Hatsya's jRPG-ish art dump
I've been a lurker for ages here in Polycount, I have decided this time to show off some of my craft.
Influenced by the art-style of the ill-received anime-ish spinoff of Wizardry, which is Class of Heroes (jp. Totomono/Ken to Mahou to Gakuen Mono), and seemingly resemble Level-5(Inazuma 11, Little Battler eXperience/Danball Senki)'s Gundam AGE, I decided to present my take, and they are for the game I've been conceptualizing last 2007.
These characters belong to my long-conceptualized web animation/game concept called "NetGameSaga" last 2007. I made it in response to the popularity of the "online game universe"-themed anime like .hack//, Philippines' RPG Metanoia, the recent anime named Sword Art Online.
The series is all about a new online game, that is managed by a good Artificial Intelligence system, but unlike most of the online RPGs portrayed in media that are played using virtual reality, it is plainly played with keyboard and mouse. The game is called No-ah Online, an anime-themed sci-fi fantasy online action roleplaying game, which seemed to play more of Nexon's Vindictus, or comparable to GOD EATER, Monster Hunter 4 due to its playing style, such that you don't just watch your character cinematically pull off the skills, you get to control them in real-time.
The online game world lets you play as humans, cat people, cyborgs, dog-like dwarves, any humanoid race that you may think of. The first half of the game will revolve on lives of typical teenage players who are balancing their offline, and online lives.
I'll be working on this via Blender 2.6+, and on Unity Engine.
So, let's get to the whole game universe's characters, and many of them are middle-schoolers (1st year high school, in Philippine school system, Grade 7 in most school systems)
NOTE: To avoid confusion of characters, the art is really the offline world characters, dressed up as their online game counterparts.
Henry Kanlaon is a son of a game developer who made the No-ah Online game. In real life, he's a lone average student who tends to write more about his father's game lore under the tree in his school, but when he gets home, he plays as one of the game moderators supervising the game. Though he was assigned to play as a typical character to observe the game's behavior. Henry is a loner, a serious person, and a bit hesitant to do things, unless it is of his forte (anime fandom, game issues, computers).
In the online world, he goes by the name of Hatsuya (corruption of the star name, Hatsya). His regular avatar's job is a Fencer, and often seen wearing bright yellow vest, and black short shorts, because he believes that if he has more clothing, he feels slow. The odder reason why he chose his avatar to wear such outfit because, it could be a slight suggestion of his effeminate attitude, or he is really roleplaying as a weak character in order to develop side-stories to support the game as a multimedia franchise.
Hatsumi Kalantiao is a daughter of a Japanese fashion designer who even supported her cosplaying stints, in spite of her father's objections due to ruining the normality. She's also at the same school as Henry, and was even one of the endorsers of the game during an anime convention, three months prior the game's story. Hatsumi is bubbly, determined, and willing to yell (and imagine hitting someone with a frying pan) at someone at wrongdoings, even petty ones.
Her online game counterpart is also named Hatsumi, and her in-game job class is a Martial Idol, which lets her buff her fellow party members with her singing prowess, and then kick some enemy butt. The reason why her character tends to wear short shorts because in real life, she can't be any character that have revealing parts, hence she's putting all of it on her avatar.
Mikhail "Eisen" Salonga is also an average student, yet proud Japanese anime fanatic in the same school as Henry's. During his free time, he can be seen drawing weapon designs on any paper he gets his hand on. He's a procrastinating teenager, and tends to ask help and answers from Henry, Hatsumi, and to any schoolmate before classes.
In-game, he plays as Eisen, a Castlancer, which is basically a spear-inclined magic knight, and likes to don anything black, and red.
Actually, the main character is an average boy who sells fresh bread at dawn, but isn't drawn yet.
Influenced by the art-style of the ill-received anime-ish spinoff of Wizardry, which is Class of Heroes (jp. Totomono/Ken to Mahou to Gakuen Mono), and seemingly resemble Level-5(Inazuma 11, Little Battler eXperience/Danball Senki)'s Gundam AGE, I decided to present my take, and they are for the game I've been conceptualizing last 2007.
These characters belong to my long-conceptualized web animation/game concept called "NetGameSaga" last 2007. I made it in response to the popularity of the "online game universe"-themed anime like .hack//, Philippines' RPG Metanoia, the recent anime named Sword Art Online.
