Like I had planned already.. I want to now make a sprite for my original super hero

Knovy Spength



This is a very sketchy and horrid start..
Which pose is right when running?
left leg X right arm or
left leg x left arm

...use references...

Hey, some sketches, that's great!

Since you were nice enough to take the time to try out my humble request, here's my end of the bargain! (full-sized sketch sheet)

Here's a thumbnail with some structural overlays:


The great thing about the overlays is that you can directly compare lengths of all major components to make sure, say, that the arms are the same, and the shoulders aren't too far apart and whatever.

Also notice that the rods that join the balls are not drawn as straight lines. By giving them some artistic curvature, you improve the liveliness of the final image.

Now, if you don't mind a little critique of your sketch, I'll point out that:
1. In the upper left image, the closest arm has a forearm that is too long (protruding past his stomach, as it doesn't in the ref) which makes it difficult to tell which arm is swinging back, and which is swinging forward.
2. In the upper right image, the lower ankle appears to be attached to the foot in the center rather than by the heel.
3. In the bottom image the head's a bit small.

But otherwise you did really well!

Now let's apply what we've found out from all this to your sprite:
You can either use the practise to create a brand new sketch from scratch, or flip one of the ones you already have to be the right direction.

Do you have something like GIMP? If so, once you have a sketch of the pose you want, draw a ball-and-rod structure over the pose in a new transparent layer over it (as I did with mine) and when you are satisfied with the result, post it as a GIF for us to see with the structure layer (it can turn on and off if you like).

Once we decide your new sketch is as awesome as you want it to be, then it can be traced and filled with colour shapes to become the base of your final sprite.

Whew, I hope that's not too much to ask - I'll help with any of that if I can.

Thanks!

Hey RollerKingdom,
I would like to redirect you to a website I recently posted in this thread.

It is called PoseManiacs, and the owner included a program that will generate a random 3D human sprite action posing. You have 30 (or more) to make a sketch of it before they change to another pose.

This is a typical art class exercise, except they do with live models.
I think it is a great practice for human proportions and poses.

http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html
It is a flash player, and sometimes the loading bugs. If it does, try to right click and select play from the pop up menu.

Have a blast
:)

PS: Looking forward to see more from that super hero ^^


Edited by Leath - 17 May 2010 at 2:45pm

its good youre sketching from references, now try to follow the references more carefully, namely, pay close attention to the angles of the lines and the proportions of things.  Also look at negative shapes.  Okay so I did this

I tried to point out the angles of certain lines that youre off on with red lines.  Also notice the overall movement towards the right, whereas yours in leaning left a bit.

also check out the negative shapes.  Compare the negative shape between his back and arm on (our) left side in the reference to on your drawing.  Infact when I drew that part of the image I only looked at the negative shape, the angle of the back and arm just fell into place because of it.
Also look at the negative shape between the upper part of the legs.

lastly, it looks like you sort of made the abs and arm muscles up a little bit.  Youre trying to learn anatomy so making stuff up isnt going to help, follow the reference more closely.

Thanks for the tips.. I really should start using some lines now to get the angle better now.. also I was looking at phone from a screen shot i took from the pc so the picture was really bad but that's not excuse. I think i will be using this pose you studied because I believe it's one of my best sketches "yet", I will try to later create the body mass on paint. Thanks again



Now that's scary.. I got a bit accurate to it xD hehe
Thanks for this!

he appears to be standing on one leg rather than running. you'll notice in the ref that the upper body is leaning forward. your figure's center of gravity, and the general line of (non)motion, is straight up and down, but people generally lean into a run.

@ Pragz, Leath, & r1k: Those are great tips!

@ RollerKingdom: Thanks, I'm glad you like the sketches.

Your new ones are really good - yes I also think you did better than before (I think r1k had a really good point about the anatomy to remember, though: if you aren't really really sure what a muscle group looks like, it isn't safe to guess - at least, it never works for me).

