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[deathtotheweird]

mizukagex's, definitely. it's not super great but if he removed that soul patch and perhaps make the nose less.sharp (her chin is guilty of that as well) or if he made it a few pixels shorter it would be much better. left eye needs a bit of a touch., and she needs eyelashes.

orchad's sketch looks like she is trying to be seductive, but failing real hard. It looks like she is stoned. I don't understand why he has the black dots spotted through his image. I also dislike the mouth for reasons I can't put my finger on..except for the bottom lip.  looks like it was chapped and she ripped off the dead skin with a razor blade. and the smile itself looks like it's merely centimeters from being similar to the joker's smile. the weird neck muscle also looks odd. I also dislike her attire. but I do love the nose. however, it does remind me of one of the females from snatcher (been too long for me to remember her name) which is cool.

reason why I chose mizukagex's:
better hairstyle; i see what chevy means about the missing spot, but I did not notice it until he mentioned it. and on further inspection it just looks like her front bangs are really long, snad since it's combed to that direction it's fine And it's less pixelated than the 2nd. pixel art is wonderful-when done right but the other one, wasn't. and it looks like time was actually spent on it, the other one looks like it was whipped up super fast. I also like what she is wearing, the name of the garment escapes me at the moment though. and like chevy, I would prefer a character in a portrait to not look directly at me, especially with that odd stoner look of the 2nd. so definitely, mizukagex's.

edit: it's late and I am exhausted..excuse my horrible use of grammar and punctuation. chrome needs punctuation correction

[Montoli]

I vote for mizukagex.

The style just looks much more organic.  Orchard's looks too much like "video game art" to me.  I mean, I realize this is art for a video game we're talking about, but it also looks like "art from an old 256-color, VGA Screen-Mode-12 video game.  Unless you're going for a specifically retro look.  (which I haven't been sure of, based on your trailers, but it didn't look like it, since you have alpha blended particles and such...)

With my sincerest apologies to Orchard-I, since it is still worlds above anything I could hope to make.  But really, I'm not a fan the "limited color palette + dithering" look.  So while I appreciate both, if I had to pick one, I'd go for the one that looks more like a painting.

[Jason Bakker]

I think the issue with orchard's portrait is that it's trying to be too functionally correct and detailed, as opposed to suggesting features and letting the viewer fill in the blanks, which is more what mizukagex's does.

For instance, with the right eye in mizukagex's portrait, the shape of it is more suggested than shown. The left eye of orchard's, in contrast, is done as completely as the right, and therefore doesn't look as natural. Also the skew on it seems slightly off...

My 2p! All that said, I still like both of them

[William Broom]

The second one looks more professional to me. I can see that picture in an old-school DOS game, whereas I can't really see the first one anywhere except on Deviantart.

[Eclipse]

(drawn by long's friend, mizukagex)

(drawn by orchard-l)

poll: which do you like better, and why? (this will not be decided upon by vote, i'd just like thoughts and impressions). a few people have complained about orchard-l's portraits, and long had an artist friend who wanted to join the project.

I like orchard-l pixel art, he's very talented, but in that pic she looks like an aging woman more than a young girl.
Mizukagex one has some anatomy i don't entirely get but it's not bad at all, plus i like the "concept art" style more than having pixel art portraits, and she looks like a girl.


Is this one the same character too?


I still like Mizukagex one better than this two this one is made well but it has a strange " '80s anime" vibe...

Try to not mix too many styles during the game!

[sergiocornaga]

I definitely vote for orchad-l.

The first is nice, but looks a little odd to me. I feel like she's missing some hair that should be in the top left corner of the picture. Could use some polishing as others have said.

The second would probably go a lot better with the general pixel aesthetic. There's a lot of weird dithering, though. Should it actually look like the version shown here? 'Cause if so, you've given what I feel is an unrepresentative portrayal of orchad-l's work and a lot of the opinions you've gathered don't mean much. 

Furthermore, you've got a ton of portraits by orchad-l already, right? Would it really be worthwhile to replace them all when this wouldn't please everyone? I don't actually know the answer to that.

[Kingel]

I'd worry less about style and more about consistency. My advice would be to go with whoever can make the portraits look varied and at the same time as if they were drawn by the same person. Judging by the portraits in the above post, orchard-l seems to have some trouble keeping the style consistent. It would be nice if you could get a few more portraits drawn by mizukagex. I think it's important that the artist can draw properly constructed heads from different angles, so I wouldn't base the decision on a single portrait.

[moi]

I don't really like either to be honnest.

But 2 style is a bit more original.
If I had to choose I'd go with 2

[Eclipse]

I'm totally sure the first one is more appealing to almost every non-indie gamer and people not biased over pixel art

[moi]

I'm totally sure the first one is more appealing to almost every non-indie gamer and people not biased over pixel art, provided that they are weeaboos

[Eclipse]

weaboo? they're both manga, one is modern style manga, the other is '80s manga. So... no.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@sergiocornaga: the reason it's 'unrepresentative' is that mizu has only finished the mercedes portrait so far (he still plans to do the others), so i had to compare those two specifically. also, the reason to replace them all is that orchard only did *one* portrait for each character, whereas mizu has the time to do several per character (for different emotions), which can add a bit to the game

@arachne: of course consistency is important, i wouldn't use some portraits from each and mix and match for the same thing; mizu plans to draw all the portraits (well, there are only 5 and a half characters)

@eclipse: i think weeaboo normally refers to people who just got into anime in the late 90s or 00s, whereas it doesn't really apply to people who got into anime in the 80s and often don't like modern anime, so that division makes sense

@all: thanks for all the input so far. i've collected it on the lj entry: http://rinku.livejournal.com/1657074.html

[Xion]

I would like the first if it were more crisply rendered and had more of a back of head and the far eye weren't...like it is.

you should have them tag-team the portraits >_>

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

well, mizu's portrait was unfinished -- he said he'd update it based on the thoughts given in that entry. another thing is that he probably has more time than orchard to work on the game, because orchard also has to do the map art

[Eclipse]

maybe the best solution could be that the artist that's doing the cutscenes do the portraits as well

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it's also planned that mizu at least partially replace harlock as the cutscene artist, because harlock is so unreliable and has so little free time

[Kingel]

@arachne: of course consistency is important, i wouldn't use some portraits from each and mix and match for the same thing; mizu plans to draw all the portraits (well, there are only 5 and a half characters)

That's not what I said. My point was that one artist can draw portraits that look very different. Make sure you have an artist who can draw portraits that look like they were drawn by the same person.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

ah, understood. still, as an indie, i can't just fire people for inconsistency, since it's all volunteer, and volunteers are in short supply, so the "make sure" part sounds strange.

[Kingel]

Oh, that's true. I was mostly thinking about what to look for and less about the work involved. It's nice that you have a fairly limited character selection, then. How many different emotions do you have in mind?

Looking forward to seeing how the rest of the portraits turn out.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i was thinking of about 5-7 emotions for the main two characters (venus and mercedes) and 3-5 for the secondary characters (theo, neotheo, icks, and spare) -- things like anger, sadness, crying, normal, cheerful, contemplative, disturbed/shocked