Character design: Milca

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tepples
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by tepples »

At scales like this (1px = 25mm), mitten hands are unavoidable because you can't fit four distinct fingers into four pixels. But at least make a suggestion of a thumb.

I'll need some time to look over these pics and see what details to change, as well as expected width of a head side-to-side vs. front-to-back. I might have to strip her down and refine the underlying "doll base", as some pixel artists call it.
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cpow
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by cpow »

tepples wrote:At scales like this (1px = 25mm), mitten hands are unavoidable.
I realize that. I just didn't want that knowledge to quelch my initial reaction since my initial reaction was "amputee" -- but I dumbed down my response to "mittens" and then decided that wasn't helpful so edited my response to include "amputated". I believe the appearance of amputation is not what you're after...
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Krill
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by Krill »

Haha, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind, but it does look a little bulky.
I thought I'd try to fix it quickly but it still looks a little stubby.
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tepples
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by tepples »

cpow wrote:I believe the appearance of amputation is not what you're after...
You'd be correct. Though characters in some of my works resemble high leg amputees, this is not one of them. And I don't really feel like writing about hand amputees because fine manipulators (especially the opposable thumb) are a big part of what distinguishes human-type characters from more "animal" characters. One might justify a mitten hand as an oven mitt, but then the flipped version (the character's other hand that doesn't have a mitt on it) would need a hand.

tl;dr: Mind the thumb.
Denine
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by Denine »

Tokumaru's edit is superior, IMO.
Also, "Milca" sounds awfully familiar(but it is a nice touch, if was intended).
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by tepples »

User "Conejo Pescador" in a Discord server for Cyanide & Happiness fans (of all places) made fan art
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darryl.revok
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by darryl.revok »

tepples wrote:There are practical problems with asymmetric highlighting on a sprite that's going to be flipped.
I kind of feel like this is placing too much importance on something that people won't notice (or care about) and sacrificing something that does make a noticeable visual difference on account of it.

I've gone through this thought process before, and decided that at the end of the day, nobody but me is ever going to care that the highlight might reverse sides. It's like when a character faces the other way, their handedness changes. How many NES games use the space, and the artist manhours, to create a version of the sprite tiles, and all animations, which face the opposite direction and have the weapon in the correct hand?

I feel like NES gamers can forgive limitations of the system. Or limitations that come along with keeping your work in a feasible scope.

To me, avoiding highlights because they will reverse sides would be almost like deciding not to let SMB3 levels scroll vertically because doing so is going to cause attribute glitches on the side of the screen. For those of use who did notice, we didn't really even care.

I think the highlights help a lot, but you could always put them at the top anyway to avoid the issue. Even that doesn't technically make sense though when your character's position in relation to a light source would change. But again, it's not going to matter to the audience.

BTW, I do like the character, in particular her costume design. Is that a cookie?
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by tepples »

darryl.revok wrote:BTW, I do like the character, in particular her costume design. Is that a cookie?
Yes, it's a cookie. She's supposed to represent the player character in the idle game Cookie Clicker.

I'm inclined to agree with not caring about highlights and horizontal flips with respect to Milca. But I know Kitty from Hello Kitty World has separate sprites for facing left and right to keep the bow in the right place. So do characters wearing black shirts and hats with a yellow "P" emblem in another game; it takes care not to turn them into "Q".

As for vertical flips in another character design of mine, I'll have a reply in another topic.
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gauauu
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by gauauu »

tepples wrote:. So do characters wearing black shirts and hats with a yellow "P" emblem in another game; it takes care not to turn them into "Q".
I discovered that the hard way trying to add said character to Super Homebrew War. I vowed never to make a character with a letter or words on their clothes for that very reason.
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Kasumi
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by Kasumi »

Dee Jay cheated death in this regard:
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Re: Character design: Milca

Post by tepples »

"MANTIS" was tried first, but Capcom didn't want to spend CHR ROM on storing both "MANTIS" and "MAИTIƧ" versions of Dee Jay's costume.
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