The series is all about a new online game, that is managed by a good Artificial Intelligence system, but unlike most of the online RPGs portrayed in media that are played using virtual reality, it is plainly played with keyboard and mouse. The game is called No-ah Online, an anime-themed sci-fi fantasy online action roleplaying game, which seemed to play more of Nexon's Vindictus, or comparable to GOD EATER, Monster Hunter 4 due to its playing style, such that you don't just watch your character cinematically pull off the skills, you get to control them in real-time.
The online game world lets you play as humans, cat people, cyborgs, dog-like dwarves, any humanoid race that you may think of. The first half of the game will revolve on lives of typical teenage players who are balancing their offline, and online lives.
I'll be working on this via Blender 2.6+, and on Unity Engine.
So, let's get to the whole game universe's characters, and many of them are middle-schoolers (1st year high school, in Philippine school system, Grade 7 in most school systems)
NOTE: To avoid confusion of characters, the art is really the offline world characters, dressed up as their online game counterparts.
Henry Kanlaon is a son of a game developer who made the No-ah Online game. In real life, he's a lone average student who tends to write more about his father's game lore under the tree in his school, but when he gets home, he plays as one of the game moderators supervising the game. Though he was assigned to play as a typical character to observe the game's behavior. Henry is a loner, a serious person, and a bit hesitant to do things, unless it is of his forte (anime fandom, game issues, computers).
In the online world, he goes by the name of Hatsuya (corruption of the star name, Hatsya). His regular avatar's job is a Fencer, and often seen wearing bright yellow vest, and black short shorts, because he believes that if he has more clothing, he feels slow. The odder reason why he chose his avatar to wear such outfit because, it could be a slight suggestion of his effeminate attitude, or he is really roleplaying as a weak character in order to develop side-stories to support the game as a multimedia franchise.
Hatsumi Kalantiao is a daughter of a Japanese fashion designer who even supported her cosplaying stints, in spite of her father's objections due to ruining the normality. She's also at the same school as Henry, and was even one of the endorsers of the game during an anime convention, three months prior the game's story. Hatsumi is bubbly, determined, and willing to yell (and imagine hitting someone with a frying pan) at someone at wrongdoings, even petty ones.
Her online game counterpart is also named Hatsumi, and her in-game job class is a Martial Idol, which lets her buff her fellow party members with her singing prowess, and then kick some enemy butt. The reason why her character tends to wear short shorts because in real life, she can't be any character that have revealing parts, hence she's putting all of it on her avatar.
Mikhail "Eisen" Salonga is also an average student, yet proud Japanese anime fanatic in the same school as Henry's. During his free time, he can be seen drawing weapon designs on any paper he gets his hand on. He's a procrastinating teenager, and tends to ask help and answers from Henry, Hatsumi, and to any schoolmate before classes.
In-game, he plays as Eisen, a Castlancer, which is basically a spear-inclined magic knight, and likes to don anything black, and red.
Actually, the main character is an average boy who sells fresh bread at dawn, but isn't drawn yet.
Replies
It's really hard to say anything with the information we have other than that I can tell it's a boy and a girl and it kind of looks like anime.
Drawn via PaintToolSAI v1.1.0.
This is why some or most anime-related art can't survive here. I may quit posting about this, as I'm trying to build a jRPG (THAT'S NOT TO LEVEL AT FINAL FANTASY QUALITY, because final fantasy is losing its jRPG touch).
This. Absolutely. I am not trying to be negative, but your responses to the said critiques we rent very positive either. People like to give critiques to people who are patient, willing to accept the critique and apply it to the work. They don't want to type out a paragraph or more and do a paint over on someones work to help them if they are going to give a short, curt, cold response. As for a critique, I actually rather loathe the style as well, but coming from a artists standpoint, your shading on the character's legs makes the character seem more flat than 3D. You use one large stroke of the same tone. I know that is the style, but look towards the ankles of the characters, the shadowing covers the whole leg, which would normally (with where I can see your light source coming from) receive some sort of highlight, giving it quite a flat appearance. As for craftsmanship, its clean and reads well.
Also, I wouldn't make enemies users here, depending on your field, they could possibly be your coworkers and/or boss some day. Good artists can make solid art, but to become a great artist, one must accept and apply criticism when it should be accepted and applied.
The costumes are very mundane for MMO avatars. For the most part they look like modern street clothes. When I think of Sci-Fi/Fantasy JRPG characters I think of outlandish garments with lots of leather straps, buckles, and zippers. What about armor? These kids don't look battle ready in the slightest.
Just because it's "anime style" doesn't mean the rendering style has too be so bland. Get some contrast and hue variation in there! Take a look at this character from Radiant Hisoria, for example:
Also, Phantasy Star Universe/Portable, GhostX, and God Eater were my influence, where you don't really have armor, but instead you have some sort of invisible shielding that renders you invulnerable at certain thresholds.
