Lijj's Sprites

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Looks good, Lijj.  I have full intent to use this set now for something.

Is it possible for the female to get a bit of a portrait touchup though?  It's possible that it's because she's an older work, but her face is a tad thin (not as bad as that Female Samurai you've still not touched up for sure, but still a bit noticeable) and her hair is unusually glossy.  I'm imagining the male's portrait will be far more in the proper FFT-style now that you're far better at it, so having them match would be cool.  It looks like it'd just be a bit of dimension fixing and color toggling looking at her portrait but I'm color-shade retarded when it comes to actually doing it myself half the time so I don't trust myself to do it no matter how simple of a job my eye says it looks to be.

[Lijj]

..

[Kagebunji]

Ok, let's get to it. Chin is way too dark when compared to skin(wich is lightly shaded), Hair goes very dark on some parts, but it's not that bothering. Clothes are lacking depth(only the white part), there are like two shades there, from what I can see. I personally choose A, since hair is not that dark.

[mav]

The shading on the hair is too drastic. It's going from near-white to near-black. Compare this portrait to the male Archer's to see how to distribute the shadows and colors better. The gold part on his chest should probably extend over his shoulder, if it's a strap. For the shirt, consider swapping the second white for a color that's a little darker than the background, then use the background color as the second white, and the new, darker shade for shadows. Did that even make sense?

[Vanya]

What mav and kage said + that swath of hair over his left eye looks flat and unnatural.

[Celdia]

I know what sprite I'm stealing when I finally replace Squires! ^_^

[Wolfran]

[Lijj]

___Ok thanks for the input guys; I found the solution I think, managing to get one extra shade of white and one extra blue into the scheme.
(Actual bmp included)

[Lijj]

Wolfran, where's that nice pic of you?

[Kagebunji]

It looks way better now. But chin is still very dark. Try putting some lighter shades in there, and do only one line of dark pixels, ok? Other than the chin that bugs me, everything is perfect.

[Lijj]

alright

spoiler

(bmp)

Thanks  for the tips.

[Kagebunji]

I totally love it. There is nothing that seems wrong on this. 10/10 Lijj!

[mav]

I still think the shading on the hair could mimic Yoshida's style a little better, but whatever. Good work, Lijj.

[Wolfran]

Wolfran, where's that nice pic of you?

Idk, maybe it was deleted but nvm I put it in my FB profile .
About the sprite I think is already done, submit asap. I want to play with this sprite.

[Lijj]

10/10 that makes my day!
I'm the worst artist when it comes to using ref and or mimicking a style.. never been able too not even with a pencil. In life drawing I did a lot of improvising or filling in. It's just hard for me. I'm slightly disappointed that our expert portraitist(Mav!) doesn't quite approve, yet I like the hair style as is a lot. And it matches his sister.
I won't submit it yet though... I want to see if mav might be into Yoshidaizing it up a little before hand.

[mav]

Haha, I'm no expert portraitist, just a decent thief at best. It's all good though, Lijj. This is a top quality portrait and sprite, so submit it now. Don't let my bitching slow down submitting this thing.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Looking much better than the time you showed it to me on IRC.

I've a couple things I noticed though.  You can use this small and poorly made image in Paint based on your old two-portrait style preview to see what I'll be talking about as I go:



First, the hairline is much better, but seems to be a straight line.  Considering the viewer is seeing this mugshot from an angle, this looks a bit wrong.  I made a poorly drawn red line on the left portrait to show something that looked a bit more natural.  It's a small curve, but it's all it really needs.

Second, on the left side (the side furthest from the viewer), the hair looks... strange.  Specifically, going but I would judge to be the shape of his head under that hair, the far left most hair bunch is the highest... when it shouldn't be unless he has a huge lump under there.  It's the farthest thing from the viewer, but his head's not a slope, and he's not facing down at all, but looking straight, so that can't be the back of his hair.  It would plateau and go back down by that point, meaning the hair should be a bit more flush with what's on the opposite end of the hairline.  A quick trim and an adjustment of the hairline together will probably fix this issue, but it looks very unnatural currently - he's facing to what would be his right side but that one section of his hair's fitting on him a bit more straight pointing, and as I said, appears to be set on a completely different angle.

Third, I didn't note on the image, but his hair (specifically the back bits) have an overly anime-spike feel to them.  Behind his neck he has one solid chunk of hair when he definitely shouldn't going by the FFT art style, and what we can see in general of the back of his hair that goes off into portrait-space also has evidence of this.  Even looking at mav's avatar, you can see a good way of doing it a bit more naturally.  You can also insert a couple other bits of bitching about how the hair could look more natural in terms of shading and shape (the brightest bits seem unnaturally bright and the front bits of his hair are arguable either way in whether they should be made more natural looking) but that back bit's the one that really comes out and bugs me for no real reason.  You're getting a lot better with the whole hair than you used to be, for sure, but I really would fix up the other bits mentioned then see what you can do yourself on "Yoshidaizing it up" yourself since it's the best way to improve what's really your main weakness from what I've noticed, even if it really is an art style thing and not a real lack of quality.

This has come out really well though compared to that really old preview you showed me.  I was going to tell you this stuff on IRC but my net basically died right after I went "Hey" and you replied to the first thing I asked you.  :/

E: Also looking, the closer bang (the one on the right) could use a bit more shading near where it meets the rest of the hair I think.  It kinda looks like a looks nice at the tip but then turns into a huge glob of paint bucket color as it nears the rest of the hair, personally, which also makes the hair in general look unnatural and far brighter than it probably is.

[Twinees]

They are some good crits Raven.

Lijj, use references. Whenever I'm making ports (or pretty much spriting in general), I have tons of fft portraits all over my screen, just to familiarize myself with Yoshida's style the entire time.
References are especially important if you are trying to copy someone else's style. You have your own unique style, I can see that, but its important that you remember its going into FFT.

[Lijj]

I can't process this, it's too much. I'm done! /toast

[Lijj]