15 replies to this topic

[Niraven]

Well I'm obviously new here as a member, but I've visited this site several times and I'll say right away it's the best out there regarding NiGHTS.

Anyway to cut to the chase, as anyone can see my sn is Niraven. I chose this due to the fact I'm designing a video game called Niraven (copyrighted!). I'll say right off the bat I'm a girl or else I'm sure people will think I'm a guy for the longest time.

A little bit about myself. I have several interests. What I'm most well-known for probably though is my ability to pick up languages very fast (going on 6!) and my artistic ability. This includes graphic design, photography, drawing, painting, you name it and I've probably done it. I specialize in game and character design, as one would easily guess from the doodles I leave like footprints on my notes and schoolwork. I love to draw and let my mind wander aimlessly in creativity. I'd love to share my artwork sometime. Another interest of mine is The Legend of Zelda. I'm one of 2 webmasters for the largest Zelda site in the world and I love to visit game events such as E3 and soon Leipzig in Germany.

5 things I have in my room you probably don't have in yours: a custom longbow, 5 real knight's helmets, a golden Triforce GBA SP, a sumo-wrestler stress ball, and a snake. This is simply stated for interest's sake.

As for why I love NiGHTS. My first formal introduction was thanks to Sonic Adventure and the pinball game NiGHTS. Everything about it was so fantastic and surreal I got addicted and could play it for hours well beyond 999 rings. With the character NiGHTS, he was so mysterious. You could look right at the creature and see every detail of the character and feel like there was still somehow more you couldn't quite see. Everything in NiGHTS screams creativity and originality, and it's among my favorite games today very proudly.

So that's a little about myself. I'm glad I can finally post!

[Chan Kaylore]

Heya, welcome to the forums! Glad you liked the site enough to peek into the forums; don't worry, it took me a while to start hanging around here also.

Wow, you hobbies sound great (and I'm envious of that room! XD). Hope you enjoy your stay here!

[animejosse]

Hello Niraven, welcome to the forums! If you have any questions, just ask me, Icachan or any of our mods.

A longbow, ey? I assume you are an archer then?

[viperxmns]

Allo

What's your game about? I watched the trailer, did NiGHTS play a part in inspiring you to create it?

[Icachan]

Hello there and welcome to the forums!

[~Tsuki~]

Hey~! ^_______^ Welcome to the forums, it's nice meeting you. You have lot's of fun sounding hobbies, and the trailer for your game looks very intriguing. Best of luck to you with it!

[Niraven]

Allo

What's your game about? I watched the trailer, did NiGHTS play a part in inspiring you to create it?

First of all, yes archery is one of my many pasttimes.

I'm a little embarassed about that old trailer. I made it a few years ago and it's in desperate need of an update! The website is up, but no direct link has been added. I'll post the URL later.

The game follows the normal outline of "hero, villian, go defeat the villain, yay". However a lot of what makes this game different is gameplay and interaction. Right now the game is being designed third-party, it doesn't have a big company to back it yet and my dream is that one day it will. I'm working hard toward that in my schooling. At the moment I'm working primarilly freelance.

The game follows the life and story of a young man named Niraven, who is different from most due to his yellow eyes (hence the logo). Only a certain race called the Shadaar (most names are tentative at this point in time) has yellow eyes, and since they are reknowned for being evil, Niraven is often mistrusted and mistreated by other people. But these yellow eyes give him the ability to see past lies and illusions, making him extremely valuable, if only other people in his world could see that.

The game is similar to an RPG in that you travel with more than one character, however it is not the typical standing-battle, taking turns. With this, it's all open battle, and you can switch between characters at will, even assigning tasks to other characters of your party to execute while you play live battle with the one of your choice, much like you can assign tasks to Sims. The lives and stories of all the characters of the party mix in odd ways that are revealed more and more as the game progresses.

The primary story follows Niraven, who seeks to uplift his reputation and prove his trust by helping people and accomplishing difficult tasks and quests. This is how he eventually meets and picks up various party members. The main goal in the end is to of course defeat the most powerful villain behind them all and discover the secrets that lie behind the Shadaar.

