Gostek- Need some ideas

[STM1993]

Okay, I'm actually working on a full mod (more towards the cuter / cartoon side and using purely MS paint, and if need be, a little help from Photofiltre)

Currently, I'm having some problems with the Gostek. Not for drawing, but I'm out of ideas on how to draw the rest of the gostek. I currently have the Head and Hands fully done (includes injured), but the rest I haven't touched. I have no idea how to draw the rest of the body because whatever I think of, it resembles too much like Thing Thing or Wink or even a Kingdom Hearts heartless, and that's not what I want,  I preferred to be a bit more original. This is quite a problem, knowing that my inspiration may not last very long if this continues.

Any ideas? (Attachment below, you can take a look.)

Current Story:
Once upon a time, there were a group of little people who lived happily in their village. One day, some terrible big bad bullies came about and attacked their home, shattering their pure and peaceful lives. The little people were very afraid at first and always fled, but later, they got fed up of being bullied further. They decide to take up their weapons and fight against the big bullies. However, no matter how long they fought and kept their ground, they kept spawning. They decided at last to end the whole accursed war altogether by attacking and infiltrating the big bullies' bases to steal a special object that these big bullies relied upon for reasons that benefit themselves, then bring that object back to their war-torn village to be destroyed.

Current Ideas:
1. Good guys are skinnier and darker, with brighter vertical eyes. When injured, a halo is seen.
2. Bad guys are bigger and lighter in colour, with darker horizontal eyes. When injured, a pair of horns are seen.
3. When bad guys are injured, they get some kind of dark blue symbolic pattern on them.

Current attachments:
1. A picture of the current gosteks.
2. Download for the current product

[Hair|Trigger]

Well... what are you trying to make?  Cartoon charactrs tend to have black outlines try doing something like that.

Btw: I like how it's comming along so far.  I wish you luck in your mod

[STM1993]

Well... what are you trying to make?  Cartoon charactrs tend to have black outlines try doing something like that.

Btw: I like how it's comming along so far.  I wish you luck in your mod

Hmm outlines... nah the head doesn't need it, but for other parts of the body its definitely needed. The hands do have outlines though.

Oh ya, any ideas for the rest of the body on how it looks? I have no idea whether to keep the body like Soldat or different though.

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestion =)

EDIT:
My current idea is making the Soldat look a lil thinner, since the concept of these characters are supposed to be fast, agile yet cute little human-like shadowy creatures. Any suggestions?

Date Posted: 09 May 2008, 15:04:14Update:

Check out the first post. Now I got Team 2's head! They make good little devils, don't they?

Differences in Team 1 and 2:

Morda (Head): The eyes, which is a white 2 pixel-long line, is different for both teams. For Team 1, its vertical. For Team 2, its horizontal.

Ranny Morda (Injured Head): Team 1's injured head has a halo on top. For Team 2, it is replaced by a pair of horns.

If you want to current head and hands, PM me for it. I'll release the gosteks eventually when I get it fully complete. Then I can work on the rest of the mod slowly one by one.

[Hair|Trigger]

Fast, agile, cute human-like shaddowy soldats?  Hmm, I dunno how you could make that.  Except for the Jawas in star wars.  They like tiny humans with brown robes, Might've been done before I dunno.  But you could try that.  Also, You can mod the body of the soldats right?  Try make it slightly slimmer in shape

Date Posted: May 09, 2008, 04:55:13 amIt's very difficult, and mostly impossible to make much with the soldat gosteks, but your doing well with the head and gloves. 

[STM1993]

Fast, agile, cute human-like shaddowy soldats?  Hmm, I dunno how you could make that.  Except for the Jawas in star wars.  They like tiny humans with brown robes, Might've been done before I dunno.  But you could try that.  Also, You can mod the body of the soldats right?  Try make it slightly slimmer in shape

Date Posted: May 09, 2008, 04:55:13 amIt's very difficult, and mostly impossible to make much with the soldat gosteks, but your doing well with the head and gloves. 

