Xenomic's Art Thread! GASP!

[Xenomic]

I know right!? Me!? SPRITE!? BWAHAHAHAHA!


But in all seriousness, I thought it was about time I tried to do something again. You can thank Ryoga for somewhat perking my interests again and to Chamat for getting me attempting this again. Though whether or not I'll actually try to do things for the Midnight Bliss & Shock Project myself is debatable. I'm still not a good spriter by any means, and I haven't sprited anything in 3-4 years.


Some of the more ancient sprites (found in my ancient thread years ago). Keep in mind that these have NOT been touched in 3-4 years, and this was back when I first attempted hi-res style (the only one I actively tried to fix up was Reimu. Komachi was the very last one and was in beta before I stopped):


Touhou Hi-Res Sprites (Guilty Gear styled):

Komachi Onozuka:




Reimu Hakurei:




Remilia Scarlet:




Sakuya Izayoi:




Youmu Konpaku:





And now, for modern time stuff!


This...is a beta so far.






It uses a slightly modified version of Guilty Gear's May's face (only eye colors and eyebrows. I haven't touched the mouth yet). I'm just outlining things right now, but...I'm not sure if this is going to turn out ok or not. I need to keep her height shorter than May's (May being 5'2", and I'm assuming that Maria here is shorter than her), which is a task in itself...and since I'm no spriter, this is turning out to be...a monumental task all on its own. ^^;;


References I'm using for the sprite:

(click to show/hide)

I am trying to keep it as close to the original sprite as you see there, while using the images as references. I...don't know how well this is turning out at all tbh. ;__;


Why Maria of all people? And this version of her? Because I like Maria despite not knowing much about Castlevania, and this design is a simpler design to work with. *shrugs*

[Xenomic]

More tinkering with the outlining today~




I did check this sprite against May's, and it seems like she's going to be shorter after all~ How bout that?

May's reference sprite:



Yes, you can tell the face is the same pretty much, because it fit perfectly for Maria's. Other than that, this has mostly been used as a height difference than anything else. I did use Shannon a bit for the sleeves/skirt bit, but not too terribly much considering she's well...taller than Maria by far. I didn't do the other arm yet because I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that. I feel the chest isn't...quite right either, if you know what I mean. That's something else I've always had trouble dealing with in spriting. @_@;

Also, hands. I hate doing hands. >_<

Will need to get the legs/feet set up later. I think this is good enough for today. Took about 30 minutes-1 hour to set all of this up. Hopefully she's not too wide/too unanatomically correct? ^^;;

[Xenomic]

More tinkering, and the more I sprite this, the more I feel it gets worse and worse...




*Moved the left arm over some, thinned it up some, and redid the arm/added the right arm using Shannon's arms essentially.
*Added the feet and legs, though I feel the legs are...short? Not sure, but the feet look god awful. I have problems with feet like I do with hands.
*Redid the chest a little, but not sure if that looks right or not.
*Added the rest of her hair that I forgot last time.


Criticism and help is much appreciated...

[Xenomic]

I haven't touched the elbow yet as I'm not entirely sure how to go about that. Looking at Shannon's sprite, there's really no big curve difference (though again, she has sleeves so maybe it's different). I'll look more into it...not sure if there's any good characters to look at for that. I do need to redo the ascot though as it's terrible looking, as well as the chest (it...just looks bad too). Shading has been added massively everywhere, and also for some reason decided to slim up her back (why, I don't know. I don't think it looks as good this way...I might revert it back). Dunno if I have the right hair colors or not either...again, I'm terrible when it comes to colors/coloring. ^^;; I do think the shoes came out alright though, what with the colors/shading/proportions so I guess that's something? ^^;


In addition, Valeri did touch up on the sprite massively. While I do appreciate her doing so (and I really do. It's a pretty good sprite and scarily enough captures the style of the original official arts I was using as reference), I'm still going to work on this sprite myself too (sides, I'm trying to go with Guilty Gear style, which Valeri's isn't really, no offense to her). I'm also trying to refrain from using it too much as a reference sprite as I don't want to end up being too similar to it. ^^;;:

[Xenomic]

Added the braids in. I think they actually came out really well (no, I didn't use anything but one official art as reference), which surprises me. Guess braids aren't super hard to do after all.

This might be the last revision for the sprite for now as I'm honestly not sure what else I can do to make it better. I again am by no means that great of a spriter, and I'm terrible with colors overall, so...who knows? Maybe I'll come back at a later date and touch up on the sprite again, if I ever do. Or maybe I'll keep working on it over time.

