A character I'm working on for some time now

[Digital]

Also my first post on this forum as well, so hi everyone!

I was/am searching for my own drawing style and remade this character in several styles using several drawing programs and was never really happy with the result until now, and I felt like sharing my main game character with you for some feedback. I was curious on how others would react on this character, and if you think I should continue in this style. I used Clip Studio Paint for this drawing.

My original file is made out of several layers to make animating a lot easier when using Spine, and that will be my next challenge to teach myself on how to do that. My goal would be to release a game someday in the future, and I do hope RPG Maker MV will help me with that, but it will need some more plugins for animations (like Victors Engine for RPG Maker VX Ace), but I'm sure they will come to RPG Maker MV as well.

Let me know what you guys think!

 

[Zebestian]

Oh, uh, wow, that's quite the character alright. I'm not really too much into the ins and outs of art but I gotta say, I do like the style. It does remind me of something but I don't really know what. Maybe some sort of fighting game...? Dunno, but I must say, I like the simplicity your style has although I can't say the same about her outfit. But that's just me. :D
I'd like to see some more characters in that style of yours. Curious to see how a guy would look like for instance. ^_^

 

[Digital]

Thank you. I will sure draw some more characters in the future and make sure to leave some of my work here as well, but first I need to test if I used enough layers for each moving part for animation, to prevent making the same mistakes in the future. The plan is to use images in these quality in RPG Maker for the images in the text windows and as battlers when encountering enemies.

Ingame the quality will probably be a bit lower depending on the resolution I decide to work in. The default battler animation for each pose is 3 frames, and that is not enough when I want to have a smooth animation, plugins will probably solve this for me in the future. And I also have to keep in mind that high resolutions and more frames could cause for some troubles with older hardware. And I still need to create the pixelart to be used on the maps and backgrounds. At least this will keep me busy for some time :3

 

[Wingedwolf]

looks like she may "bust" from excitement :D

 

[Amysaurus]

I meant to leave a comment earlier, but I didn’t get the chance to take a good look until now ^^

I think your character looks pretty good at the moment, but I would touch up a few things:
-Her upper chest/neck area has no shadow, and there should at least be one under her head.
-There should be a bit of a shadow underneath her bangs.
-Some areas under her clothing need at least a hint of a shadow - It’s most noticeable around her the side of her torso and her chest.
-There’s way too much highlight on the breasts. There shouldn’t be any highlight underneath her outfit, especially that close to a shadow, and the amount of emphasis on them makes them look like they’re seriously about to pop.

The color scheme you chose and overall proportions are pretty good, though I’m not crazy about her outfit design. It seems almost too complex for your drawing style :S



Keep up the good work - I'm looking forward to seeing more!

 

[Status Gear Entertainment]

I'm actually curious to know what programs you used for this. It's not flash is it?

 

[Digital]

Thanks for the critic Amy, I will try to work on my skills a bit more and have a good look at the image to improve the shadows a bit. I mostly just do this as a hobby, and never had any drawing lessons, so I will make lot's of mistakes.

And to Status Gear, I just used Clip Studio Paint for this picture (there is also software called Manga Studio, same software, but Clip Studio Paint gets updated more frequently according to some so I went with this). Many people seem to use it for Manga art and comics, and I love the tools. It's easy to create a custom palette, and there are many options in the tools. I use the Curve tool a lot, you can set up the thickness, even for the start and ending of a line so I am able to draw with even just a mouse and keyboard combination. I do have a Wacom Bamboo tablet, but for some reason my hand never goes exactly where I want to. Here is one of the youtube tutorials I watched to convince me into buying Clip Studio Paint. Link

 

[Status Gear Entertainment]

Thanks for the critic Amy, I will try to work on my skills a bit more and have a good look at the image to improve the shadows a bit. I mostly just do this as a hobby, and never had any drawing lessons, so I will make lot's of mistakes.

And to Status Gear, I just used Clip Studio Paint for this picture (there is also software called Manga Studio, same software, but Clip Studio Paint gets updated more frequently according to some so I went with this). Many people seem to use it for Manga art and comics, and I love the tools. It's easy to create a custom palette, and there are many options in the tools. I use the Curve tool a lot, you can set up the thickness, even for the start and ending of a line so I am able to draw with even just a mouse and keyboard combination. I do have a Wacom Bamboo tablet, but for some reason my hand never goes exactly where I want to. Here is one of the youtube tutorials I watched to convince me into buying Clip Studio Paint. Link

Right on! I recognized it from somewhere. I was looking at a Cintiq 22 hd touch, but I wanna wait until I got a place I don't need to move it from. ^u^

 

[Digital]

Did some updates on the shadows, fixed some minor colour errors, and removed the opening in the clothes on her side. And this is the result for now. I do think I keep the highlighting in there, and yes I know it isn't realistic that they pop out like that, I think it makes the character a bit more playful. I want to give the clothes a bit of a shiny feel to it. the red lines in her clothes should be a bit like in Tron, that's why I didn't use any shadows there.

There could be added some more shadows behind her hair, but I want to wait with that until I have done some animation on her. For weapons she will be using a sword and shield. The shield will be a device on her left arm that will be activated she holds her arm in front of herself in a protective way. The shield will pop out on one side and rotate all around so that it will look a bit like the inside of a camera lens. Sword will have some electronic parts in it as well to make it better than any normal swords and could be improved on her quests. So meet Ruby, the main character in my story!

 

[Macro]

Her twintails and eyes are cute, have to love the green/red combo. ^_^ The hair is really nicely shaded.

 

[Rise Evil]

Great design. But with an armour like this, I wonder if her element rates are 200% of total damage received from Spears, Sword and Arrows since she has less to cover. (Was just wondering, nothing much nothing less. And besides, she looks really cute ^^)

 

[Amysaurus]

Ah, I was meaning there was too much highlight on her actual chest, not the outfit, lol. Here's how I would tweak it:

There's still some emphasis there for that "playful" vibe, but now it's not quite so shiny. I think simplifying the side of her outfit helped out a lot, by the way. :)

 

[Lato]

I have never heard of that program but the art looks very good!

 

[Amysaurus]

It's a really nice one, if something like SAI isn't your thing. It's what I use, lol.

I didn't mention it before, but I like how you did the outlines, @Digital. They're rough, but consistent enough to give the impression that they're clean. It's a really neat effect :)

 

[Digital]

Thanks Amy, for your tips and will consider removing the highlights on her chest in the final version. Now the hard part has come trying to be able to create an animation with what I have so far to get known with Spine. I know what all the features are, but trying to find them the first time can be tricky. And thanks about the note about the clean lines as well, I like to start in a bit higher resolution and in this case went with a line thickness of 5 pixels. In the game the character will be smaller, and resizing the animated pictures it in the end will give it a smooth finish, but when working with it it's a lot easier to work with a sharp/rough picture with as less colours as possible for easy fixing and editing. Maybe my ways of doing things are a bit different compared to how others do it, but they seem to work for me ^u^

Thanks Lato for your support :3