The final playable characters have been selected in the character design, though I like to update their design every once in a while to keep the ideas fresh as my creativity grows. In addition to having the main playable characters, there are characters that you can play as for a short while depending on where in the game you are. Example, if you're in a fishing village and meet a girl named Kai who is important to the village, she may be able to aid you in a battle that involves that village, but she's not a permanent playable character and cannot travel. In such a way, your allies always stay fresh.

In addition to creating and drawing the characters, I've also been able to make a few live replicas of some important aspects of those characters. For example, there's a character named Dierdre who always wears a mask. I made the mask by hand and it's sitting safe in my desk drawer, life-size, too! Here's a couple example pictures of Dierdre(picture is a sketch):




I hope these pictures are not too big, my camera has a bad habit of taking very large pictures I should address. Anyway, that's a brief run-through of some of Niraven, there's a lot more if you're interested.

As for if NiGHTS influenced it, I do think to a certain degree since NiGHTS was so original in itself. The life that the fantastic creatures brought to the game I have tried to reflect in the creature design of Niraven. Not the same style, but the same life. The bright colors also make NiGHTS incredibly fantastic, and the color scheme for Niraven is on no level "tame" like many adventure games of the age are.

[Huruyami]

Those are very nice! Welcome, and I have all 5 of those in my room XD just kidding, I have none of them.

[Niraven]

Those are very nice! Welcome, and I have all 5 of those in my room XD just kidding, I have none of them.

Thank you! It certainly doesn't rank among my nicest works, but it was still fun.

[Huruyami]

Well if thats not your best then I cant wait to see what is. ^-^

[Niraven]

Well if thats not your best then I cant wait to see what is. ^-^

While my personal best is defined differently by many people including myself, here are some common favorites we share of my work:


This one was done with a single normal pencil in an old art class of mine. The red is a result of my camera when I took the picture of the penciled piece, thanks to having no scanner to work with. (Recognize this woman? Robyn Write/Buttercup from The Princess Bride).


This picture was done in late 2004, all pencil once again, to celebrate the yet-to-be-named Twilight Princess. I did it in under an hour, but it's still among my favorites.


This was another art project from school I did where we had to impliment ourselves into a picture. I honestly liked the sketch better than this final version (the eye isn't right), but I still enjoy it a lot. Pencil once again.


This one was lightly penciled a few months ago, and I put it on the computer to color. It's far from done, but this is how it's come along so far. Despite the lack of finality, it's one of my favorites.

[Huruyami]

DEAR GOD. PLEASE SHARE TECHNIQUES.

[~Tsuki~]

Wow, you have amazing talent! ^__^ My fav is the one if you looking at the lil dragon in the field. It's beautiful.

[Niraven]

DEAR GOD. PLEASE SHARE TECHNIQUES.

***hatehatehatehatehate*** I just spent half an hour posting pictures and a long reply of lots of techniques and something happened that it all got deleted. >_>.... Let's try this again....

My techniques for the above pictures are as follows:

For the first one (Buttercup), I used a grid system. I scratched a grid on the original photo, and then mapped a grid of the same size on a piece of paper. Then I compared grids and got a basic feature outline. I started out very very lightly with pencil. You can never ever be too light with a pencil when it comes to realistic pictures, because you can always go darker later. Once I got a light version of the picture, I carefully shaded it little by little all over to even it out.

For #2, Link, I actually started him by drawing his face alone. After I filled in all the details there, then I drew the neck, then the shoulders, then the sword arm, then the shield arm. I find when you do it little by little, it's a little more lively and convincing than a strict outline to begin with. Does saying "it gives it more personality" make sense, because you're spending more time on drawing details instead of big outlines? I bolded the lines with pencil when I finished.

Picture number 3 was based off a sketch I actually like more in some ways than the finished picture.

I like it better because she looks nigh exactly like I do, but the dragon is stiff. The final version was for a school project, so I started by doing a larger general outline of the smaller sketch. I started with the girl's face, because that's the attention-grabber, then her hand, then her shoulders. The dragon came second because it's not as important or dominant in the picture. But notice how the final version, the dragon looks more lizard-like in movements? That's part of what makes the final version flow much nicer, and also the bolding of the areas with pencil has a huge effect.

