Lamentable Nights Art

[marcien]

and this week brings yet another time-consuming critique session held in a dark classroom. seriously, it's hard to draw in dim light. perspective errors, anatomical errors, off-model, amongst many others, all the time.


and here we have, the three strays (i like them much, yes) dressed like they'll appear in a shoujo manga. inspired by granado espada's costumes and sound horizon.

[AYC]

I made some doodles. All of them are at least a month old, if I remember correctly, but I didn't get around to do much with any of them until today... instead of ahem, doing schoolwork.

From Oldest to Newest:


The lineart for this is from last year, and I actually had this colored a while ago, so... yeah.


Everyone's favorite cat/waiter panzer.


It's Lanette, back when I thought she had a ponytail instead of just short, messy hair. No idea how her lower body looks like, so I just guessed and gave her flashy colors everywhere. Here's a version I made with a semi-flashy background. It looks kind of like a bookmark. (... And photobucket makes it somewhat pixelly, huh.)


Sophia. I realize now that martia, Pictor and I seem to have drawn her with three different lengths of sleeves, whoa.

[Pictor]

@AYC: Holy crap. Everyone's so pretty. Lanette with a ponytail, huh? I'm liking it. A whole lot. Maybe when she grows a bit older.

[marcien]

here's your favourite batman, pictor.

[Pictor]

here's your favourite batman, pictor.

Aww, thanks!

[Pictor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cJe5v5lLKk



AH.

HA HA HA HA HA...

So I guess this would be one of those battles you can't win, and have to lose in order to progress the story.

Also, all the items you equipped on Jacket disappears with him. LOSER.

Alright, I'm off to bed.

[Pictor]

So I was like "This style should be quick, easy, and refreshing to draw with."

But then it turned out that it was actually rather frustrating. Oh well, it looks nice.

[marcien]

*curses at photobucket* Y U NO LIKE ME?





old stuff i forgot to upload. so old that m's pants are in the wrong colour.

[marcien]

An artist draws, regardless of the tools (or lack thereof) at hand.



autodesk sketchbook mobile free version. On my samsung galaxy ace android. With my ultra-fat fingers

Also, colour-picker fail. Apart from the eyes, everything else could be an error.

[SavviG]

An artist draws, regardless of the tools (or lack thereof) at hand.



autodesk sketchbook mobile free version. On my samsung galaxy ace android. With my ultra-fat fingers

Also, colour-picker fail. Apart from the eyes, everything else could be an error.

Wow, you can now draw on phones! What can't people do with a nowadays XD

[marcien]

savvi -- XDD it's good for when you can't find a seat on trains.

So I did the Pixiv expressions meme:

and i'm done with this. scratched out in-between crashes and renders.



rather amusing to draw expressions for an emotionless man.

and no, i can't draw "uke" properly. i get hand cramps there.

now you know how he looks like when hailey's around: "impatient" + "in front of something they hate"

now, where is yours, AYC? =3

[Pictor]

When I read up on AYC's WIP character at the wiki, the first thing I thought was "I have to draw this guy."

And then I ended up drawing some more.













My finishing thought at the end of this escapade was:

"Wow. We've really created a diverse range of characters."

[Sentrovasi]

Haha, they've all got their individual quirks, which is awesome.

And those are really awesome-looking. Lazarus is really lulzy. Haha. Lolzarus. You see what I did there.

And Threads has pins! Which would keep him in line with the whole TWEWY vibe I had going when I first conceived him. And I really liked how Cassius was done. M looks like a young vampire wannabe X3

And Martin here's really pulling off the weary old-timer look. I like it.

[Pictor]

And Threads has pins! Which would keep him in line with the whole TWEWY vibe I had going when I first conceived him. And I really liked how Cassius was done. M looks like a young vampire wannabe X3

Glad to hear I didn't mess him up too badly. I didn't really know how to draw him, besides the base features described in the wiki.

But I figured, since he's always collecting items on the go, he could be wearing anything at any given moment. Maybe Threads I drew just happens to be wearing those items at the moment. I simply thought of things that might have sentimental value and stuck it on him. Prayer beads, pins, hats... etc. And of course he has a side pack for misc. things (the pack itself could, I suppose, be an item as well).

While drawing Cassius I initially made his jaws too square. I mean, he's 20, right? No matter how sweet and innocent the fangirls like to paint him, physically he's a young adult. But then I thought "Oh right. It doesn't matter."

2000 year old demons can look like prepubescent little girls. What do I know?



If Mr. Chang bothered to keep himself groomed, I'll bet he'd have a few fans from his class himself.

[marcien]

photobucket is being an ass to me again.

hug-tackle1.jpg

@__@

[SavviG]

photobucket is being an ass to me again.

hug-tackle.jpg

@__@

AYC! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Omg, what a cute bear! （ ^（ェ）^）/ *Hello!

[Pictor]

Tried to draw some cartoony art.

[Pictor]

I did it.

http://megaswf.com/serve/1183026

Just a test. Press Z to start.

Requires flash.

[Sentrovasi]

That's awesome. Probably will want to fade people in and out so the transition's not that jarring and have both of them when they're talking to each other but that's brilliant. Would it be easy to input text and images? It would be, right?

[Pictor]

That's awesome. Probably will want to fade people in and out so the transition's not that jarring and have both of them when they're talking to each other but that's brilliant. Would it be easy to input text and images? It would be, right?

The whole thing reads from an XML file. The point is to make it as automated as possible, so when I'm finished with the "engine", there'd be no need at all to modify the code short of embedding the pictures files. It's how Flash works; in order to have everything packed into one single, handy .swf file, you embed all your assets before compilation. Currently, the parser is able to pick up dialogue text, discern between different scenes of conversation, discern between different "pages" of text, detect different speakers and show their portraits on either the left or right side, and project the name of the speaker into the little label. And of course, close the "cutscene" once all dialogue is finished within a scene.

As of now, I've no plans to show two portraits while speaking. There's simply too many variables (figuratively, not literal data members) when that happens. For example, under what circumstances would there be two speakers? Under what circumstance would there be only one speaker talking to the air? When talking to a random, unimportant NPC, there's no need to even show a portrait. It's easier if I just choose a style and go with it. I might consider it after getting everything running smoothly, but so far it'll be one portrait at a time. There's plenty of games that go with that style... including Ghost Trick, if I recall correctly. Plus, the current size of the window used in the showcase is a bit bigger than what I'd want. I'm going to be resizing the assets to fit with a smaller window eventually.

I will be adding smoother transitions though. Having characters suddenly appear and disappear is awkward and jarring, I can agree with you there. A list of future features include:

• Modify program so that it pulls character portraits from a sprite sheet rather than individual images. It's much neater and manageable that way. I can have certain indices of the sprite sheet match with certain "emotions" for convenient access. Say, [0] is "neutral", [1] is "happy", [2] is "upset"... etc. So the XML attribute "Ja0" would display an image of a poker-faced Jacket.
• Fade in the textbox when a scene first starts up. Fade out when scene ends.
• Transition animation when switching character portraits.
• Allow for different color text within a dialogue, for highlighting important terms.
• Special effects during dialogue, like shaking and flashes (the kind that Phoenix Wright games are saturated with).
• Sound effect queues to go with those effects

That's pretty much it. Every graphical object is still a placeholder for now. The dialogue boxes are simple, rectangular BitmapData that I fed into Flash's drawing function. I'll be replacing that with a cool graphic eventually. I might stick with the current, hard-shadow style of the portraits since it looks wicked (imo).