This one is really good and matches the original post's pose you made. If that's what you are still going for, then that's the one I'm going to assume is safe to work with.

First off, let's study it, keeping also what r1k and Leath said in mind (note that these points are only to make your sketch more accurate to the reference and make no style assumptions) :


You can flip it, too, if you like (I forgot!).

I would recommend making a new, final sketch with all this information, which (if you think it's good enough) can be used for the final sprite pose.

Hope this helps,
JD

Hey, wow, this is looking just great - I'm impressed.
I think there's actually very little to do here as long as you're sure you're very familiar with the relationships between your image and the ref (though it would probably still be fun to make a sketch or two more, just to give yourself more power to spot mistakes later while working on your sprite).

Well, I don't know exactly how WIP this last image is, but here's some points I noticed:

1. You fixed how much he leaned based on what ThereIsNoCure said, but not quite as much as he could be fixed. Keep in mind that the weight of his body would be placed squarely over his load-bearing foot, and then draw a line up to see which part of his body the line touches. In your first version the line goes past his face, which meant that none of his body was above the foot, and the center of gravity was backwards from where it needed to be. Your current one has his body balanced perfectly above his foot, and that's okay for jogging in place, but you'll notice in the ref that the weight of his body is in front of his foot, and that's where it will go when it is actually being pushed forward by a good strong run!
2. The knee on the left (his right) should probably be longer, as it is in the ref at least. Don't forget that the bottom of the knee will not be a straight line, but rather a diagonal (like this "/" only not as steep) because of the bone (you'll notice the protrusion in the ref below the thigh that creates this diagonal line).
3. Don't forget a slight point to the feet where the big toes are. This point is always closer to the inside side of the foot (not just at the end of the foot in the middle).
4. The foot that he has on the ground also needs more of an arch for his instep. You can think of the foot as having two main areas (the heel area and the ball of the foot area with the toes) as a kind of figure eight, but don't give the eight a narrow waist, and try to make the outside of the foot have a straighter edge (the pinch of the eight should be mostly seen on the inside edge).
5. The line you have wrapping around the oval of his head to represent his eye & ear line needs to be a bit lower, if one pixel isn't too much, and the back of the line should be lower than the front since the head seems to be tipped up a bit.
6. You have a pretty big inner thigh on the left (his right) which has sort of absorbed the area where his groin should be.

Well, that sounds like a lot, but they are small peanuts as details, and you mostly have a great sprite going, so I trust it won't be too hard to fix any of the points that you agree with.

Major improvements - even I'm surprised by how such little touches can make all the difference. But I just happen to be really OCD about details!

Yes, the head looks much better forward (yer gettin' the hang o' this stuff fast!).

The leftmost knee could still stand to be a pixel or two longer, as could the big toe of its foot.

The foot on the ground is a bit wide, and the ankle a bit thick, so I think you could solve both at once by removing a line or two of pixels along the top edge.

The eyeline on the head looks a lot better, though he may need a slightly longer chin now (but I can't tell for sure until more of his face gets put in, sorry!).

Your base pose is just about perfect!

Fab.

Okay, I only see two details that are kind of bothering me:
1. The upper thigh on the right (his left) seems a little caved in - needs to be more rounded out (maybe fill in the vertical notch above the knee)
2. Back of leg (the one touching the ground) needs to be thinned a bit above the foot so that he has a more obvious calf muscle.

But otherwise, really solid stuff.

sorry for the double post again.
Started working on his shading and detail..
So far did the head..
what do you think of it?

I deff can see that I've improved compared to my last time doing a sprite..
this time I seem to understand more where colors go and color balance..

The face does seem to be a bit rounder, and his nose does seem to have a bit more of a bulb on the end, than the portrait.

Also, his visible eye seems to be shifted too far to our right, but moving it even a pixel back would probably be too much (such is the restriction of a very low resolution) so I'm not sure what you may be able to do about that (sub-pixelling?).

