Charas Charset Generator: Plans.

[Bluhman]

Yeah, the normal skin tones are a given. We're obviously going to have a plethora more of them.

Anyways, here's the completed charset for Male-Normal.

Tweaks that probably will be made:
-Thin out the legs
-Shade better
-Tweak head size?

Some tweaks that were made to the side pose:
- Head, ear, and jaw much better defined
- Arm and leg in alignment; straighter stance
- Body is a little slimmer

[Valiere]

Can we go with a dark brown outline instead of a straight black? I think it'd look less toonish.

And what's with the dark spot on his lower back? Here, I'll just make a template of how I'd do it to illustrate my little nitpicks.

[Bluhman]

Yeah, that's most possibly going to change (since all I did was use an extra skin color for shading.) Probably don't want it too bright, though.

And the dark spot on the lower back is supposed to be some sort of back-arch shading; somewhat a simulation of the crease most people have down the center of their back. It's probably a bit too low.

[MissingName]

Can we go with a dark brown outline instead of a straight black? I think it'd look less toonish.

I second that.

[Valiere]

Actually now that I open it in Idraw, it is a dark brown. Just a very dark dark brown.

[Valiere]

Silence, little one! I'm doing it.

Edit: Okay, here's Bluhman's version with several tweaks, mainly to the back-facing angle. I like the old template, but I just wanted to add some minor improvements. I'd still be okay with just using his version...I think it'd look a lot better with clothes and hair.



The sideways-facing head still looks a little square, but I can't figure out how to fix it while still having it look realistic. Again, if you add hair, you won't even notice it.

[Osmose]

Well, then, enterbrain clearly wanted their entire cast to be hunchbacks.

(Discount the blue haired guy on the far right. He would fall under the 'taller' category, since his head is positioned a pixel higher.)

Note that all those people are wearing clothes. Not to mention I would think that err-ing on the side of less body would be more permissive to clothes than having more body that needs to be covered up.

[Bluhman]

That's true. In fact, that pretty much is the central dilemma that's surrounding my decision on whether to make the legs thinner or not. (Seriously, those pants are huge. If you actually look at the guy on far right, he actually has feet that are only 2 pixels wide instead of 3 like the rest. I still can't tell whether the feet should actually be that size, or if it's a stylistic choice due to the fact he's probably supposed to be a bishounen or something other.) However, the thief charset, right next to the custom template, is wearing a tight shirt, so the shoulder dimensions should resemble that, pretty much.

We should keep a consistent height. Since that's what valiere did in her Charset, this is pretty good so far. Only problem, and it's a extremely small one, is that the arms are a pixel longer on the side pose. On RTP size samples, the arms go down straight, and curvature to the back is applied by means of baggy clothing.

[Valiere]

I see what you mean. I made them a pixel longer in the middle side-facing pose because I thought it'd look weird in the walking animation if I didn't. I'll change it back and see how it animates.

Edit: Yeah, it definitely looks weird. Like he's doing some kind of dance. Maybe if I make the arms longer in the front- and back-facing angles.

Thoughts on this? Too monkeylike?

[Bluhman]

Yeah, the arms are now longer than the legs on the front and back poses. That's definitely not good.

The effect isn't present on the side poses, but that's only because we can't exactly see how long the legs are in relation to the rest of the body.

[Valiere]

This should fix it.

Edit: I noticed some weird shading spots and fixed them, so download this again if you got template-3. Should be template-4.

[Bluhman]

This should fix it.

Edit: I noticed some weird shading spots and fixed them, so download this again if you got template-3. Should be template-4.

Alright. I think this will do just excellently. Making the legs slimmer was pretty much accomplished by some creative shading here. Probably the only thing I'd want to do is take a pixel off the ankle, since I think that looked alright on the 1st complete template. (EDIT: Nope. I decided against that.)
(EDIT2: Ok, I did fix one thing; the armpit level was jumping around as the walk animation played through. That's now fixed.)

I'll get started on the very simple 'Taller' template, and perhaps the female equivalents.

[Bluhman]

Alrighty then. The two basic body forms are pretty much complete. Thank goodness there are so many scantily clad women in the RTP sets; the Female Pirate char-set made a worthy base for this template.

Some females in the char-sets like to have this girly "hold your hands out to the side" thing going on, which is present in the wierd red-bikini girl charset, for example. Something like that would make an ideal hand accessory for females, simply using the setting to move the hands out from the body a pixel.

[Valiere]

Yeah, that looks good.

Maybe we can consider making the hands-out-to-the-side female version an alternative template and maybe just some dresses and "sexy" outfits for it, because only princesses and...well, the Enterbrain equivalent of whores seem to do that.

Since the males have that "oversized" template, it'd make it even.

But it may also be wise to begin making accessories for the templates we already have. These will be the two most useful templates in the lot, and it'll take a long time to make enough stuff for them that they're worth updating the generator with. But it's your call.

[fruckert]

I just realized that in Lucas's sig I'm holding hands with Alex.

Those do look damn good though.
We're definitely out to an awesome start.

I'm starting to feel weird about basically joining a community centered around spriting and art and having almost no experience in either.