Hi everyone!
This is my first post on this forum. Seems like a cool place and the closest forum to what I was looking for (It’s kind of funny but every forum I can find for art critique seems heavily focused on 3D. At least this forum has a 2D section here)
Since I think I intend to have all my WIPs in this one topic, I think I should introduce the idea of the game. I am in the super early stages of making a video game with my friend. We are both artists and musicians so we’re making all the materials ourselves. We’re also learning C# and XNA. It might take years but I really want to make this game and he does too.
Basically it’s a comedy RPG/adventure game in the vein of Paper Mario. It plans to have a large parody element to it, making fun (lovingly) of JRPGs and so on. Basically, it’s about a bunch of anthropomorphic animals that play musical instruments that want to stop a douchey lion from taking over the world. I have a little bit prepared now (mostly concept but some stuff that is supposed to approach in-game graphics) and I’ll just share everything relevant in this first post.
I am totally self taught so there are many things I have major deficiencies in, including but not limited to selecting the right colors, especially for shadows, and shadow placement.
Almost all of these images are resized in the post so if you want to see them in greater resolution, drag them to a new tab.
Some sketches (I will ask for critique on these when I redraw versions of them as in game art. For now they are just to give you an idea of some of my characters and what I’m going for.
“Gothstrich” and yet-unnamed Sloth bass player
A more finished piece, the main character and namesake of the game, Giraffaraffe:
(critiques of this one welcome) I feel this looks better than my attempts at background so far. Most of my art experience is in drawing characters, although I have never attempted anthropomorphic characters until now.
I am definitely struggling the most with backgrounds, which is unfortunate since 95% of the work I have ahead is going to be drawing backgrounds.
Here is one I’ve been working on:
I feel like I’m approaching the style I want as far as shapes but that it just looks really…“blah.” It is not dynamic, or something. One thing I know I can change is the line thickness, but I’m not sure how thick they should be and what would look better… Also the shadows are kind of insignificant looking but I don’t know how to make them larger and make them not look ridiculous.
I also feel perhaps my colors are too saturated or primary but I don’t know how to make the colors fit together otherwise. I am also really confused on how to make images look less flat, even when, like in this situation, the actual environment would be fairly flat? I tried to move the bed more into the middle to at least do something, but I don’t know. And the doorway is green because it’s supposed to be a stairway in there but I’m not sure if any corners of wall would logically be visible through the doorway since the “camera” of the drawing is angled straight on.
Right now I am drawing this stuff in Flash just because I feel it works well for lines and has a better integrated animation system than Photoshop does. Plus it might take me so long to finish the artwork/improve that the TV standard will be 4K by then, so it’ll be good to have it in vector, lol. I could post a lines-only version if anyone is willing to do some example work on it to guide the process… The thing is I have a vague sense of what some of the problems are but I don’t know what direction to go in to solve them or where to turn for the specific resources I need.
Anything from specific criticism to relevant tutorial links or exercise suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Sorry if this is too vague or if I have posted my images the wrong way…
thank you