^ One of my inspirations were the art from Class of Heroes 2 (2009, Acquire, ZeroDiv) when it comes to shading.
Some of my fellow anime art friends think of my shading style almost close to Gundam Age:
In drafting these characters, you've assembled a set of symbols without understanding the subject's underlying structure. It doesn't suffice to say "that's just the style." It's not. In anime, even hugely simplified anatomy is based on real muscle groups. Learning them isn't optional.
Example:
Same goes for lighting. Mimicking the placement of dark spots in other anime will never teach you how light behaves. Even worse, it will teach you to excuse inconsistencies without intent. The only similarity I can see between your shading and that example is the number of tones per material. But studying Gundam won't fill the gap; you need to study light in the real world to render it convincingly.
You've replied to this thread five times without a single art update. I don't know why you ask for critique if you don't intend to apply it. Armor or no, your character designs are far too mundane when you consider the fact they are avatars for a game within the game and must contrast the characters' "real world" apparel.
Mundane outfits are deliberate, and relevant to the story, because many of them are starting off as Lv1s or Lv10s. On Eisen's case, he'd rather have a simple black jacket without pockets.
As for the new sketch, it's my attempt to combine a hoodie, cycling outfit and with supposedly a jersey top, and my attempts to design weapons.
(Inspiration: Haseo's Xth form from .hack//Roots, and Charlotte from Samurai Shodown)
first two are fine, the third guy comes off very bland - black pants, black jacket, black shoes, blehhhh.
In my game's universe, there should be alot of clothing styles there, which some spiky belt-ridden clothes do require monster skulls, and some money to get one, while the mundane ones are easier to purchase.
From my friend's standpoint, I even asked him if I put pockets in his jacket, he find it bad, especially his character is supposed to be a spearman with magic in the in-game game. At some point, I might lay alot of neon lights, and give 'em some armor.
I think anime is awesome but not bland anime with no history and development to the characters.
Thats a fantastic character concept, use it as inspiration. It tells me who this person is and it is great composition without being too much. I instantly get a notion that this is some kind of royal ninja assassin that you dont want to mess with. Think about who these people are and act accordingly. Saying they are level 1's is just a way of saying "I'm creatively lazy".
Also, put your character's concepts in poses that dictate their character. Itll help you figure out who they are better.
Justin made a great point earlier. Sure some people can't appreciate the style and that's fine (personally I prefer anime style to a lot of the 3d game art style I see - it's colorful and imaginative). They aren't criticizing it because it's anime. Ask yourself what you are looking for? Are you trying to argue about hurt feelings or do you want Polycount's advice? This is simply not the best place for this style of art so it gets ignored.
These are my favorite forums for posting 2d art:
www.conceptart.org/forums/
http://community.imaginefx.com/forums/
They might give you more attention, but they will also agree about the anatomy issues. Another thing: look at the refs you posted. Better anatomy, better line weight variation, much better use of color than your black boots guy, more dynamic poses and composition. Hope this helps.
then perhaps put some trim along the jacket or something similar to the character it's inspired by. Nobody is asking you to trim it in neon or put crazy spikes all over it. Do some research on modern fashion, you can't hide behind the "this is a JRPG" defense because Japanese video game clothing design are super fashion conscious.
http://www.autodestruct.com/thumbwar.htm
"Anime" is no different than any other sort of drawing/illustration. It comes in a ton of different styles with a huge amount of variation, and all of it uses the same principles and techniques as anything else that makes pictures by making marks on stuff. There is a drastic difference between your stuff and the things you used for inspiration.
I can tell what they are, and they may very well work for your game. But in that event, they'll be relying mostly on the rest of the game to work, because their design and execution right now isn't particularly interesting or informative. It seems you've put a lot of thought into who these people are, but keep in mind - that's what you know about them. What do we as the viewer know about them - and if we don't know enough, are we at least interested enough to want to find out?
My advice to the OP is that you focus your studies on specific artists and understand what they do as artists. While I disagree with the wording most people have here of it being "unprofessional", there's truthfully no point doing "anime style" since that (imo) is a categorization that is flawed. If you study the art of Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo and compare that to the stylized drawings of video game concept designer Toshiyuki Itahana, that alone highlights that "anime style" is generally as meaningless as "3d style". Most importantly, you need to start with gesture drawing and real life drawing since it's a fundamental skill for all artists, anime or not. It may sound boring, but in reality it's a fundamental for all artists to understand how the body should move and what poses humans strike and what meanings those have for the viewer.
