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Author Topic: Requesting critique on some sprites  (Read 5497 times)

Veronw

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Requesting critique on some sprites
« on: August 27, 2012, 10:56:20 PM »

Hello all, I have created a couple of sprites over the last few months, as it is a very slow process of kitbashing/painting, and I was hoping to get your opinions on them!

I have two that I feel comfortable posting, with the second ship having a different color as I cannot decide which one I like more. Heavily influenced by Babylon 5, Amarr ships, and a very old ship I drew when I was a kid.

Explorer-Class Capital Ship

This ship by far took the longest out of anything I have done! I intended for it to be a deep range exploration vessel about 1.4km in length. The back wings contain a significant portion of the sensing equipment near the aft command deck, while the front mini wings provide a large bulk of armor to protect the hangers from attack.

Kanost-Class Heavy Cruiser

A dissapointment for me, as I do not feel it is on par with the explorer.. Still, I designed it for a battleship/cruiser role with big solid look in mind, but maintaining that same sort of elegance that the explorer and other ships I made possess. I put two images here because I am not sure which color scheme I like better, the blue one gives it a sort of lethal alien look, almost dark-eldar imo, but the biege/gold fits in the with the faction more.. Hate the engines  ;D (the awful purple rectangles)

Opinions welcome!!
« Last Edit: August 28, 2012, 11:17:05 AM by Veronw »
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armoredcookie

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2012, 11:02:27 PM »

Those... Look... AWESOME!  ;D
Left sprite looks a little better to me, since it matches up with the Explorer. Although both of them look pretty good.

The only problem I have are some of the harder outlines on the Kanost (some of the black lines stand out a lot) and that the engines seem a little out of place ( color-wise).
« Last Edit: August 27, 2012, 11:04:01 PM by armoredcookie »
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Veronw

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2012, 11:09:05 PM »

Hmm didn't notice the line differences between the two ships, I'll go fix that, and as far as the engines go, I have no clue what to do. The engines on the explorer aren't really translatable to the Kanost, but I want to keep a similar design philosophy.. hmm.. Thanks for the praise though :D, will admit to being nervous having my babies out here in the open haha
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armoredcookie

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2012, 11:22:13 PM »

Glad to help, but you should expect a wall of praise from the rest of the community within a few hours :)
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Veronw

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2012, 11:25:53 PM »

Hmm, may have shot myself in the foot, because all I see now are the flaws in the ships lol :(
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armoredcookie

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #5 on: August 27, 2012, 11:31:59 PM »

That tends to happen :/
But after some edits it makes AWESOME into... not sure what.
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TheHappyFace

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2012, 06:42:22 AM »

they're design is so epic!
they look a bit sketched ,but as i allready said they're design are just.... perfect..

make sure to take a look in the spriters thread if you need any help, guides, examples etc..
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xenoargh

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2012, 06:48:22 AM »

These are great line drawings and have clearly been a labor of love :)

Here's some specific critique:

1.  You need to blackline the shapes and clearly define them.  At this point, you're going to have to do that with Curves (better than using Contrast) to rough-fix the interior lines.  Don't forget to highlight the edges where it's appropriate; if the panel lines are big enough / deep enough to be visible, they're going to have a bright area where the light catches the corners.
2.  Fix all the anti-aliased jaggies.
3.  The lower wing on the large ship has blurry sections that need have all the lines cleaned up.
4.  Shading needs to be much more explicit and use more contrast.
5.  I'd like to see some details break up the symmetry a little bit in the final edit.  Nothing major; we're talking a few "radio masts" and other small greebles that differentiate both sides.

Basically, this needs a lot of detail work to smooth things out, improve the shading and generally tune it up.

In terms of color choices, I feel the dark blue needs a rethink; perhaps painting it in with some lighter blues in the un-shaded areas will give it a better feel (and it will allow panel lines and details to be seen).  The other colors look like they were hand-drawn and are going to need a lot of strengthening as you roll into the final editing stages, but that can probably wait until things are blacklined.
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Trylobot

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #8 on: August 28, 2012, 08:10:58 AM »

These ships use very clean shapes and would lend themselves well to a vectorization before you start in on the pixelation process. Having vectors on hand would also let you remix their design aesthetics into new designs more easily, as it would allow for easier scaling.

