[WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

All development of pixel art, maps and other graphics.


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AxlTrozz
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[WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by AxlTrozz »

Well I'll try myself to see if I can come out at least with an idea that anyone can improve of feel challenged to do it themselves.
I'll take as a base DaVinci human body concept.
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Rotonen
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by Rotonen »

That'd be grossly out of perspective as is and if we want lower armor to be visible we probably have to blow legs out of proportion somehow. I am in any case very interested to see what comes out of it.
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by AxlTrozz »

well I'm not going to complicate too much the things, just take the picture, outline and apply perspective on Gimp and see what it comes out. ;)

1. outline :Image
2. reduce and change arms : Image
3. perspective (not perfect because looks crazy with 45 deg) : Image I just retouch the chest to give more perspective.
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by Crush »

Do you really want to go for a realistic look? I doubt that this will work out well.
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by AxlTrozz »

hmm, I don't know, I'm just trying to help, nobody has any other idea/proposal, my idea is basically start with something I couldn't find any other basic reference to start with.
If you read my post I'm offering doing something because that in general that can call others to do it better or use the base and do it themselves, sometimes things works good sometimes they even take what I've done and use it, so I'm just testing, trying to motivate good artist to participate.
Please Crush if you have any idea or base I can use please post it so we can work with that, I'll try to help as much as possible and I need something to start with.

also I'll try to find another type of reference to start with I'll post it if I find something
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by IvanMorve »

Hi,
Axl, if you are going to draw a realistic playerset, maybe that will help:
http://www.posemaniacs.com/

45° human body:
http://www.posemaniacs.com/?p=601 (load slowly)
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by Crush »

I would rather suggest to continue with using console RPGs of the 90s as main inspiration and go for more animesque proportions.

This has the advantage that you can give the player characters a real face.

When you have a 64px high character with realistic proportions, you end up with 8x8 px for the head. When you also have realistic face proportions, you can display eyes and mouth with just a single pixel each. Not enough to make the face one bit expressive.

When you use more cartoonish proportions, on the other hand, you can use much more canvas for the face. Depending on how much you go into the realm of "chibi", you can double to quadruple the width and height yielding a lot more real estate for face design. Also ditching "realistic" face proportions in favor of increasing the size of the most expressive parts of the face (eyes, eyebrows, mouth) allows you to create faces which are much more expressive and make it easier for the player to identify him/herself with the characters.

The disadvantage of making the head over-proportionally large is that body armor becomes less visible. But this could also be an advantage considering that it saves work and allows to cut some corners unpunished when creating equipment sprites.
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Re: [WIP] Playerset - CR1 - NEEDS HELP

Post by Crush »

A few examples from commercial sprite-based games which show how different ratios between head and body look:

1/8 Head - (Diablo):
diablo_screenshot123xx4.jpg
diablo_screenshot123xx4.jpg (93.49 KiB) Viewed 4949 times
This is a screenshot of characters in our scale with realistic proportions. Look at the faces. Are they happy? Sad? Angry? Afraid? The few pixels left for the faces unfortunately don't allow to give them any expression. While the artwork is definitely very professional, the character sprites themselves just lack soul. This makes it hard for the players to identify themselves with their character or relate to the characters of others.

1/4 Head - (Ragnarok):
RagnarokOnline-screenshot.jpg
RagnarokOnline-screenshot.jpg (57.9 KiB) Viewed 4954 times
The heads are two times as large as they should be from the realists point of view, but in my opinion this is the minimum head size you can get away with in this scale and still have some facial expression. The faces are expressive, but the artist had to rely only on the eyes to achieve this. There just wasn't space for a mouth anymore. The artist literally used every single pixel he had.

1/3 Head - (Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu):
Luminary_screenshot_05.jpg
Luminary_screenshot_05.jpg (268.62 KiB) Viewed 4948 times
The proportions of the characters look quite bobble-head like, but note how expressive the faces are. The level of detail of the faces is much higher than Ragnarok. You can see eye color, nose and the mouth shape. And this with face proportions which are quite realistic and not overly animesque. By the way: this is exactly the perspective we are going for.

1/2 Head - Maple Story
maple_smaller1.jpg
maple_smaller1.jpg (131.39 KiB) Viewed 4953 times
While the faces are indeed very expressive here, I believe that the maple story artists went a bit too far. The head is just dominating the characters too much and degrades the body equipment to accessory (This effect would be even stronger when they would show the characters from a 45° perspective and not head-on).
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by AxlTrozz »

Is really hard to balance the shape, I'm trying to get a decent starting point, so far I have this stupid draw :mrgreen: , Image

P.D. I confess took me 2 hours to put those lines together and still not even close to what I'm looking for, but as you can see I'm trying to get enough space for a expressive face, hopefully this will go in the right direction.
Perspective will never be perfect for aesthetic purposes (I think)
Should I try a bigger head ?
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by Rotonen »

As IvanMorve pointed out, we are enforcing perspective consistency with TMW-CR projects. That also includes playerset and monsterset work.

As for the visual style to be chosen here: going for a 90's console RPG pure pixel art animesque look would only add insult to injury here with our chosen tileset approach.

The point about how realistic proportions make equipmentset work pure hell in the future is also valid, which makes this one a tough one to balance. We can and should take our time here, prototyping and outlining: this will set a lot of things into stone when locked.

The cartoonish proportions from the latest outline seem the most appropriate so far for me.
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by AxlTrozz »

Rotonen wrote:As IvanMorve pointed out, we are enforcing perspective consistency with TMW-CR projects. That also includes playerset and monsterset work.

As for the visual style to be chosen here: going for a 90's console RPG pure pixel art animesque look would only add insult to injury here with our chosen tileset approach.

The point about how realistic proportions make equipmentset work pure hell in the future is also valid, which makes this one a tough one to balance. We can and should take our time here, prototyping and outlining: this will set a lot of things into stone when locked.

The cartoonish proportions from the latest outline seem the most appropriate so far for me.
In regards of perspective is going to be hard to get a perfect 45 deg with a big head and tiny feet, the humanoid shape I showed before is just like 20 deg because 45 only let 2 or 3 pixel for the bottom side.

Now, in a second though I think has a lot to do the distance from the camera and the objective, if is too close you have that fish eye effect, if is too far you get the perspective from buildings and surroundings not from the object it self because doesn't show enough detail.

I'll try to improve the latest shape, but also try new shapes until we are happy with it.

EDIT: for demo purposes I did this test : >>another weird try Image , the same shape but like 20 deg perspective Image and it gets wider at 45 deg
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by Crush »

Any "fish eye" effect or other perspective shortening should be avoided. We are working in orthogonal projection.

Maybe you should try a more geometrical approach and draw the individual body parts as wireframe boxes or wireframe spheres first and then fill them out.
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by AxlTrozz »

Crush wrote:Any "fish eye" effect or other perspective shortening should be avoided. We are working in orthogonal projection.

Maybe you should try a more geometrical approach and draw the individual body parts as wireframe boxes or wireframe spheres first and then fill them out.
Yes, agree with the perspective note.

Well these are my wireframes draws, at least the best I can do, is like my own version of wireframes :wink:

BTW: this is a new version Image >> and..it goeas back to the stupid draw when I scale the image to 64 px tall. Image
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by AxlTrozz »

Image the mini version Image feet are not in perspective, well pretty much everything is wrong, hehe.
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Re: [WIP] AxlTrozz new playerset

Post by Jaxad0127 »

Do the hair and eye/mouth placement right, and we may be able to get good emotion out of that, IMO.
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