Note to self to fix on Maria's sprite however:

*Fix the size of her hand that's underneath her right hand (so the hand below the other) as it seems far too big for her actual handsize.
*Maybe fix the right arm so that it has an elbow? Not entirely sure as I'm not sure how to do elbows really, nor not sure how to angle the arm to accomodate the elbow change.
*Fix the shading in various places.
*Fix the belt/sash and perhaps the tiny part of her back that you can see. Not sure on where the back needs to be...
*Change the face perhaps to not be so May-like
*Fix the shape of her hair perhaps
*Fix that goddamn ascot! >_<
*Fix the bust size probably. It's really REALLY hard to gauge her bust size from the official arts (despite some of them showing her to be quite...voluptuous or whatever. Which seems very strange for a 12-year old to be that way but...), and I'm terrible with doing breasts overall anyways...
*Fix her left arm (the arm on the right) to be more...bending? Not as hidden by her shirt? I don't know.


Anything else that I may have missed, feel free to let me know. Still learning so yeah...I probably shouldn't be doing these kinds of sprites already but...^^;;

[Xenomic]

Not much done today, but here ya go:




*Tried to fix up the elbow some...dunno if it looks better or not. It looks worse instead of better now I think : S
*Changed shading on hair and skin. Clothes will be next later. The hair and skin shading was borrowed from Millia Rage of Guilty Gear, since that seemed to be the way to go (plus I needed someone with blonde hair to work with, and Millia was the first to come to mind. I guess I could've used Ky or Bridget but eh!).

You can see the differences in the shading here:




I don't really have anyone with pink from Guilty Gear I can use for shading references so...the dress might be a bit tougher to shade than normal. The boots...well...those will get fixed later on. Still working out the shading differences and proportions right now from top to bottom. That elbow is going to bother me a lot...

[Xenomic]

Fixed the shading by using one of Millia's pink palettes. Thanks to Darth Akuryo for finding the palette for me. Palette is here:





That's all I'm going to do today on her. Not in the best of moods as I found out my grandpa passed away this morning and then family issues regarding that...

[Xenomic]

So...this was something I was working on...



But thanks to being such a dumbass and not checking, I accidentally saved it as JPEG (why the hell is JPEG the default for Paint?!). So, this sprite which WAS really good ended up being completely ruined. Then I tried a second time...




And now it just looks plain freaking awful...like...you have no idea how angry I am at myself and Paint for losing such a great sprite, then spending another hour trying to get back to that point only to end up with this terrible sprite...goddamnit all...I haven't been THIS pissed off at myself in forever, but really now. Lenna ended up looking TOO manly in the newer version, and I had it perfect in the original...


References:

(click to show/hide)

The last one is what pose I'm using. The other two images are what I'm using as references. Well..unless someone knows how to save a sprite saved in JPEG format...>_>;;


So yeah, 1 hour and a perfectly good sprite lost because stupid goddamn me. >___>


EDIT - A little update...




So I tried to slim her down some and whatnot. At least she looks more feminine than manly...I think. God this is gonna take a lot to fix this up. Also, hair. Not my thing.

[Xenomic]

Ehhhh...I guess it's better than the old face but I hate hair now ...

References used:

*Ougon Musou Kyoko's Shannon - Only her face right now, as it was the closest to the pose that I wanted. Only things changed from original face is eye color (big whoop) and the mouth (one pixel removed, big whoop). The entire head was actually used, but I redid the hair from scratch essentially and had to add her ear to the sprite. Hair shouldn't be this hard to do! Also, took me like 3 hours just to get this far...terrible! Mostly because I'd get started on it, and then immediately delete it because it wasn't working out. Mostly by using ironically Shannon's head as the base (I think I tried to use Guilty Gear's Dizzy and Jam as head bases too. I even tried to make a head from scratch myself but that didn't pan out so well). I dunno how you guys make it look so easy .


If there's anything to do with the outlining of the head, feel free to let me know now since I'd like to get the head outlines done before moving onto the body. I did put in the outline for her neck accessory thing. That wasn't easy to do either...ugh...also hopefully when I do the body this time, she won't end up with super huge breasts like last time. @_@;;

I used both the cherry blossom image and black background images from before as references, alternating between the two for the hair. It kinda helped a bit...also, she doesn't look like a man now I think. : S

[Xenomic]

It looks like it's taking good shape so far. Though I feel like the belt is TOO far down as opposed to the images...what do you guys think? Think it should be moved up some??

