[GCompris-devel] Artwork Guidelines

[Timothée Giet]

Le 07/02/2015 16:18, Karl Ove Hufthammer a écrit :
> On 07. feb. 2015 14:47, Timothée Giet wrote:
>> Yes, and I just sent you an answer before noticing you cross-posted 
>> here, so I paste my answer here too so people can follow what's been 
>> said ;)
>
> I think you forgot to use ‘Reply to all’, so the e-mail was only sent 
> to me, but I’ll forward it, with my comments (inline).
> d

Right, thanks for forwarding, and adding interesting comments and examples.
I think good shapes, good outlines and good colors are enough to get 
something dynamic but still simple.

On a technical side, not adding shading and shadows makes it easier to 
have moving objects well integrated in any case.


>> Hi Karl,
>>
>> Thanks a lot for your comments, you outline a few issues I agree 
>> with, though I would address some differently.
>>
>> -External outlines: I still think that's possible to make things look 
>> not flat and stand out of the background without external outlines, 
>> though it requires very good shape and colors to work. Might be 
>> easier and less risky to still use some form of outlines.
>>
>> I agree colored outlines would be the way to go then (same colour as 
>> the inner object but slightly darker), but not as thick as in the dog 
>> example (I don't feel that's looking cute personnaly).More subtle 
>> outlines with more continuity would work better (for example the 
>> width break on the top-right of the dog's head look bad), somewhere 
>> between the chick and the dog examples.
>
> I agree that the outlines are too thick in the dog example (and the 
> colour is off, too). So somewhere between the chick and the dog would 
> be nice.
>
>> -Shadows:
>> I must say this duck example is a very good example, in my opinion, 
>> of "bad" drawing that needs shading to not look too bad. By "bad" I 
>> mean the shapes are not synthesizing well the volumes. Compare this 
>> to any hand drawn disney-style proper shape construction.. Those 
>> didn't need shadows or even colors to look solid. This is what I want 
>> to target.
>
> They did use outlines, though:
>
> http://cdn.mos.totalfilm.com/images/l/lady.jpg
> http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111204221827/disney/images/0/02/Tramp2-disneyscreencaps.com-647.jpg 
>
>
> And some shading in the last example. The lack of shading may have 
> something to do with having to draw 12 or 24 frames per second of the 
> movies, though. :) It also help that they had extremely detailed, 
> lush, hand-painted backgrounds to put the characters on. If the 
> backgrounds looked similar to the foreground (simple shapes with solid 
> colours), it wouldn’t have worked well at all.
>
> More recent (hand-drawn) Disney movies seems to use some more, but 
> still subtle, shading:
>
> http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/35200000/Walt-Disney-Screencaps-Prince-Aladdin-walt-disney-characters-35286754-5000-2721.jpg 
>
>
> So I agree that you don’t need *gradients* to achieve depth. Gradients 
> easily look terrible:
>
> http://images5.fanpop.com/image/polls/1111000/1111053_1346481149909_full.png 
>
> http://images.wikia.com/disney/images/archive/0/02/20111112212435!6976_Pluto_Dog_Standup_743.jpg 
>
>
> But subtle shading and outlines are very effective. Here’s an example 
> (I don’t really like this image, but it serves as an illustration of 
> the both outlines, shading and shadows).
>
> http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111029010913/disney/images/8/89/Lady-And-The-Tramp-Wallpaper-classic-disney-7326007-1024-768.jpg 
>
>
>> Also about good shapes, staging is another important point to get it 
>> right. Thanks for pointing at this (I knew the concept, but wasn't 
>> sure of the english name).
>>
>> -Colors: Yes only purely pastel colors would lack contrast, that's 
>> why I added "or at least not too saturated colors".
>> You can notice the wip examples don't have purely pastel colors.
>> On the first of your Ok examples ( 
>> https://lh6.ggpht.com/5KGEpRh-1H_24E5DZO8NHT5047WSMOZJFGl7nQSz--m07VA15VhlMwaUXmrT2hKJVB4=h900 
>> ) , the background saturation is very close to what I want to target, 
>> but the characters still look too flashy (they can be a bit more 
>> saturated than background but not that much)
>>
>> I'll meditate a bit on all this and make an update of the guidelines 
>> page soon.
>>
>> Thanks again,
>> Cheers
>>
>> Timothée
>