Isometric Characters C&C please
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=14336
Printed Date: 09 June 2026 at 6:27am
Topic: Isometric Characters C&C please
Posted By: Fobwashed
Subject: Isometric Characters C&C please
Date Posted: 08 May 2012 at 3:04pm
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Hey ya'll, I'm back!
I've been a very busy bee working on the engine for my game and some pretty drastic changes have been made. The biggest in relation to here is that I'm resizing the scale of my game world so that everything has more room to breathe. Pretty much, pixel counts for all objects and people have been increased by about 50% meaning I've got a lot more room to work with than I had before. On one hand, this is awesome because now I can create more detailed sprites, but on the flipside. . . well, I can't rely as much on the low pixel count to skimp on certain details. With all this extra space, I've been trying to come up with a nice style to do my characters in and I keep running into walls. It's amazing how working with less really allows you to be more abstract with things and still have characters look cool/stylized. So, I look to ya'll for help here. What I'm starting with is pretty full on normal looking but I feel like I should get a good grasp on just working with people and isometric angles before I go into anything too fancy. Here's my first shot at the higher pixel count. It's pretty much just a rough and I'm uncertain at this point how much detail I should try to use in the characters. 
I'll try to continue to post in this thread and take any and all suggestions/comments/criticisms and implement them into my work. Just a few things I may want to point out about how things will be set up. In game, the characters will be created using the following pieces. 1:head 2:torso/naked 3:left and right arms naked 4:legs/naked and then the following will be drawn over the nakedness 5:upperbody torso clothing 6:upperbody arm clothing 6:lowerbody clothing heads will be based on real people so whatever style I end up using, it should hopefully have enough leeway to be able to depict some features of the people I'm trying to emulate. I'm going to assume that arms will be separated from the torso section at the shoulders. Anyhow, I'll try to keep updating -_-;; |
Replies:
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 09 May 2012 at 10:59am
Here's a slightly updated first attempt and another take on it entirely. I think I'm going to try messing with proportions and see if anything sticks =\ |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 09 May 2012 at 12:24pm
Sticking with the sort of one I did during my first go, I've shrunk the head down to make it more realistic proportionally and tried splitting up the body sections that I need split up for the game. Basically, I need the arms separate from the body so that I can have them doing various things. In addition, I'm hoping to be able to swap in and out various clothing so I've also tried placing a quickie suitjacket and slacks on the guy to see how that'd work. I think the thing as a whole looks. . . well, okay. It's all pretty rough but just to get a general idea of what it should look like. The main issue is that it really looks bland and vanilla. I may just give up on having more detail and try to use the same pixel area to do something a bit more interesting looking. |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 09 May 2012 at 4:16pm
Still tweaking around. I'm gonna try to do at least a full set of one body type to begin with and throw it into the game and see how it runs. I'm still iffy on how I want to handle the isometric angle. Looking around online, it looks like games either go full isometric where the character sprites are all definitely from a top down angle, to other games where while the world is isometric, the characters themselves look as though they're being viewed from a lower angle. Basically, showing less of the topside of their head, shoulders, etc. I'm wondering if I'm working at a low enough resolution where that'll be something I could do without it looking too funky or clashing with the game world too much. My older character sprites were set up in that, lower angle view and worked fine before.  
You can see that the old sprites weren't exactly isometric -_-;; |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 10 May 2012 at 9:10am
Here's something else I may try. There's something about 1 pixel width limbs that I like and this does feel like it'd be much simpler to draw many frames of. I do feel that if I were to go with something this unrealistic, it would have to be reflected to an extent in the game world as well as just the characters. The only problem (aside from my lack of pixel art ability) is that the game I'm building is striving for simulation and realism so it may clash with this style of character. |
Posted By: AngelOTG
Date Posted: 10 May 2012 at 9:14am
| I like the idea of 1 pixel limbs, but those arms are fugly. |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 10 May 2012 at 9:48am
| Any tips on how to make em less ugly? -_-;; |
Posted By: AngelOTG
Date Posted: 10 May 2012 at 9:51am
| Either make them perfectly straight or put into poses (bent elbow, arm outstretched, etc.) They just won't look right with these jutting sections since you don't have AA to smooth the transition. |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 10 May 2012 at 12:43pm
| How about the legs? Do they also need to be straight lines or is it alright as long as they don't go in and then back out? |
Posted By: AngelOTG
Date Posted: 10 May 2012 at 1:04pm
| The legs look fine as they are. |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 11 May 2012 at 9:51am
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After more testing and tweaking, I've decided to go with the more realistic look to match the tone of the game.
Can someone give me some pointers on how to make the front view isometric? I think I'm supposed to draw the body at it's full height, but I can't figure out how to do that while giving it a top down viewing angle =\ 
The quarter turn angle looks a bit better (I removed the back arm for now) and has the top down feel but the front view looks strange to me and doesn't feel like it fits in with the environment. Any pointers or even links to some references I may be able to use would be helpful. |
Posted By: Fobwashed
Date Posted: 11 November 2012 at 8:23pm
So I've taken another crack at the quarter turn. I've also worked in the height that I'll be making my assets at. I'm a bit disappointed that the face has so few pixels to work with but if I'm going for real proportions, thems the breaks. Was hoping that anyone lookin might be able to point out any glaring mess ups in this anatomically or pixelogically. |