Also, that skirt is surprisingly difficult. I'm used to frilly skirts like Maria's or Remilia's, not simple ones like this where there's hardly any creases. x_x;;

I do think I got the body build right though. It looks slim enough to fit her (the clothes aren't exactly form fitting I think), and her breasts are actually the right size...I think.

[Tha Lando ( Le CROM )]

sup there! i like her face and yeah her breasts look pretty aight ( lando would made them like super comic big boob sized..cause i got issues ) her shirt yeah isnt form fitting cause around the back edge you can see she got a lil lump there above the belt. if you want it smoother..just edit that area a bit if want it form fitting and maybe lift the belt a pixel or 2 up. Its not bad where its at , its just depending on how you want her to wear it  i guess. it has good room for where her stomach is but ehh yeah up a pixel i guess. Looks good Xenomic. def looking forward to the finish look of her and how you gonna shade her .

you also have my condolences on the passing of your family member. stay strong.

just my thought on her. Keep it up.

[Xenomic]

Just a FYI for everyone, it MAY be a while before I get back into spriting again. I need to get more videos done for my channel (only got one more video left to upload before I'm out of videos) and am currently playing Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- on emulator for the Final Fantasy Wiki. Once I get enough done for both videos (and finish the game), I'll probably return to working on both this sprite as well as my RPG Maker game.

I have also found out (from both Tekkanon and a Japanese forum) that there is a RPG for the Sega Saturn called The Legend of Heroes III which has special effects for characters (with matching portraits) for burn, freeze, and shock. If anyone knows how to rip sprites from a Saturn game, that'd be fantastic as I'd like to get these sprites (including at least the normal sprites) as well as the portraits. I do not know if the rest of the games in that series has them though either.

[Xenomic]

So I decided for the first time in like...10 years or so to do some art. Granted, it's not from the top of my head as I was using a reference image, but really...looking at it, it's not that bad. There's some problems here and there yeah, but it's not bad for a first try with Photoshop and using a mouse. No I don't have a tablet, and none of the scanners here at home work so I didn't try with paper and pencil. Maybe I should give paper and pencil a shot though?

It's really hard to keep the mouse from screwing things up, lemme tell you. If you guys wanna color this in, go for it! I'm terrible with coloring . And feel free to give criticism and feedback if you so desire~

For those who do not know who it is, this is Nowi from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Yes, I'm aware there's some proportion issues going on, but it was hard enough getting myself to do this with the mouse. Ugh...x_x;;

[Xenomic]

Time for an art dump! Finally got the scanner to work, so scanned some of my works over the past couple weeks.

(click to show/hide)

Shyam faces:



This is the last image I attempted to do. This was me not using Tiki, Nowi, or Nah as references, and trying to do different hairstyles mostly to see which would fit my OC. This also shows how bad I am at keeping anything proportioned on the head...;___;


Nah Practice Art 1:



A frontal view of Nah. Just the head, as the rest of the body was to come later. This was a later drawing after I figured I got some decent grasp of doing heads. Also, first time doing braids, which I thought came out decently. The mouth could've used more work though. Jawline too, but jawline is always hard to do...


Nah Practice Art 2:



An attempt of doing an angled view of Nah. The braids, while they look ok, kinda...just float there weirdly. I honestly don't know how I screwed those up so badly.


Nowi Practice Art 1:



Or what I dub Stoned Nowi. This was before I thought I had a decent grasp on doing faces. Needless to say, this was bad. ^^;


Nowi Practice Art 2:



This was the first image I drew on paper and pencil after the Photoshop version. While it's not TOO terrible, there's still some glaring issues, even with the head...


Nowi Practice Art 3:



This was drawn right after the 2nd practice art, and well...as per usual, still some glaring issues. This is based on her portrait image from Awakening as well (the 2nd one was based on an artwork from Awakening too).


Tiki Practice Art 1:



Done later on when I thought I had a firm grasp on heads. Same issues persist here, though I think this was before I stopped drawing eyes first and then doing the head around the eyes...


Tiki Practice Art 2:



I attempted to draw a full body for Tiki (this was long before Practice Art 1), and well...I just couldn't do it. I wanted to see how it'd look and it looks bad. ^^;; So after this art is when I went back to practicing heads a lot more.


Nowi Practice Art 4:



This is actually my most recent art right now. I attempted another full body art, and while it's not nearly as terrible as the Tiki one (or maybe it is?), I still can't do the body parts right. I guess I should just work on heads more or something...ugh...

[Xenomic]

Nowi was kinda used as a base again, but this was my attempt at a quick sketch (less than 10 minutes or so) of a head in an angled view, with some shading and heavier line art. Could be better of course, but it's not the world's worse I think. I've yet to read the Loomis books I have, nor either of the other books I have, and felt like doing a quick practice to see how I'd do the shading. Light source is from the left. I know my shading isn't exactly stellar either, but I think it's not TOO terrible...maybe.