With the mask applied, you have a long horizontal shadow at the mouth level that gives the effect of a Joker-like gash mouth, or a very gaunt "dummy face" look (ventriloquist's dummy) which may or may not be your intention, but which I personally find a bit non-attractive in this context. What about you?

But great updates, and yes, I think you have a real knack for bold colours. (though on my monitor, the three dark colours of your palette next to the two blues are indistinguishable from the darkest of your three greens, and may be superfluous - don't worry about tossing them though if they look unique to you, since one thing it seems a sprite can never rely on is very subtle differences in colour!)

I'm not sure which one to mention first, the nipples or the crotch...

Oh well:

1. Nipples are a bit far apart (the mass of the pec on the left (his right) needs to be shifted right, closer to the body's centre)
2. Crotch is a bit narrow and pointy
3. Top of his hair line seems a bit thin (a bit more of the forhead and above the ear could be covered)
4. The cheekbones look a bit too prominent (the highlight on the left one - his right - could be smaller, too)

It's really starting to come together fast!

right pec extends too far to the right, left pec extends a bit too far to the left. we should see a bit more of the side between the pec (on our left) and the arm.
also forearm is a bit long in comparison to the upper arm.

Hey, I didn't know you were going to put a cool background in behind him - that's really ambitious! It's looking great so far, too.

Wow wow wow, I'm really impressed, and there are only a very few minor things I noticed (think of them as nitpicks!)

1.
I don't see anything wrong with the shape of his right thigh, and I also don't really see anything that would put a shadow on it, so you're good there.

2.
The location of his right nipple is just fine, now, but the original bottom line of the pec needs to be moved up to be closer to the top line of the shadow you put on it.

3.
I would lower his left nipple (without having to change the pec outline) and move it to our left (but probably not more than a pixel!).

4.
He looks like he lost a little bit of his instep on the foot that's touching the ground (it sort of looks bulged out, rather than curved in properly). Also, for my money, I'd put the highlight on the side of the ball of his foot, just behind the big toe (but not too close to the instep) and put another spot of highlight where his ankle bone protrudes.

5.
I don't think his right arm length is wrong, but what it looks like to me is that the ends of the two long shadows that seem to show the line of his wrist are actually extended over onto the back of his hand, and need to be shortened by a pixel or two.

6.
I also finally noticed what was bothering me about the cheekbones. The one on our left looks fine now, but I just realised that the one on our right protrudes beyond his brow. If you'll recheck your original reference, it's not true for this guy, at least, or in average hero designs like in anime (that does not mean having no cheekbone, though!). So the brow needs to be wider, or the cheekbone narrower - or some combination that you like the best.

So that looks like a lot, but I just wanted to be clear (I can show it in a GIF if you need)!

I really like that city, and this picture is going to be awesome!

okay So I have a bunch of versions which Im undecided >_>
If you could give me your opinion in which one you liked the most I would be glad :)

•Transparent windows and the road color


•Non-transparent windows and same road color


•Transparent windows and different road color


•Non-transparent windows and different road color


•Transparent windows and darker road color


•Non-transparent windows and darker road color


Also what do you think of the city blue?



Edited by RollerKingdom - 22 May 2010 at 12:31pm

I did to them what I understood but apparently it's not what you were looking for.. maybe if you could show me what you mean by the points #2,#5 and #6 and also show what you mean with his foot as instep ...Id appreciate it..

and which new city colors? Blue or the original ones?
and EWW transparent windows won't work.. looks horrible with dark theme

Edit:

I also like the browns a lot better


Edited by RollerKingdom - 22 May 2010 at 1:07pm

Here:


Those small points DEFF made it a lot better :)
and i though i was done with the background hehe..
I don't want to make it too detail to take the attention from the sprite ;)

So just worked a bit more on the windows of the building and here is the final project




Edited by RollerKingdom - 22 May 2010 at 6:51pm