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[WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 11 Dec 2008, 17:20
by Spit23
I started a sprite of a mana dragon, inspired from the original mana dragon of secret of mana. How you see it's still in a early state. I just played around the get a feeling for the shape ("arms" and "legs" still missing). The only thing I've really done yet are the wings, but I also have to fix some details and use some anti-aliasing effect. The head sucks at the moment, I just made it to get a feeling for the proportions. Maybe someone of you has cool ideas or scetches for it. I'm thankful for every inspiration!

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 11 Dec 2008, 17:58
by Crush
Nice start. The colors are awful right now, but this will be easy to change. The hard part is the animation, of course, but I would not be against showing such large boss monsters only from the front (secret of mana did it, too).

I would suggest you to start with the animation lineart and then do the details.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 23 Dec 2008, 22:10
by Spit23
Crush wrote:Nice start. The colors are awful right now, but this will be easy to change. The hard part is the animation, of course, but I would not be against showing such large boss monsters only from the front (secret of mana did it, too).

I would suggest you to start with the animation lineart and then do the details.
I glad that you agree with showing it only from the front ;).

Here's what I have so far:

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 23 Dec 2008, 23:05
by Crush
Judging from the head you did not yet understood the meaning of shading. When you did not really bothered trying then feel free to skip the next paragraph.

It looks like you just applied a color gradient from bottom left to upper right without keeping the three dimensional shape in mind. You should use shading to accentuate it by highlighting the areas which face the light source and make the parts which face away from the lightsource darker.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 24 Dec 2008, 00:04
by Spit23
Crush wrote:Judging from the head you did not yet understood the meaning of shading. When you did not really bothered trying then feel free to skip the next paragraph.
I don't skip it. The only reason why I posted this sprite in such an early state is to get feedback to improve my skills. So, thanks for it :)
Crush wrote:It looks like you just applied a color gradient from bottom left to upper right without keeping the three dimensional shape in mind. You should use shading to accentuate it by highlighting the areas which face the light source and make the parts which face away from the lightsource darker.
Shame on me :? . I guess that's better:

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 24 Dec 2008, 00:14
by kr0n05931
Better, try looking at this for reference:

Image

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 03:52
by Spit23
Here's the update of the sprite. How you see the tail is missing, also the shading isn't right and it needs some anti-aliasing.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 03:55
by Rotonen
So far not so bad. Animating this will be the real challenge.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 04:05
by Spit23
Rotonen wrote:So far not so bad. Animating this will be the real challenge.
Yes, the animation of the wings will be the hardest part. But the other parts won't be that hard I guess.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 05:02
by Rotonen
Yeah, you can just probably at least partially just cut and paste the body parts around for the desired effect.

BTW are you sure about the perspective you've used here? Especially on the wings. IMO from a 45 degree angle we should see more of the top of it.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 05:35
by Spit23
Rotonen wrote:BTW are you sure about the perspective you've used here? Especially on the wings. IMO from a 45 degree angle we should see more of the top of it.
I changed the perspective a bit and fixed some other details. What you think?

EDIT:
I added the tail

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 07:06
by Crush
With the thin limbs and the batlike wings it looks more like a gargoyle than a dragon. But this is not necessarily bad.

The skin between the wings is very pillow-shaded. This definitely has to be reworked. But before you do the shading you should first do the animation. It's usually easier that way around.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 08:33
by Rotonen
Also the animation could require some tricks from your shading to work properly so it's better to do the animation first in any case. Just ugly-filling the main colors in for the animation should do.

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 20:24
by Spit23
Thanks for the feedback. Here's my first crappy animationtest for the wings:

Re: [WIP]Mana Dragon

Posted: 05 Jan 2009, 20:32
by Crush
Looks strange with the top points of the wings nailed in the air. I would suggest you to search for some slow-motion videos of bats in flight on youtube or other video sites and use them as a reference.