No, it’s not a new Touhou flash. Well, not yet, anyway. I don’t actually have any ideas at this moment, but I’ve decided to redraw the characters to make them more organized and actually animated. In the flashes, Meiling’s (And Marisa’s) create.swf-ish style doesn’t really go well with the other characters in my opinion, and the scale for the different characters don’t really match up well, so I decided I might as well just redraw some characters so they fit together nicely and so the image quality of each character is about the same. And I might as well give them walking animations too, rather than making a still image move around in a wavy path.
Anyhow, here’s the first two redrawings: Reimu and Marisa. There are some characters who I kinda want to keep the way they are (Specifically Yuyuko, Nitori, and Chen… maybe Yukari and Ran as well; I kinda liked how their graphics turned out), but I guess I’ll just try to make them as similar as possible to the older versions. I might be using these redrawn characters in later flashes, once I get some ideas. Oh yeah, I also upped the framerate to 24 fps (the framerate for Touhou flashes used to be 12), so it’ll probably look a lot smoother too.
Edit (July 4, 2008 @ 1:49PM):
Well, after reading the comments, I’ve decided to just use the old graphics as a starting point this time. Here’s Reimu again, in the old style, with a walking animation. The arms and legs were redrawn, as well as the moving hair/ponytail. The walking animation is a bit weird, but I guess I can figure it out eventually.
I’ll be honest. I can’t really say I like these. They just seem a little too lifeless…
Maybe it’s the increased Body to Head ratio, or the lines are too thin, or the lack of facial expressions…
I have to agree, these are not the greatest in comparison to the first ones.
The first ones…I don’t know, it just looks better, but thats just personal preference
They look fine to me, it’s just that the heads are either drawn strangely, or they’re just too small, or both.
Yi er san yi er san one two three one two three ichi ni sa~n
Yi er san yi er san one two three one two three ichi ni sa~n
Yi er san yi er san one two three one two three ichi ni sa~n
Eins, zwei, guten morgen
Yi er yi er ichi ichi ichi ichi
Back to the shapes from the first touhou flashes? Mouku is most likely the best looking in this style if you ask me.
Interesting… O.o
@T_ConX: Yeah, I see your point. They look a bit same-ish (because they’re actually using the exact same scale for the different parts). I kinda realized I liked most of the older versions when I was listing the ones I wanted to keep (most of the more recent flash characters turned out pretty nicely too), but there were some characters I didn’t think came out too well that wanted to change (Specifically Mokou and Kaguya, although I like the Pre-School versions).
I did notice an increase in the height of the characters when I was drawing these (they seem a bit taller than they normally are), and it does kinda look odd. I think it’s because I ended the top part a bit too far down, or something.
The lines are thinner because I drew them bigger and scaled them down, and I used a smaller size brush. When I started making Touhou flashes, I used the third-smallest brush, but soon I realized I liked the size-2 brush better (I use it in daily flashes), but whenever I had to draw a new character, I’d have to go back to using a size-3 brush (to make it fit in with the other size-3 brush characters) and it felt odd. It wouldn’t be too hard for me to just go over the lines with a thicker brush.
I think another option for me would be to simply redraw some of the older characters that look a bit weird (in the old style), rather than to redraw all the characters in this style. It’d certainly save me a lot of work, but it’d also be a lot less organized on my end, because not every character is drawn the same way or in the same scale (sometimes I don’t have things on different layers and it gets annoying to have to do a bunch of things to make minor changes). The FLA files of the old flashes are actually very disorganized and files are all over the place, making it hard to find stuff.
I guess I’ll let this get more comments before deciding whether or not to redraw more characters, though. Should I go with this style, or keep the old one?
Wow… you really need to redesign them?
Hm… they’re more realistic, but that’s both good and bad: having more functional legs and arms (especially arms) is going to be a huge plus for animation, but the miniature, huge-head style from before is far cuter and more appealing in a lot of ways, especially when there’s so much more realistic detail for the bodies than for the faces.
My personal suggestion is to shorten them a little bit, omitting a little implied torso/leg size rather than going for realistic proportions there. Redrawing for better organization is good, but losing the small-head-size appeal isn’t good unless you want a more serious look. Personally, I think that the ‘body’ size is the lowest priority – for the most part, they looked fine in the earlier versions.
