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[DanFessler]

Someone at work linked me to these and I thought they were absolutely brilliant.  Thought I'd share it with you...

Character Art Guide:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

Texture Mapping Guide:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterTextureGuide.pdf

[blinkok]

here's the workshop

[Cobralad]

So much about character contrasts and it looks no better than Warcraft 3 clones from days of grim 2000s. Its like they made up whole shape\color thing after making all graphic (which happens a lot).
Also, I think that proportions and composition are not really beautiful.

[Geti]

That's really punchy and edgy and all Cobralad but I think many people like the aesthetic a lot and the game is played by millions, which gives it a little more heft than your idle words. Just saying.

I feel that they could tone down the bloom a tad and I'm still not sold on the idea of normal mapping just about everything (especially at the kind of scale things are presented in dota) but I think the lighting and silhouettes work nicely. The game is very easy to read at a glance.

Dan: Yeah saw these linked on polycount, interesting stuff. Its all fairly simple, logical stuff but it's nice to have it presented in a well thought out, well collated manner.

[The_Ulf]

Pissed as I am at some of the character design that doesn't depart enough from their Warcraft 3 ancestors in my opinion constituting intellectual property theft (I'm looking at you, Axe!), you've absolutely got to respect and admire Valve's impeccable art direction on the game.  And I must say, I am excited for the customizability of swapping out weapons and accessories on champs ala TF2 and the Steam Workshop.

[Götz]

sure it's not a great departure from "Blizzard Style", but I think it still is a great character design work and a really useful document.

[Muz]

Very, very nice information for a character art noob like myself. I love how short it is and illustrates the point nicely. Bookmarked.

[Miko Galvez]

I like what they taught about color schemes like polar opposite colors, etc but I think it kind of limits the colors that you should use for a character. Thoughts?

[Cobralad]

They are not saying "paint character in 2 primary colors" its rather "choose several dominant colors so characters wont turn into salad".

[Kiriban]

Anyone already made it from this guide? 

[Muz]

I like what they taught about color schemes like polar opposite colors, etc but I think it kind of limits the colors that you should use for a character. Thoughts?

Nah, I think they hit it right with the color examples. Loved that character color key example. As a newbie at art, I fell into the trap of sticking too much to color theory.

On that other topic, the reason they kept most characters similar is because DoTA is a really high learning curve game so a lot of people won't want to relearn character appearances.. and they already have a lot of memorable characters who they don't want to lose.


Are there any tools that analyse how much value is used on a sprite or what colors are used most?

[Geti]

A histogram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_histogram
Very useful, actually The levels tool in photoshop draws a value histogram to help redistribution, so do most value/colourspace scaling tools.

[Happy Shabby Games]

@DanFessler- There is some great practical advice in these. Thanks for sharing!