[Xenomic]

Couple new ones~ Haven't been practicing enough as I should due to running like 4 projects but...





Bottom one is the newest one. I attempted to do another image of Nowi for the last thing, to see what I could do with the new techniques I learned. It's...a bit better than before? I'm not really sure...*sigh*

[Xenomic]

Oh me oh my~ *Dusts off topic* Been half a year? A bit long eh? Well, I've only recently started picking up spriting yet again (nothing on art since last time, since well....no motivation to do that still). Why now? Because I'm doing a little request for someone at the current time, in exchange for something, on DA.



It's just a head for now, and uses Mei-Fang (if you can't tell) as the base for that. Mei-Fang actually is a good reference for this character's height (only 1 inch shorter than this character), though having a bit of issues sorting out how the shoulders/arm should go. Once I get past that, the rest should be fairly simple to do, as the character's design is pretty basic. Pretty Ada Wong-ish actually.

The requester's character in question:

(click to show/hide)

So yeah! Just throwing this out there, since it's SOMETHING I suppose. *shrugs*

[Xenomic]

Still a rough draft. I've always had issues with legs and arms, so the arms being off is no surprise. Not sure how to handle the back nor butt, since I'm also not used to skin-tight anything (nor did I ever really dabble with the torso much in any of my art-related things). Once I get the rough draft of the arms/hands/legs done, I should be able to tidy up the rest of this. I think...just trying to get this done as quickly and efficiently as possible without making it look too bad for the person it's being made for. Who knows? Maybe after I finish Lynn here, I'll go back and actually finish that Lenna I was working on last year. ^^;;

[Xenomic]

Update to the first version. I think the back turned out nicely, and the breasts are finally situated (I think), both thanks to using Jam as a reference. But help! How to do arms and hands!? Even with using Jam for the left arm (Lynn's right arm), I don't think it turned out the way it's supposed to be. And I don't know if the butt is right too...may have to use Mei-Fang more for that...but that arm/hand! It's terrible looking right now! >_<

[Xenomic]

Taking some time to study some real-life arms, and then finding Lilica and using her as reference, I attempted to correct the left arm (character's right arm). Also attempted fixing up the hand...:

Near Max/Max Zoom:




Default zoom (so normal zoom):




Better or worse? I'm not sure since again, arms and hands are my bane. The other arm I will probably work on soon (and probably use Lilica again as a reference since she seems to be the better one for these arms). Will probably touch up on the torso later. Though now that I look at it, I'm not sure if the torso is properly placed or if where her chest is is too low on her body...hmm...


Oh, and the reference image I was using for my real-life image:

(click to show/hide)

Apparently I cannot translate RL stuff into pixel stuff. *Sigh*

[Xenomic]

So, since the Naruto site I was watching the episodes from is having issues for whatever reasons (140 episodes I watched in a row, my lord...), I decided to work on this a bit more, doing the legs this time (and fixing up the butt/back a bit more to be a bit more...in-line I suppose?). I think I have to readjust the bottom of the dress now since well...I THINK this is the right length for her legs, since she's supposed to be very close in terms of height to Mei-Fang there. Though not sure if the legs are right or if the body is right or what now. @_@;

Oh, and Lilica was used as reference for the legs, not Mei-Fang. I feel like Mei-Fang's legs are too thick for this character personally, and while Lilica is a scrawny little thing, I adjusted the width and whatnot accordingly to work with an adult and not a 14 year old, to the best of my abilities...

[Xenomic]

Back at this again after nearly a month of not doing anything. All that Naruto and whatnot. Ehehe...^^;




The hand is the main focus right now (I also rounded out the hip a bit more. Dunno if it's too much or not...), the rest of the body will wait until later. I'm still having issues getting the hand right, as right now it looks far too fat and now the arm looks too short...just what am I doing wrong here? T-T

This is being used as a reference on fixing things up before I do anything else, thanks to HCF for giving me some tips on this.

[Xenomic]

So hopefully this looks better now? I feel like the hand at least looks like a blasted hand now, but not sure if everything is in order. Maybe I shouldn't have taken up this request if it was going to be this rough, heh. x_x;

[ParanormalParanoia]

From what i see of her drawing shoudn't her, uh, assets be bigger?

[Xenomic]

Probably, though I'm still trying to fix everything up. I'm so rusty at this, and not that great, that it's taking a while to get everything up to speed. ^^;