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Knight in Sour Armour

After putting my PC to sleep, I opened up VX, only to realise that the demo I had been working on failed to load area data. Which means that all the maps I've been working on are now gone. >< All this in the midst of going through a pretty shitty time ( I never curse, so yeah.. ). So all the maps I displayed in an earlier blog are gone. On the brighter side of things, I got my Wacom tablet and have been practising some portraits/illustration techiniques with Clip Studio Paint Pro ( weird name, but that's Japanese software for you. I'm certain it was the same software used by the artists who did the Fire Emblem pre-Awakening art. )




Fan art I'm busy with, using the software. One day, I want to make art like that, without using a base to work from. I can get away with it at fan-art level, but as for original works...




I may or may not use that menu portrait.

While making Tristy was easy enough, getting other portraits to match the size/scale is bloody hard. I've tried doing Ianna something like six times and failed every time. Not to mention I want to go with dynamic poses for the menu gfx. But until I've resolved that situation, I'll probably be sticking to the pre-pixel portraits ( read: FE edits ;_; ) Said pixel art portraits was going well until Lance came along and screwed up everything. Now I'm debating whether or not to scrap the pixel portraits entirely and just go with hi-res art ( which is within my grasp now; the only reason I took the pixel route was that I had no tablet ).


Pre-tablet portraits. Miserable little sod, that Lance. Just look at the size of his portrait compared to Tristy and Ianna. The two perfectly sum up my current mood... *boots Lance in the behind* And I've been debating over changing portraits for the last three days as well.

*sigh* God, I hate this heavy of heart feeling. It really saps my gam-mak drive dry. All this on my long weekend. I was fully intending to dedicate it to my gam-mak, but I haven't really been the same since the passing of my 15-year old cat...

Oh well. Live to gam-mak another day, that's what I say. I could use with a bit of advice for the portraits too. ;_;

Posts

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Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I'm not a pixel person so I can't really help out in that regard even if I WAS in a position to give any real advice, but I can say that there are a few uneven curves around some of the armor that makes them look wonky. Lance's pauldrons were the first that caught my eye. Also, speaking of Lance, how old is he? Because his body is more visible compared to Tristian and Ianna, he looks very young when placed next to those two. Like, 16 years young.

There's also this thread going on. It's a pretty good thread.

Sorry to hear about your cat. I'm going to go through that myself soon with my 14 year old dog. If you need to, don't hesitate to take some time off of everything. It'll help your brain recover a lot quicker. Maybe work on a side project?
I'm so sorry about your cat ._. Losing pets is always a heartbreak. I've lost a few dogs and I still have a hard time letting go.

I may or may not use that menu portrait.

Use it. It's badass.
What's with that error to load area data? I thought that could only happen if the PC shuts down instantly while the editor is open. Eitherway, I always recommend to have several back ups of every mayor project you work with. One inside the computer(in case something like what I just said happens) and another one in an external Drive, in case something happens to your computer itself.
You would probably get really upset if you lost your entire game.

By the way, that Tristian portrait for the menu looks amazing *-*.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Bugger re the maps, you can't revert your PC to an earlier state and see if that rectifies the problem? Sometimes it's something as simple as a corrupt dll and a revert goes back to an earlier copy. I assume you've grabbed the maps and tried to open them in a new project?

So sorry about the set back, and you have again my condolences for your cat, but I hope the new artist expression helps alleviate the shittyness.,

So sorry to hear about your cat. :( *hugs* And your game file. Do you have a tech-savvy friend that could help you?

One thing you might find helpful for the portraits is studying anatomy—there's some good tutorials on Deviantart. But for example, Tristy's shoulders are three heads wide, which makes her look like an adult, whereas Lance and Ianna have only two, maybe two-and-a-half, which makes them look like children (their larger eyes only add to that, too). What I do when that happens is I just stretch the portrait until the main parts are the correct size, and then I draw over it and redo it.

I love Tristy's new portrait, by the way. She always looks badass.