Also, elbows. Although that would make realistic animation hell.
Okay, I just changed it a bit (haven’t uploaded the swf), and I think it’d be helpful to have a comparison screenshot. I definitely didn’t notice how different the heads looked until just now, but I just realized something I could do. I could simply just trace over the old-style Reimu, putting different parts into their own layers rather than putting a bunch of stuff in one layer as I did in the past, making it a lot more organized. I could base other future character drawings on the tracing, so they’d still look the same as the old style.
Actually, I think all the characters since the Aya flash have been based on Reimu (I traced over the shape of her face and used similar body proportions, changing them a bit for shorter characters), so it wouldn’t be too hard to do. I think I’ll go make a newer version later (or eventually), in an attempt to make it look more like the older style.
Yes, older style is preferred. Tall Reimu is rather frightening. The adorable large-head style is what you’re known for. As shown in the comparison chart, the older style has rounder heads it seems. Oh, and in specific, the new Marisa’s hat seems to have a smaller and floppier and just less appealing.
Oh, not to mention Marisa’s actually one of the shorter characters, so the create.swf style isn’t so bad for her.
The first redesign has just reminded me the almighty 8-head proportioned Marisa in Super Marisa Land
hummm… I’d go with what ever you think. Ultimately if you think it’s good it’s good and if you think it’s bad it’s bad. I would trust an artist with there own stuff more then my own personal opinions. Tings seem to come out better that way. How ever I guess it still helps to have opinions. I believe the newer drawing style mite improve consistency, and organization witch would further improve productivity. This mite also prove less restrictive when trying to do advanced animations or so people have said, but even with just Daly flashing it seems to look quite nice. I personally have grown quite fond of the old style as it does indeed seem cuter.
Hmm, though I do prefer the shorter style, this style doesn’t look bad at all. One thing that came to my attention is that the walk animation gives it the impression that it has really short legs with no knees. This kind of walk style seems like it would fit the shorter characters better.
Also, as you noticed already, the top part of the hair is a lot shorter than normal. Unnoticeable on Marisa because of her hat, but it does make Reimu a bit odd.
2 head proportions seems to be the standard for chibi characters. I think the simplistic look of your art style best matches this style. 4 heads and up seems to be more for higher detail styles, so having 3 head tall characters in simplistic style sort of hits the uncanny valley of drawn characters. I think if you wanted to make them taller than they were before, then it would be best to make it somewhere between 2 to 3 heads tall.
Things I do like about this is that the back hair is separate from the front hair. This would allow characters to look up or down without dragging the entirety of their hair with the head. The waving back and forth while walking looks nice.
The separation of upper body and lower body is also good. The skirt waving back and forth adds a nice subtle touch in the walk animation.
The completed arms look good for this style, and animate pretty well actually.
Hmm, a suggestion for the walk animation is to make the feet sort of move in a circular motion rather than simply moving back and forth. Circular motion may simulate actually stepping better.
I suppose a redraw is a good idea, since the earlier characters and the recent ones are out of sync, but I would really like the same style, because it just doesn’t look walfas-ish.
And the walking animation is a pretty good idea.
i don’t like it
Old style is vastly superior, cuter, and…cartoonier(?).
Realistic isn’t good in the world of Touhou. The trapezoids are too tall!
I don’t really like this new style either… I find the older one cuter. Maybe there could be a way you could re-organize the old ones?
The trazing thing sounds like a good idea.
No matter what you do, I’ll always love your flashes. ^_^
Reimu just looked more zombie-ish, other than that I think the old style is better.
Chibi is preferred (old version) XD but adding these as jokes may be fun =D like reimu drank some weird elixirs from eirin and turned into this form XD i donno /hides
Yeah, I’m going to have to agree with the people here saying they prefer the old style. I appreciate that since you see your own work a lot, you have more time to look at it in detail, and I know that everyone is their own worst critic… but there’s really no problem with your old designs. And if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Make them short again please :(
Or at least adjust the head size a little
Yeah, I kinda prefer the “short” style better. Doesn’t quite seem as “off” now that I’ve seen the comparison, but … yeah.
