouds aren't hard to make for me (though I only know how to do cumulus or cumulonimbus clouds....) and I sort of understand how to make tornados (kinda, but I'm still rough on that), though how to do wind escapes me, so I guess I don't have the air element downpat... Though admittedly I can't sprite rock or stone that well, same with sand, so the earth element is hard for me to figure out too...How do I sprite those things?

The issue here is that I don't want to "steal" other people's styles of making water/ice/bubble effects, I want to make my own style of it. But I don't know how to do it without copying what other people have done. Which is "stealing" their styles, isn't it? It's not going to teach me anything.

And the style I want to go for is a cartoony one.

Help?

Here are some samples of what I've done with water/ice/bubble effects. Look how horrid they look, and how much more work I need to put into them.

Ice:



I've never done effects that look like "ice energy radiating off of ______". I also haven't figured out how to properly do "_______ frozen in ice" or even "ice crystals".

Water:

This one isn't a sprite, but....it's old, I guess? Probably goes as far back as 2007. Maybe 2010? Definitely no later than that. ....And looking it up, it dates back to early 2010.


Only thing I did that was water, unless bubbles count. I tried to do rain at a grassy field...Yeah, I can't do grass either. I was trying to follow a tutorial for rain and....that didn't work out. If the VGR staff/mods/admins want me to remove this pic because it isn't a sprite, I shall.

I also can't figure out how to do stuff like water splashes, geysers, waterfalls, water currents, etc.

Bubbles:

Here's the latest I've done with bubbles....



If these images aren't large enough to properly view, just let me know and I'll enlarge them.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

There are many ways to convey water, ice and bubble effects. The sprites you're thinking of most likely succeed for different reasons, so your question is actually extremely vast.

My advice is that you search for what ice looks like for example, how it's formed, and how it affects various materials. From there you'll understand the basic ideas behind ice, and you'll be able to work on how to stylize it - as in, which aspects of ice you will keep to effectively represent ice. Drawing studies of ice in those regards will help you with spriting.

You could always imitate an exisiting sprite's style, which will help you understand more the style rather than the ice/water/bubble. This is the way to go if you want to emulate a look which you like.

[Midday-Mew]

There are many ways to convey water, ice and bubble effects. The sprites you're thinking of most likely succeed for different reasons, so your question is actually extremely vast.

My advice is that you search for what ice looks like for example, how it's formed, and how it affects various materials. From there you'll understand the basic ideas behind ice, and you'll be able to work on how to stylize it - as in, which aspects of ice you will keep to effectively represent ice. Drawing studies of ice in those regards will help you with spriting.

You could always imitate an exisiting sprite's style, which will help you understand more the style rather than the ice/water/bubble. This is the way to go if you want to emulate a look which you like.

One issue. I live in a place where ice does not naturally occur, in fact, manmade ice melts pretty quickly no matter what time of the year it is....I live in Florida. So doing real-life studies of ice would require me to, like, take a vacation to some cold climate or something. Unless you expect me to stay inside a room-sized freezer? -imagines self wearing clothes like the Ice Climbers, heh-

Any other ideas? Normally the best way to go would be to use real-life examples, but here-in lies the problem: I have vision issues in that I don't have a complete range of vision. I have holes in my vision. Not to mention that the popping of a bubble and water effects happen too fast for me to observe properly to even get a good idea of how it looks. (I suppose if I had a slow-motion camera, I could film it...Hm....I wonder if a certain older brother of mine has one....)

I would try watching documentaries, but....I dunno how well that'd work out. Would that work as a substitute? If I were to do that, the main issue I'd face is inconsistent lighting when trying to mimic the shading. I guess the main issue I have is with anything involving simulated partial transparency, I guess.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

You could look for pictures or short videos of these phenomena, and compare them to how people draw them too. That way you could work out what makes ice icy, bubbles bubbly, water watery