A: Gordon Freeman

Fengol

I'm starting with this titular character to test the idea. I'm not an artist but I figured I'd give it a go as well. I've done Gordon Freeman in the style of the old Sierra quest games.



And my attempts:

Early Sierra games
Later Sierra styles






Bigger versions:

Fengol

(Updated first post)

Tuism

Cool! Pantless Larry style Freeman! :P

Good start, he looks very pantless. And evil (red eyes) :) Gotta give him a crowbar too :)

Nandrew

Oh wow, that's ... simple and awesome. Daaang. I reckon that's a cool style choice for not-an-artist. ;)

I'm actually pretty keen to get involved in this comp as well, pixel art is pretty much the only thing I wouldn't feel absolutely terrified trying out ...

Ratel

Damn I wanted to do freeman (just me or does that sentence sound wrong). It's looking good just give the freeman a crowbar, a little shading and change the color of the eyes a bit maybe and he's good to save the earth in all his 2d pixelness :)

Fengol

@LittleBear you can also draw Gordon Freeman, and it will be cool to see the differences.

I will add the crowbar and try fix the pantless feel

Ratel

@aodendaal Sounds good to me :) I will enter as well but can't produce anything atm coz I'm at work. Looking forward to your moded freeman!

Elyaradine

Hey, looking good! :) The light grey and the orange look fairly similar in value, making them blend a bit when they appear next to each other. (This is especially visible in the two dots on the sides of his torso I think.) You may want to have another look at him with the image desaturated, and see which colours you can make lighter/darker to push that contrast a bit more.

Fengol

By desaturated you mean see it in greyscale?

Elyaradine

Yeah. :-) (Er... There are actually several ways to create greyscale images. Desaturation is one of them. Default PS shortcut is Ctrl Shift U.)

Pomb

That's pretty cool man, wasn't going to take part, because I wanted to carry on learning other stuff, but your submission inspired me, thanks.
I actually don't mind about the pantlessness, it's the red eyes that scare me the most, any particular reason why you made them red?
Could it be the reflection of blood in his glasses?

Fengol

I've updated the image in the first post. I playing with desaturating the image (I'm using Paint.NET cause I don't have Photoshop) and I made the orange lighter. @Elyaradine is this what you were talking about?

I also added his crowbar and fixed his eyes. The original eyes were based on the eyes for Sonny Bonds character from Police Quest 1

Tuism

They look like nipples :P maybe if the middle orange bit and the two bits to the side touched they'd look a little less nipple like. And the nipple bits, maybe work better if moved down a tad?

Oh and please blow up your sprite to like x4 or x8 or something, cos it's really squinty :)

I remember the red eyes from Sierra games, why WERE they red?

Nandrew

They were red because all Sierra characters were irredeemably evil.

Every. Single. One.

Fengol

Big picture added. I've also removed the "nipples" because it not part of the main focus of the character.

I'm going to try tonight for a Sierra VGA caricature

Tuism

Very good call on removing the orange bits :)

It's looking cool! I hadn't realised that the halflife crowbar was red till now :) The second image has a black block between his legs, that's just the background not having been removed right? My guess.

Not sure what you mean by caricature, like reducing the colours to 8bit? Looking forward to it :)

Fengol

Fixed.

I mean I want to re-do Gordon Freeman as the later Sierra games

Fengol

Here's a work in progress of the new style.

Rigormortis

Looks cool man! Don't forget the iconic glasses :D Excited to see how it ends up.

Tuism

Oh cool :D and his beard :) given the higher res I guess you could play with more details from the original :) fun! :)

Fengol

Here's an update. Suggestions greatly appreciated!



and the larger image

Actrox

The crowbar does seem a bit small to me. Plus moar beard :)

Nandrew

Hmm, only thing I can think of is that he feels more like he's wearing a tracksuit, whereas the source image strongly suggests that the outfit is more "body hugging".

Could you trim his clothing without messing up the style?

Fengol

Updated the first post with the latest image. I've tried to remove the baggy trousers @Nandrew suggested and made the crowbar bigger for @Actrox.

I've also added more shading to give him some depth, fixed his one arm (and moved the crowbar) and tried to give him the appearance of wearing dark glasses.

I'm not happy with his legs, they look to stiff. I'm going to play a bit and see what I can come up with, but if anyone has a suggestion I'm all ears.

Tuism

New details are pretty good :) Should he have glasses?

If you don't like the legs (I see what you mean) you could try and get them to be apart a bit more, in a more natural stance. What I guess you could do is maybe take screenshots from the Sierra games you're modeling after, and actually look at how they achieve their stances. One of the best things you can do to learn is to copy while thinking about it! :)

Actrox

It does look like he is bending the crowbar in his hand now, the lines of the crowbar dont quiet match up. The bottom should move left about a pixel.

And agreed the glasses are paramount

Fengol

First post updated with better legs. The glasses are really difficult to do because the eyes are only 1 pixel high and a black line for the glasses just looks weird. I've made the eyes as dark as possible do they don't look like something alien and hopefully passes for glasses. Suggestions in that department would be appriciated

Tuism

I'd say try the black frames :) or slightly greyer :) make em like 2 or 3 pixel wide in the gap/glass... Or leave out the top bar of the glasses perhaps :)

Fengol

First post updated. I think I've got the glasses. It looks a little weird zoomed in but at it's original size I believe it looks right. Actually very happy with the result

Fengol

some minor changes added, including some shading and features from the reference pic

Tuism

oh just one little thing - the little crest symbol thing on his chest's orange area - it makes more sense if it were shifted one pixel to the right, as perspective wise if it were lifted a bit it'd be there instead of more to the left - ya know? :)

Then his right glove - the black part should not be a V pointing towards his hand but away from his hand, also for perspective's sake, his hand would be in front of the sleeve not vice versa.

But these are just minor things, It looks pretty sweet dude :)

Karuji

The current pose with the sunglasses is making me think of Ivan the spacebiker. Otherwise I am really liking how it is. Also consider posting images in your update posts ;)