Seushiro's Sprites... Redoing some sprites

[Krobelus]

Good job Roly. Looks like it's based off of FF7 Cid with the goggles to me. The bangs look a little pixely, but the bang strand on the right has a piece shooting off into the left which looks weird to me. Other than that good job!

-Krobelus

[MiKeMiTchi]

We'll see what Asmo's got to say with it.
It has a lot of flaws, actually.

[Seushiro]

I think its a great job. . . pixelated but still can be considered the best reno Portrait in FFT for now. . . Let me try it in game maybe it wnt be that pixelated when reduced. . .

[jimmyjw88]

Yeah. Not bad but like Mike said, a lot of flaws, like shadings of the hair, darker shades under the neck, colar looks flat and etc.
Well, we'll wait for Asmo for crits.

[Asmo X]

Yeah it's not very good, as everyone has sensed. I don't normally crit portraits. It's incredibly rare to find a good one. Basically, the problem here is that you have simply placed your shading in layers, one after the other, and then taken the line right to the end of the object. This does not look good. Smash had a good tutorial on this a while ago. Essentially, you don't designate some area as the clavicle and then just draw a line to show it. What you draw is indentation or depth. If you look at Mikemitchi's avatar, you can see how the jawline gets phased out by grading the same line. It's heaviest at the front where the jaw is deepest and lighter towards the back where it begins to meet the plane of the neck. It's a similar story with the hair. You not only need to shade it properly but you need to think about how it sits and where the line is "deep" and where it starts to phase out. You aren't going do anything good by trying to show tiny little strands of hair a couple of pixels wide. No other portrait I can think of attempts to do that, and if they did they would probably not draw them coming off the brow and hanging down almost perfectly vertically. Jimmy is right; the collar looks very flat. There is no shading whatsoever to speak of, bearing in mind that outlining an object in darker colour does not constitute shading. The guys who did portraits for FFT were incredibly skillful and unlike spriting, not everyone is going to be able to do it. If you do want to make portraits you are going to practice your fucking face off. Ideally, if there was ever a portrait needed we could just assign Smash, Curu, Mikemitchi or Mav since no one is even close to any of them but that's a lot of demand to fill for 4 people.

[MiKeMiTchi]

Yeah it's not very good, as everyone has sensed. I don't normally crit portraits. It's incredibly rare to find a good one. Basically, the problem here is that you have simply placed your shading in layers, one after the other, and then taken the line right to the end of the object. This does not look good. Smash had a good tutorial on this a while ago. Essentially, you don't designate some area as the clavicle and then just draw a line to show it. What you draw is indentation or depth. If you look at Mikemitchi's avatar, you can see how the jawline gets phased out by grading the same line. It's heaviest at the front where the jaw is deepest and lighter towards the back where it begins to meet the plane of the neck. It's a similar story with the hair. You not only need to shade it properly but you need to think about how it sits and where the line is "deep" and where it starts to phase out. You aren't going do anything good by trying to show tiny little strands of hair a couple of pixels wide. No other portrait I can think of attempts to do that, and if they did they would probably not draw them coming off the brow and hanging down almost perfectly vertically. Jimmy is right; the collar looks very flat. There is no shading whatsoever to speak of, bearing in mind that outlining an object in darker colour does not constitute shading. The guys who did portraits for FFT were incredibly skillful and unlike spriting, not everyone is going to be able to do it. If you do want to make portraits you are going to practice your fucking face off. Ideally, if there was ever a portrait needed we could just assign Smash, Curu, Mikemitchi or Mav since no one is even close to any of them but that's a lot of demand to fill for 4 people.

In-depth crit! Absolutely correct! (Don't take it as a bad thing, RolyTunedIn)
Take it as a compliment and learn from it.
It even has my name on it!

Well, if you'd ask me, I'm not that great at portraits, too.

What I secretly do is the same as sprites. COPY and PASTE from default/finished portraits.
I make use of layers, and rotations, and play with the colors/palettes.
After that, I study how they work (the shading, the anatomy).

[Mental_Gear]

Simple solution - make a winged Sephiroth and a non-winged one.

Actually, just do non-winged. When I get to grips with GG I'll try making the winged version myself.

[Asmo X]

What I secretly do is the same as sprites. COPY and PASTE from default/finished portraits.
I make use of layers, and rotations, and play with the colors/palettes.
After that, I study how they work (the shading, the anatomy).

This still seems to be beyond people. Everyone wants to make their own portraits and its always a massive failure.