While studying the fundamentals of anatomy and human form, I advise looking into specific Japanese artists who appeal to your tastes. Study what gestures they use and what makes them cool. I also advise studying animation and specific animators in order to observe their composition. Animation is a fundamental example of why "anime" is heavily gesture based, so I recommend you buy a gengashuu (key frame book or lit. "original picture book") and study those gestures. (For example http://www.amazon.co.jp/REDLINE%E5%8E%9F%E7%94%BB%E9%9B%86-%E5%B0%8F%E6%B1%A0-%E5%81%A5/dp/4047269328 )
My recommended list of artists to study and a link to either their animation reels or their personal illustrations:
Hiroyuki Imaishi (Animator)
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Yoshinari Yoh (Animator and Painter / Illustrator)
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Sushio (Animator) ( [ame="
Atsushi Nishigori (Illustrator) (Character Designer for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann)
(Note : Just in time after comic con, I'll share art all four of these artists (and more) did based on american comic heroes. http://vanishingtrooper.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/superhero2-artbook-by-gainax-and-friends/ )
Tetsuya Nishio (animator)
( http://www.catsuka.com/player/mad_Tetsuya_Nishio_3 )
Tadashi Hiramatsu (Animator and Illustrator) (His sketch website is down, which is a shame since he's a very good gestural based illustrator. Personal Blog http://tempo01.blog76.fc2.com/ , Animation reel
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Takeshi Koike ( Directed, animated, and did a ton of work on his debut film redline, also animated the opening sequence to samurai champloo )
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I could keep going and going, but you all probably get the picture now. If you look at ANY of those animations, it shows the importance of gesture when it comes to illustrating animated characters. A careful and precise knowledge of anatomy is also important (unlike what prior comments may state). Look an analyze the art of your personal favorite artists and try to understand what makes what they do cool. Lastly, focus on being a good artist FIRST, and then focus on doing simplistic drawings. "Anime" is no different than doing a stylized American animation character, and for the reason I would also recommend the book Drawn to Life by Walt Stanchfield ( [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961"]Amazon.com: Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures (9780240810966): Walt Stanchfield, Don Hahn: Books[/ame] ) which has (personally) been very useful when it comes to understand what you are drawing!
I'm not sure if this was helpful, but I hope it was!
The gesture thing is huge, with any type of illustration or character art, but particularly if you're going to be using a style that relies more on lines and shapes than heavily painted/rendered images. Even beyond the body, motion plays a huge part in the fashion/design/shapes of a character as a whole, something I'd say the OP's work could really benefit from.
brilliant understanding of perspective and weight (of which are transferable to other character and drawing styles)
A new character in the works, and this time, with gesture drawing (stickman mode) provided.
For anime-ish hairstyling reasons, I even included curves on the gesture layer too.
BTW, app used: EasyPaintTool SAI 1.1.0.
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The best way to build up your muscle memory on the fundamentals is by doing 30 second and 1 minute gesture poses. Do those for an hour in the morning and use that in combination with life drawing classes and you will slowly start to learn new things and apply them to your drawing style.
http://www.posemaniacs.com/thirtysecond
Really good site for doing gesture poses at home.
You can keep going with your art now, and do it as a hobby. But if your truly want to succeed and become a better artist faster, you need to take life drawing seriously.
Note: Apps I have are SAI, GIMP and Photoshop. Hmmm...
Anyway many many many many digital artists do their block out, and rough detail via traditional and then use digital to clean things up in the inking and colouring stage.
If you do want to look into getting a tablet perhaps for the sake of it, and you don't have the money for higher end tablets, I'm using a trust flexi tablet that only cost me £20 including postage.
It'd probably make a good first tablet, cheap portable and the pen is a nice shape.
Though be warned, if you decide to go with tablet, it can take a while to get used to the tablet. a few years ago me and a collage teacher vs'd each other in drawing a person, my teacher only ever using traditional I beat her hands down.
I´ve read a couple times about the 1000 or maybe 10000 hours theory: You only will learn after having practicing this amount of time.
My suggestion is draw in pencil 10 drawings. Then get the best ones and post. Get some feedback and do it again.
Don´t waste your time trying to paint them now.
Maybe do one month just drawing and ask feedback of them, then after that do one month painting your best drawings (get feedback of your painting). After that start over again...you will see progress. Don´t start from the end.
You already got more feedback than most people get. Use it! Good luck
I'd like to draw my first teen character in both jRPG anime style and with some realist.
[A 2009 Rider Kick figure drawing attempt]