Hmm … does this mean it’ll become possible to have Marisa riding her broomstick eventually? :3
I really don’t see a problem with the older designs. In fact, they’re what keeps me coming back here. Although, what I think is… you could adopt both styles anyway, for alternate flashes when you feel like it. However, that’d might be pretty stressful for you, I guess.
And I only have one complaint: I STILL CAN’T SEE NEW REIMU’S ARMPITS!!!
Old school is better.
LOOKING ALITTLE TALL THERE.
Older style is better, and IMO the animation is reminiscent of too many crappy two-bit flash cartoons on NG. Not sure what the name for the technique is, or if it even has one, but you always see it in flash, and it really irks me.
I like these, sort of. They’re good tall, but are a little too tall. Find some midpoint between these and the others, maybe? I like the fact that you’re making the characters more “real”, in that they actually walk now, but that sort of body with that level of cartooniness doesn’t quite work. Perhaps if you made the bodies smaller, but left the heads as they are? Just my opinion, of course. You can do whatever you want.
I still prefer it when Reimu bobbed, midget-wise. Reimu now is tall, but her sizes are the same (no, the head.) which doesn’t give the LOL factor anymore.
Where is their necks?
OMG THEY R MOVIN!!!!!
err.. ahem.. In my honest opinion, the old ones are better.
I do like the new re-draws, but the older designs made them look younger and more fun. Now they look grown up and sophisticated, like Reimu’s moving onto multi-locating Shrines and Marisa getting a job in Home Decor etc…
I wouldn’t know about sophisticated, but that’s the awesomest metaphor ever. :3
That said, yeah … I am now reminded of the Eddie Izzard routine where he talks about the police officer trying to pull over your snowboard. “*wobbles* You’re tail light’s out … and you’ve got know knees!”
Hmmm. I recommend doing animation which actually makes it look like they’re walking — make one foot “stay in place” as the other one moves forward (though this could just be an issue of the walking/animation sped). Right now it looks like they’re hovering whilst wiggling their legs.
*writes out wishlist* Let’s see … being able to make them sit down, bend over, etc., resizing body independant of head so that some characters can be taller than others … maybe show them from behind, too! :3
keep the old design
Okay, I’ve made another attempt. What do you guys think about this? It’s basically just the old style, with the arms and legs redrawn. The walking animation still looks kinda weird but I’ll figure it out.
I just noticed that the legs are rotating slightly in an arc, which means that the bottoms of the feet aren’t always in the same place. You’ll also need to make the characters sort of bounce up and down, in addition to adjusting the speed to match the animation.
Oh, and I’d also like to add a “JUST AS PLANNED!” face to my previous wishlist. ;3
@MarisaMuffin: Oh, that’s what was missing! Yeah, it does look weird without the bounce effect. Anyway, updated it so that Reimu goes up and down as she walks. I kept the other one in the middle for comparison.
I think the problem is the right leg… It seems to go twice as far as the left one (and the left one more to the back). The arms and hair are good though.
Alternativelly, you could just make them fly.
Nevermind, I didn’t saw the updated flash… It does look good now. Guess it was the bouncing indeed.
BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW CHANGE
The bounce indeed makes it look a lot beetter, the middle one looks like it is sliding or something
That another attempt seems better, I like it a lot.
Why change something that’s great at it is??
DO NOT WANT!
I think you should speed up the leg movement a bit more.
KirbyM, on the comparison Reimu seems skinnyer and brighter thats all i see…
Yes! The bounce is what was missing! You fixed it :D
Okay, the newer one works better; the “hovering with legs wiggling” is slightly less noticeable, too, though it’s still there.
*adds PC-98 Marisa to wishlist*
… oh, and the ability to make a character look like they’re holding an object, by having one or both of their arms appear in front of something (or someone, for purposes of snuggles!), but with their bodies behind it! :3
Hai guyz! what’s going on he…OUCH! MY EYES!
OH GOD, WHY WHY WHY!??
I like the newer attempt a lot. The body parts are separated and animateable, but the proportions are still about the same. I think it accomplishes the intended goal of improving the character models, but doesn’t change the character setup/proportion appeals, which I’m thinking was the intent all along.
I like the second one, looking forward to new stuff!
I think you should keep the bigger Reimu and Marisa, for a sudden LOL EVERYONE HAS GROWN UP flash or something.
Even though most of the touhoes wouldn’t change when growing up.