The fourth picture was done very lightly in pencil, and then I colored it as-is. I didn't bold it, because then the character Midna would lose that "gentle, delicate" feeling. I colored it with a slightly faded brush to keep the gentle feel and not have harsh color transitions, like this picture:

See how Midna appears much gentler than Rouge, who is much cruder in contrast here?



One of my main techniques when I draw a picture though, is that I almost always start with the eye/eyes of a character. Why? Simple, because I believe of all the features people have, eyes are unique. They're like a window to the soul and personality of an individual, they're what brings people to life. Even in sketches, when you start out with an eye, it brings a drawing to life. Take this one of Samus for example:

The picture's far from done, but it looks like she's watching something intently. She's already alive and merely waiting to be finished. Yet, she doesn't have to be finished to appear convincing in character.


When I draw larger pictures, or full-body pictures, I'll usually start with the head and work my way down. I like to concentrate on detail right off the bat, because it builds a rich basis for a character instead of appearing to be an "add-on". Take this picture of Garrow (yes I know that's the name of an Eragon character, yet I copyrighted my character's name before Paolini even published his book):

By working on the shading all at once as I went instead of waiting until after I had a full outline makes him appear more complete. The picture of Link was done much in the same way. I did the shading as I went, I didn't wait until the picture was outlined, because I wanted the shading to appear natural, like it was always there, and not added at the end.


Here's another example of how I start with a character's eye(s), then the face outline, and finally worked around that:

My dearest Niraven here already has a personality even though this sketch is far far away from being completed simply because his eyes are the boldest feature and are already completed. See how he's already convincing?


Now, when I draw creatures, I actually use a full body outline, and I don't start with the eyes. This makes my humanesque characters appear much deeper and more mystic, unique from all the other creatures. Plus, with creatures, I like to fill in the details afterwards. Like in this next picture, I finished the snake outline, and decided "gee, wouldn't poisonous spikes on it's hood make it even more deadly? *adds spikes*" In drawing creatures, their personality lies in their appearance. With humanesque characters, it lies in their eyes/face.

After I finished this, I also thought "wings would make it look more powerful". See how it's more effective to add the features afterwards to make stronger creatures?


In addition to drawing creatures, I also like to mess with concepts on photoshop. Take this one for example. I thought of a flaming dragon, so I created 3 seperate layers of different fires over this dragon picture by CiRuelo, then used the smudge tool to make the fire flow with the features of the dragon so it looked alive instead of flat.

Always follow the patterns, grooves, and curves of a creature, never try to override it or it won't appear convincing.


One more technique before I wrap this up (though I have several more if you're interested:)) is sharp contrast. This is a fabulous attention-grabber, and the trick with this one is to be bold with your colors and shading.

It's a different way of bringing a character to life, because the sharp contrast forces your eyes to create a 3D effect instead of a mellow grayscale. See how striking this picture appears to the one of Niraven, for example?


Those are my musings for now, let me know if you're interested in more!

[animejosse]

*puts on admin-hat* While I love hearing the artist's musing on their pictures - especially nice ones like these - they're getting off-topic for both this thread and forum. I suggest you post any new pictures on DA or your website and PM those who wants more musing Thank you. *takes off admin-hat *

[Niraven]

*puts on admin-hat* While I love hearing the artist's musing on their pictures - especially nice ones like these - they're getting off-topic for both this thread and forum. I suggest you post any new pictures on DA or your website and PM those who wants more musing Thank you. *takes off admin-hat *

My apologies for that, I understand completely (though no one sends me messages >_>). So allow me to make the best of both worlds and give a little technique on my latest NiGHTS picture for you instead of the others:


With this one, I sketched with a pencil and then penned it in afterwards. Then, I put it on my computer and colored it with photoshop. However, I used NO filters (they're a cheap way of trying to make something look fancy). Instead, I used a spectrum averaging 3-4 shades of one color. For example with the hat, I used 3 shades of purple for the main part. One for highlighting, one for normal, and one for shadows. I did this with a simple, slightly edge-faded brush. Then, and this is the important part that gives it texture, I went over it with the smudge tool to make it look silky and shiny. By rubbing it simply up and down, not all around, you get a really nice feel. Keep it in one direction to make the texture convincing.