128 replies to this topic

[Green]

[Mariobro3828]

Umm...ok? Making indifferent smilies at character descriptions I see nothing wrong with does nothing to incline me to change them. I think the writing is fine. If you wanna take lines and provide changes to them, then be my guest, however I'm a rather busy person and I wish to finish this hack in my lifetime, so I will not be putting in hours of work into optimizing things most of the people I know see fine as is. And please don't tell me lacking writing means under the original game designer's standard of quality, because the response to that should be obvious. I'm one man, who has never considered a major in any kind of writing. I'm not making money off of this hack.

I see nothing wrong with yellow.

Honestly, if these little things that my obviously "untrained eyes" can't detect bother certain people enough to not play the hack, I really could care less.

My point is, if you want to give effective criticism, saying something is terrible is more or less going to piss the creator off rather than doing anything good. Try being more specific in your criticisms and actually state what is wrong with something, rather than just giving it an unapproving smiley. The latter does absolutely no good. I already went over this in the first post.

[Vamp]

[Mariobro3828]

Alright, first let me start by saying, thank you for taking the time to post that. That was very helpful, and I didn't take offense to any of it despite what you might have thought. The post had content, that's what I was looking for.

Second, let me restate: I made none of the mugs you critiqued. I simply re-applied the coloring to most of them, because believe it or not, they looked far shittier than the ones you see.

Third, after reading this...I quit. If I'm gonna make this hack, I'm going to have to get someone to do the mugs for me, because there's no way I can do better than the above even with hours of effort. I know where it must take everyone of you like 5-10 minutes to do these, it takes me several hours. The ratio's gotta be like 14:1, no exaggerating. I've never had an art class in my life. If I had an art IQ, it'd probably be in the low 30s, and that's being generous. If you think I can do better than those, it's not gonna happen. I can't do art. This is why I always avoided any form of visual art class. Because it would **** my gpa.

tl;dr I'm not an artist, the art that flows from my fingertips gives birth to stale, foul, wretched abominations that satan himself would find repulsive.

[PokemonRomVideos]

So just because you can't make mugs you're going to quit? I mean, seriously, I saw you were on FEU, so go find my art topic on there (I'm gypsy grifter on there BTW). I was probably one of the worst spriters ever when i started out. You don't need to take an art class to learn how to sprite. No one can really tell you how to make sprites, because different people do it differently. But just take some practice and eventually, you will get at least decent enough to make presentable mugs. I mean, playing the game right now is kinda hard to do, because the sprites are pretty bad, so its not enjoyable to look at :/ I mean, if you just take a little bit of time to try and make sprites you'll get better and better. Of course you're going to suck at first, but that's why you take peoples criticism and watch what other people do too. After about a week or two, you should at least be able to make some decent mugs. And then you can improve on the decent mugs over and over until they become good

[?????]

[Mariobro3828]

That's not the point. I thought my spriting standards were at least subpar, but now I can see (or I can't really see but I can be told) they're subabysmal.

@pokemonromvideos: It's not gonna happen. I have a particularly hard major, and I have aspirations to be successful in life, so I simply to do not have time to focus my energies into something the learning curve is obviously octuple for me than it is anywhere else.

Broken borders? I can't see them unless I zoom in. Bad shading? looks absolutely fine to me. Bad color choice? I can't see the flaws at all, and I even copied all the colors from existing FE7 mugs, so by that transitive logic the game creators must have made bad color choices. I guess we're beyond them now.

You see? There's something wrong with my art sense. I obviously lack what it takes to be a good spriter, and forcing myself to become so would take far more effort than it would be worth and I would lose my grade point in the process. I like to think I have decent priorities, so I'm not going to put my ability to sprite over my career.

Nightmare, text editing, event assembling, pallettes...they're all easy enough. This I cannot do.

[Fire Blazer]

HEY. Listen.

Few spriters ever get that good that fast.

Also, I'm in the same boat as you. I've never elected to take an art class, and I always did as little as I could in my elementary art classes. And in general, I suck at art. My creativity and imagination is limited and mostly stems from other sources (that is I get inspired by other art rather than come up with my own unique designs). I rarely sprite portraits myself, too, and I've been spriting for 4 years, because it is just that hard without the natural talent to know how to shade and what is realistic etc etc...

But, I didn't quit. What YOU should do, IMO, is find someone to help you either touch up your existing sprites, make new ones, or just do the best you can (without killing yourself or your time, because I take a couple hours to do a portrait usually, so anything longer than that probably means you're spending too much time). Once you've made that effort, there is nothing anyone can righteously say to you regarding the quality of your portraits, as you tried your best. People will still bitch when they compare it to MK404's hack, but the actual HACKING, which is more important than the graphics, will give them reason to focus on the gameplay of the game more than the design of the game.

[Mariobro3828]

Alright, I'm going to try this. But I'm going to need some help because I don't know where to start. Since Mark was basically a Jaffar clone, we decided he would be better off not showing his mouth and changing up his hair a bit. My friend drew this up for me. Now, as you can see, the hair shading needs a lot of work...but I don't know what to do, anything I try just makes it look worse because I'm a terrible artist. How do I fix that?

You mentioned something about saturation...what would I change to fix that? Consider me art stupid. I can visualize what these terms mean, but I can't apply them in context.

How's the border on this?

Also, ignore the fact that the other frames are not fixed, I will fix them when his changes are finalized.

Jesus Christ I feel like I should just hire someone.

[Fire Blazer]

Hey, the portrait ain't that bad, so don't be so hard on yourself. Doing custom shading and stuff is too hard... most people are like me and stick to splicing. If you haven't been introduced, it's just taking two or more portraits and sticking parts together as they fit, and touching up the parts where we stuck'm together. The trick to a good splice is to use lots of parts so in the end, it's difficult to tell what is what, and it looks like an original portrait.

So ultimately, stick to the basics and the fundamentals, and way from the more art-oriented aspects of spriting, and you'll be fine.

[Vamp]

[Fire Blazer]

The most recent one, the Jaffar-esque one, in comparison to the others, is not that bad.

All relative, Vamp.

Compared to most spriters, I am an amazing battle spriter.

Compared to BwdYeti, I am nothing. o_o

[Vamp]

I'd have to see your battle sprites to confirm or deny that

[Fire Blazer]

I'm pretty sure you don't because everything looks bad compared to BwdYeti

[Vamp]

[Mariobro3828]

I'll do what I can, but I can't promise it'll be pretty to experienced/talented eyes.

[Fire Blazer]

Sorry for getting your topic off-topic Mariobro >_>

@Vamp I meant like, compared to the typical noob battle spriter who pillow shades and uses weird colors and terrible splices and crap. Not to the better spriters, which don't make up the majority of spriters.

[Mariobro3828]

lol, it's cool. Tbh, if I could sprite or draw well, I'd probably be making flash animations right about now.

[Fire Blazer]

You know, there are more people who can't draw than people who can

So hopefully more people are understanding of decent graphics than people who are like "wtf these graphics suck compared to X amazing graphics by X amazing artist/spriter"

[Qtaru]

For what it matters, I'm more concerned about the story an FE game/hack tells, than how well done the graphics are. Of course, graphics are still important, but to put it in perspective, I:

Will enjoy a hack with a good storyline but bad graphics.
Will not enjoy a hack with good graphics but bad storyline.

I'm just saying that more than anything, I care about characters who have depth.

If you do want feedback on the portraits, I will say the thing that bugs me the most is the saturation... the intensity of the color makes them sort of stick out like a sore thumb.