Practice sketches. Still need to finalise some things. Tristian is meant to be around 6ft tall now, so I need to convey it in a way by lengthening her upper body. Her head is still a bit small though. And I'm still finding it hard to do justice to her. She's supposed to be a very beautiful woman, sort of like a model stuck in a suit of armour...


Tristian's menu portrait comes from this image. Several details are still missing.

Lance is supposed to be around 18 or so, but he looks 12 in that portrait. ><
janussenpre
愛・おぼえていますか
1274
If you can't compartmentalize, then you should take a breather. That sinking feeling in your heart could influence your work in either a positive or negative way but you can only find out if you have the necessary drive to get back to game making, which sounds like you're lacking at the moment. There's nothing wrong with taking a little time off to rejuvenate your spirits. The time that you take to reflect on your disconcertion could very well be molded into something new and inspiring once you find yourself motivated to work again.

I also wouldn't sweat the maps. You just got your tablet (congrats! welcome to our "elite" club *joking*), so use that as your excuse to go back to what you've done by hand and mouse and revamp it into something exponentially better.

author=Luchino
I could use with a bit of advice for the portraits too


Lastly... concerning your portraits... Your menu sketch is looking good. The pose is dynamic and the picture has balance. One thing that I notice quite often with newer artists... is that their usage of pen widths is often... all over the place. If you're going to rough sketch something for the sake of conceptualization, I often find it useful to use a thin brush, pencil or G pen. Rough sketches are meant to be scratchy and unrefined. When you're dealing with lineart however (like above), you need to be wary of what pen/brush sizes you use. The brush size that you used for Tristian's cape is thicker than the brush you used for her armor and scabbard. In this case, the brush sizes should be universal. Lineart should also be very clean since its the precursor to base coloring. You need to make sure stray lines are erased, intersecting lines don't bleed over and shading is consistent. You have hatching on the glove of Tristian's right hand, but you also have a big block of black under her chin. Personally, I'd nix the black spot and save that for the actual coloring phase.

Lastly, (and I'm not sure if Clip Studio Paint Pro has this) you should change pens/brushes for lines that taper off (I personally like using G pens). If you look at the lines under Tristian's left armpit (for her cape), the ends of the lines thin out. This technique should be applied to the folds in Tristian's waist tunic, the tresses of her hair as well as the shaped creases on her pauldrons. You applied this concept to Tristian's right hand, but not her left.

Anyhoo, sorry to nitpick. I figured you'd probably want some artist feedback after all. Regardless, you're doing a great job. I hope you're able to shake off the cloud over your head soon.

Looking forward to your future works! :)
Thanks, janussenpre. I'll bear those tips in mind ( Clip Studio does have a G-Pen too, but for some reason I ended up using the Turnip brush ) for future works. I might use the break to redesign some characters and might do a script/plot overhaul. I just won't be working in the editor for once.

Part of my bad mood could stem from the fact that I feel oppressed at work too...
janussenpre
愛・おぼえていますか
1274
That's a shame. :( I'm not sure what kind of work you do, but considering how much time the average person spends working... feeling oppressed on a daily basis can have a horribly detrimental effect on your life.

I love my job. I work with little kids everyday. Normally this love would motivate me to do lots of work for FFD since I'm often in a positive mood. Too bad this isn't actually the case since the hours are long. I wake up at 6 am, go to work, leave work by 3 pm (if I'm lucky and I don't have faculty meetings), take a nap, wake up and grade homework, lesson plan, and then go to sleep and repeat. Some weeks I find it incredibly difficult to allocate time to game art... and when I do, I often lose motivation since it feels more like a second job as opposed to much needed recreation.

Anyhoo, I hope things get better for you soon.
Oh, I'll bear it all right. I wake up at 6am, work until 5pm, get home at around 5:30pm and by then, I'm normally too demotivated to work on anything apart from sketching stuff on my Wacom. >< But that's why weekends exist, which is like a blessing in disguise.

I wish I could be doing the things I love, but as they say, you can't have everything in life.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
I personally prefer that if a dev is burnt out, he or she take a rest, and take as long as necessary. I've always believed that good games are made by happy devs.
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