[MiKeMiTchi]

Is that so? Oh well..
Hmm.. That would be quite hard without practice..

[RolyTunedIn]

oh no, no offense taken. as you guys probably read in other posts, im not much of a spriter, therefor not much better at making portraits. other than that i was going to ask if anyone can wanted to use it as a reference or edit it.

[jimmyjw88]

This still seems to be beyond people. Everyone wants to make their own portraits and its always a massive failure.

YES YES. Really...for those beginners like me, PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO CREATE YOUR OWN PORTRAITS. IT JUST WON'T LOOK RIGHT. I did mine and it totally suck.

Anyway, TAKE Asmo's crits. Asmo crits always help a lot in improvements. ALWAYS!!

[mav]

What I secretly do is the same as sprites. COPY and PASTE from default/finished portraits.
I make use of layers, and rotations, and play with the colors/palettes.
After that, I study how they work (the shading, the anatomy).

Same here. And I wouldn't consider myself all that good at portraits, but I hope I understand 'em well enough to make some knockoffs here and there. What Asmo said is absolutely correct, so I won't further elaborate. Really, it comes down to shading and angles--if you can understand how these two things apply on portraits they becomes so much easier. Unfortunately I don't really understand 'em well enough to do anything from scratch (I secretly try to shade "blank" portraits from time to time and fail every single time), so instead I borrow from many portraits and keep editing them until they look good enough. If you look at any portrait I do, you'll see how many attempts it takes me...

So consider what you just did attempt #1. Expect to do four more before you like it and like eight more before it's complete.


Oh and Curu and Smash are among the most gifted artists here...they worked on their respective stuff so fast and so well it simply blows my mind. And Kuraudo Sutoraifu too. He was fantastic, though under-appreciated, in my opinion. I'd love to know their secrets...

[Zalge]

After reading the stuff about the Reno portrait... I think I'm gunna take a shot and try to spruce it a bit. unless you guys would rather I not so roly can learn some more by experience.

Also, my opinion on the Winged and nonwinged Sephiroth...

If you're gunna do a winged, try making it MON-type so you have space to work with the wing.

EDIT: I've already messed with a few things on the Reno portrait, I can post it any time if you guys want me to. The changes are few and some are very subtle.

[jimmyjw88]

Roly, you might wanna take a look a the next page post, http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtop ... c&start=40 for some guidance. There's a portrait in progress and it start out from suck to become much much better with A LOT OF Smashs' tips and guidance. Though it's still far from perfect; Also, there's a tutorial on shading that you might wanna get your hands on.
Hope this would help ^^

EDIT: By the way, is this your first attempt Roly? If it is, then you're far better than me because my first attempt is totally shit. So, if you get some tips and guidance, plus practise, I think you may get the hands on this.

[MiKeMiTchi]

^ Yup. the link you gave was an easy way around (alternative).
When I created my VERY first sprite, I started with line art.

Studying ART starts with LINES, right? hahaha.

[Luiakyn]

EDIT: By the way, is this your first attempt Roly? If it is, then you're far better than me because my first attempt is totally shit. So, if you get some tips and guidance, plus practise, I think you may get the hands on this.

yeah, I'm still editing my protrait been 6 months+ since I made it O.o

The portrait is a good concept for starters. Now you need to refine it, greatly. I have about 6 other characters protraits lined up to see if it fits or not. As soon as I'm done, I think it fits. An hour later, I see where I went wrong, very easily. It's how most of us are.

Keep working at it.

[Zalge]

Seeing as no one seems to care, I'll post my revised version of Roly's Reno portrait. The changes aren't that big except for one thats obvious, and I tried to make the bangs hanging down a little better shaded. There are still some things that could obviously be improved though.

[MiKeMiTchi]

There are still some things that could obviously be improved though.  

Yes.
The hair bangs itself.
The shading of that red in his face.
The neck, the anatomy.
The shading on the clothes.

The shading on the hair looks fine. XD

[Zalge]

Well, it was just an attempt to improve it slightly, I did it in like... 5 minutes xD

[jimmyjw88]

I'm still editing my protrait been 6 months+ since I made it O.o

By your portrait, you mean your avatar? It's looking great. Far better than mine ^^

I have about 6 other characters protraits lined up to see if it fits or not. As soon as I'm done, I think it fits. An hour later, I see where I went wrong, very easily. It's how most of us are.

Yes. Placing other portraits lining up is the best. Use them as reference for shadings, lines and etc. Definite improvements with this.

Keep working at it ^^