anime hair

After looking at several anime characters, I thought Alisha's hair looked a little boring in comparison to real anime characters, so I decided to make the highlights in her hair more detailed. I did a quick job at it, so I might have some parts shaded incorrectly. I think the highlights on the left pony tail should be swapped around with the stronger highlight on the bottom.

Here is an update I made. Any feedback?

My first thought wasn't about the hair but instead: Where are the knees?

DaMN! Look at those LEGS!

Your drawing is looking great aside for the legs but I guess you just did that part quickly since it wasn't the focus of what you wanted to do with it. The hair shading looks great.

The reason for the legs is that's the way her legs are drawn in the sprites, but it does look goofy when the rest of her body is all detailed. I'll try to make her legs look halfway between realistic legs and her sprite-style legs.

Fixed the legs.

So it's a leg fetish game like bayonetta?

The hair shading is definitely more alive in your second go. I think it looks great.

There's still something with the legs. It's like it's trying to impose a frog perspective without the character actually being in that angle. I know there's a certain style to it, but it might help to think how calves and chins would be rotated in that stance.

I think the hair looks fine in either post.

Besides the fact that her legs are much longer than her torso and head combined, her ankles are thicker than her thighs which is why she looks freaky in this pic.

You guys realize that now she looks way different from how she looks in-game.

You realize that now she looks way better from how she looks in-game.

Something about that left (her right) pigtail coming out further than the one on the right really started to annoy me, and I made it to where it's much closer to the other side. A shadow could probably be added under the elbow and the hair would now look better if it was shiniest in the middle, but I don't even know if you like it.

The in-game image...the arms seem too short...

With straight arms, your hands should go past your crotch. With bent arms, maybe hip level.

I do like the hair.

I thought the tubular legs fit the style you'd started with just fine, but ask for an opinion on a forum and get 100 opinions. ;P

Added a night sky to the picture. I think the colors on Alisha are a little too light. Maybe darker shading will look better.

You can, then again it is plausible she's standing close to ambient or multidirectional light sources. It's all in what context you want to convey.

For in-game sprites it's fine (and often necessary due to the low resolution) to draw the characters in a slightly different style from their artwork. SD characters generally has too big of a head and too short arms to be able to scratch themselves on their head. But of course they can do it anyway because their arms kind of magically extends whenever they need to do something like that.

When I draw sprites I often draw them much more super deformed, and when doing artwork I draw them with a bit more realistic proportions, I generally avoid realism though.



Intended or not the style did look quite freaky.

Either you've been following my questions on Graphic Design Stack Exchange, you've read my SD rant on the trope wiki, you've seen me in a calendar store at the mall where I joke "How does Lucy from Peanuts do her hair?" to a random shopper, or somehow we think alike for some other reason.

Contra, on the other hand, doesn't need no stinkin' super deformity, as I mentioned in a reply to a previous topic about this same sprite.

My older sprite looks like shit. Too much detail and shading shoved in too small a resolution.

We must just be thinking alike then I guess (unless you came to a mall somewhere here in Sweden and I have forgotten about it). It was just a general observation of the SD-artstyle.

Contra is drawn in a realistic style, but for RPGs and the like you often want to cram in a full character in a small low-resolution sprite and still see the facial expressions (as you mention yourself in those links), and in that case the SD-style is the natural approach I guess, besides it being cute.
Of course many games use it even if they don't really need to do it for technical reasons. It's just a very lovable style of art.