But regardless, excellent work here. Epic stuff.
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Veronw

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Re: Requesting crtique on some sprites
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2012, 11:16:39 AM »

These are great line drawings and have clearly been a labor of love :)

Here's some specific critique:

1.  You need to blackline the shapes and clearly define them.  At this point, you're going to have to do that with Curves (better than using Contrast) to rough-fix the interior lines.  Don't forget to highlight the edges where it's appropriate; if the panel lines are big enough / deep enough to be visible, they're going to have a bright area where the light catches the corners.
2.  Fix all the anti-aliased jaggies.
3.  The lower wing on the large ship has blurry sections that need have all the lines cleaned up.
4.  Shading needs to be much more explicit and use more contrast.
5.  I'd like to see some details break up the symmetry a little bit in the final edit.  Nothing major; we're talking a few "radio masts" and other small greebles that differentiate both sides.

Basically, this needs a lot of detail work to smooth things out, improve the shading and generally tune it up.

In terms of color choices, I feel the dark blue needs a rethink; perhaps painting it in with some lighter blues in the un-shaded areas will give it a better feel (and it will allow panel lines and details to be seen).  The other colors look like they were hand-drawn and are going to need a lot of strengthening as you roll into the final editing stages, but that can probably wait until things are blacklined.

I have to admit, I am a total photoshop novice, all I really know how to do are textures for 3d models, so actually going in and making an image look more refined is something I am not quite sure how to do. If you could clarify what some of your critique means, it would be most helpful :) And yes, these were definitely a labor of love -.-


Edit: clueless on vectoring as well :D
« Last Edit: August 28, 2012, 11:19:56 AM by Veronw »
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Wriath

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Re: Requesting critique on some sprites
« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2012, 11:37:08 AM »

Definitely see the Amarr influences in the second one, awesome designs, hope to see more from ya'.

xenoargh

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Re: Requesting critique on some sprites
« Reply #11 on: August 28, 2012, 12:03:28 PM »

Well, here, I'll try to show, not just tell.  I can't rework this whole thing, that's a giant project, but I'll tackle a little:

Step 1:  Adjust everything with Curves to increase contrast strategically.  First, duplicate the layer, so that you have the original sitting underneath to use as a reference and to add the result to via transparency adjustments.

Click on Image --> Adjustments --> Curves to open up the Curves tool, then add a couple of control points, one near the top-right (white point) and one near the bottom-left (black point). 

Then adjust to get the best result.  For this, the white point adjustment point needs to go up and leftwards, inverse for the black point.  This will hopefully make sense when you play with it, and bear in mind that it takes a little while to apply sometimes, so adjust a little and check it out. 

Note that the "best" result will not preserve your hand-drawn colors; that's inevitable, but ultimately it's less important than fixing the blacklining. 

In the future, do your colors in Photoshop, using the scan of the black and white drawing as the master.  That makes this stuff much, much, much easier, because you can fix each part, use transparency lock to prevent problems and do color corrections quickly.

Here, well, we need to fix what we've got :)

Another option is to simply duplicate the layer and select Overlay, which will have pretty similar effects but with a less control.

When the result's nice and sharp, then you can stop.

Here's a quickie adjustment example:



After that, it's down to color correction, overpainting and detailing, blacklining the edges, etc.  I'd definitely mirror the ship for all of that to save time, it's going to be a lot of labor to get all of those edges highlighted.
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GUNINANRUNIN

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Re: Requesting critique on some sprites
« Reply #12 on: August 28, 2012, 01:09:13 PM »

These remind me of Chronicles of Riddick.. why??!
Urgghh....
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Veronw

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Re: Requesting critique on some sprites
« Reply #13 on: August 28, 2012, 01:25:30 PM »

Okay, so I did some adjustments to the image, and this is what I got so far. I imagine going in and doing the pixel by pixel adjustments will be a nightmare but a necessity. Out of curiosity, how does one use vectorization?

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Veronw

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Re: Requesting critique on some sprites
« Reply #14 on: August 28, 2012, 01:26:16 PM »

These remind me of Chronicles of Riddick.. why??!
Urgghh....

0.o I don't even remotely see a resemblance.. lol
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