How do you make expressions

[Gamesmaster]

Well I've been trying to figure this out.You know how with most renai games you have different expressions for each character but usually the body dosen't change simply the character's expression.I've been trying to figure out how you do that.Did you have to trace the same character over and over with a different expression?Do you erase the face and put in the new expression.

[Jake]

Did you have to trace the same character over and over with a different expression?Do you erase the face and put in the new expression.

Myself, I'd maintain the expression on a different layer - tools like Photoshop or OpenCanvas (even Paintshop Pro) will store the image as a series of layers, and individual layers can be turned on and off at will. So I'll have the 'body' layer, with the character standing there with no face; a series of 'expression' layers, with an 'angry' face and a 'neutral' face and a 'happy' face and whatever, then maybe a 'glasses' or 'fringe' or 'ridiculous face mask' layer or something over the top of that. When I want to save out a particular expression, it's a simple case of turning all the layers for the expressions I don't want off, so they don't show.

[Gamesmaster]

Thank Jak
That does make sense actually.So do you make the expressions directly on the computer or do you draw them on paper first?

[Zoideah]

I made a little tutorial on this a while ago~

Here it is: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... f=4&t=2319

[Jake]

So do you make the expressions directly on the computer or do you draw them on paper first?

Personally, I do all my sketching on the computer with a relatively big brush, then drop the sketch layer down to 30% opacity or so (so you can mostly see through it and it shows up quite faintly) to draw the final lines over it in a new layer. Then I can add the colours in underneath the line art layer.


But it's just as feasible to do your sketching or even your final lines on bits of paper and scan them in - I just never got around to replacing my scanner when it died.

[Deji]

personally, I draw the base pose on a piece of paper, without a face. then with a lightbox (or a window if you don't have one XD; ) just draw the different expressions I want on another piece of paper.
I scan them all and put each expression on a separate layer.
In the end, I have a layer hierarchy that goes like this:

>Expressions layer folder
-face1 lineart
-face1 coloring
-face2 lineart
-face2 coloring
...etc
>Outfits layer folder
-outfit1 lineart
-outfit1 coloring
-outfit2 lineart
...etc
>Pose layer folder
-pose lineart
-pose coloring

[Gamesmaster]

I made a little tutorial on this a while ago~

Here it is: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... f=4&t=2319

Zoideah : Thanks for the tutorial.That saves you alot of work over the tracing method and I think the art will be a better quality over all because you tend to lose that natural look to your drawing when you trace them.

Jake: I got you.I play around with the opacity and sometimes I'll just click the eye on the left to make that layer disappear altogether.Both of your methods are pretty similar actually so I won't have any problems doing them.

Deji:Thanks.I promise I'll put all of this advice to good use.I'm working on a few drawings right now although I think the girl's head is too big for her frame.I'll have to try again.

[Deji]

Ok, I was playing with stuff today and took a couple of screenshots for you =3
The sketchy linearts were all done separately using a 0.5 mechanical pencil, a couple of sheets of printer paper and a window XD;

[DaFool]

Penelope is so cute!

[Deji]

Penelope is so cute!

she is, hehe ^__^

well, I was playing around some more and made something different to expand the range of expressions I could get.
Instead of organiing by expressions, I organized layers by face components: eyes, mouth and eyebrows, adding 2 extra layers for blush and sweatdrop.
In the end, I ended up having...
13 eye positions:
13 mouth shapes:
6 eyebrows positions:
+ blush & swt

I doubt I'll use most the combinations in the end, but it's a really nice amount to pick up from ^^
it's useful for this to make small doodles of expressions in a piece of paper and then see which elements can be recycled for different expressions =P
In the end you can make separate layer folders for each desired expression, by copying the different eye, mouth and eyebrows elements that make that espression, like...

>Thinking
- look_up (eyes)
- look_up color
- o (mouth)
- o color
- high (eyebrows)

[Deji]

And... I finally found my old pose + expression making tutorial!
I made this one last year =3
A friend of mine asked me to make a pose set of a random character for a videogame assignment she had, and I took some screenshots of the process.
First I made a simple and messy sketch, scanned it and printed it in light blue several times in the same sheet. Notice how I printed the face several times as well.
This can be avoided if you have a light box or light table... and since I didn't want to use my window... the cheapest is to print in blue XD;

Then I made the lineart over the printed paper, probably with a mechanical pencil.
In the other printed sketches, I drew alternative arm positions, also with the possible effect that they could have in the clothes. On the printed faces, I drew some expressions.

After that, I scanned it and got rid of the blue in Photoshop using channels.

My lineart is dirty and nee3d some cleaning, but oh well ^^;;

Now, since I don't need the whole sheet, I copy the base pose to a new document and clean it

I got rid of the face, because I'll need it separately in its own layer later.


This is how the base pose looks after being colored in a layer under the lineart.


Now, I pasted the original face into it's own layer and made a second layer to color.
I repeated this with all the other faces and face components I had on the sheet.


Making pose 2 with the second arm position is pretty easy.
I duplicated the lineart of the base pose, then made a new layer with the second arm position and placed it correctly. After that, I erased everything that shouldn't be there on the copy of my base pose and merged the two to make the final lineart


For coloring, There are diferent ways, but what I did here was simply duplicate the base pose coloring layer and modify it. I erased everything that sticked out from my pose lineart by selecting the area outside in the pose lineart. Ater that, I just fixed the coloring.


And this is how my 2nd arm position with happy face ended up looking like!


In the end, after making another arm position, I got a nice pose set... tada!

Hope you find it helpful ^^

[rocket]

Very nice! This should get linked to in the resources wiki page!

[DaFool]

Moe overload!

I don't really have much else constructive to say. I'm just really really jealous of this supreme quality.

You better finish your game(s) first, because once you offer your services for other projects, you'd be snapped up in an instant!

[Vatina]

That looks great Deji A great way to illustrate it. (And wonderful art.....)

I saw on another forum that someone refused to play OEL games because he/she thought all of them had bad art - I wonder if he/she can keep saying that soon with all those great artists showing up here!

[DaFool]

That looks great Deji A great way to illustrate it. (And wonderful art.....)

I saw on another forum that someone refused to play OEL games because he/she thought all of them had bad art - I wonder if he/she can keep saying that soon with all those great artists showing up here!

The irony is that many deviantartists who would easily spend 10 hours per drawing are not capable of either consuming or producing 20,000 words.

Because visual novels still rely on storytelling. "Bad art" can be forgiven if they just do the bare minimum of illustrating a good story.

That's why I'm extremely minimalist when designing projects -- just requiring the absolute bare minimum of sprites, backgrounds, music tracks, and even wordcount to illustrate and tell a story concept(not to mention its extremely dial-up friendly). It's like you're a movie producer and you have either the option of spending 100 million for a blockbuster, or you'd just spend 100 thousand for an indie flick which has essentially the same story but without the special effects. Sure, you don't get a lot of audience, but for freeware, I realized that doesn't really matter now.

Also, I usually rarely use any more than 6 expressions for main characters and 3 for side characters. I end up deleting (or not using in the first place) extraneous layers of facial expressions.