Fast and agile guys are a possible idea though. At the same time I have to think about the weapons, which can be a bit tough. By the way, they're not gloves, that's the hands ; they are black creatures in clothes XD

More or less thought up a story for the creatures. It's something to do with the good guys (Team 1) having fun when suddenly the bad guys (Team 2) come in and try to ruin all the fun and all that. Now the good guys are sick of being attacked all the time, so they decide to infiltrate the bad guys and end it by stealing some special object (obviously the flag) once and for all.

[Hair|Trigger]

Good story concept, needs a little more detail perhaps (reguarding the character depths)

The good guys should obviousley be skinnier, shorter, and darker.  The bad guys should look like bullys (Broarder shoulders, taller build, lighter (medium) colours)  Please make the heads distinguishable, maybe the bad guys black heads have a variety of decorations depended by hairstyle and/or head accessories.. that would be cool.  Maybe modify the dogtags so that they go around the soldat's head (like a headband). So yeah give some of these a go, I don't know much bout gosteks so bear with me.

[STM1993]

Hmm, not a bad idea, I'll give it a go.

For dog tags, they can't go around the Soldat's head. It's always at the neck and moving.

[Hair|Trigger]

If you put a whole bunch of green space underneath the image for the tags will that move them upwards?

[STM1993]

Lol good point but I think it'd look weird ; imagine a chain flying around your head as you move?

Anyway, this is the Team 2 guy SO FAR. Yes I know, he doesn't look muscular, he looks FAT. The biodro was not good in that picture (too squarish and big), I changed them back to normal now.

For the accessories and hair, I'll change them later. More important is their figures.

[Hair|Trigger]

Make the legs thinner and waist thinner, and the shoulders larger?  Might work...

[STM1993]

Make the legs thinner and waist thinner, and the shoulders larger?  Might work...

Hmm, okay I'll try.

Kk, I think I'll take a break from thinking of this for the day, my brain juice is going to dry up. Also having dinner.

[Hair|Trigger]

Good idea

It's 10:00pm here

[STM1993]

Okay, I think I'm more or less done. Check out the first post ; I changed the attachment and added the currently modified files for download.

Now you can see some difference. The good guys are way thinner, and actually their shoes are also smaller. The bad guys are more like the default Soldat except with bigger bodies and arms and hands. The appearance is more apparent when you actually use it ingame.

Hair Trigger's the only one who actually bothers to support and give comments. How encouraging...

[Hair|Trigger]

It's really hard to tell any difference between them, I think in-game with all the rushing and flying around it would be difficult to spot any difference, is it possible to modify jet flames?  I dunno but maybe they could be changed a little.  Sorry but at the moment, I don't think this is very "done"..  you also have to make the skinny guys darker still, make it a navy blue like it is in your sig?  I think you should also provide screens of the guys when they are half-way through throwing a grenade, where their arms are raised and their bodies are exposed.  I still like the idea but you need a little more work done on them

[STM1993]

Hmm, still not that easy to differentiate eh?

Jet flames... nope it can't be modified in the gosteks, its in sparks, so nope, everyone will share the same jets. About screenshots, okay I'll try, since my screenshots are taken with print screen instead of the, F8 button is it?

Soo, you want to make the little guy look darker in colour with some blueish effect eh? I'll consider it.

I'm thinking of adding other differences too. Anyway, just remember that I want to keep the characters as simple of possible.

[Hair|Trigger]

Yes, try doing a (sort of) pattern on their torso, kinda with light in the middle and it shades out to very dark blue that's what I'm thinking of.  I dunno about the red guys tho, maybe you should have their eyes a different colour and give them more a more aggressive type of feel (red eyes, maybe a one-sided pattern?) 

edit, And for the "pattern" thing the colours going out to dark blue should be really breif, maybe even just have 2px of fading.  How many pixels wide is the torso?

Also I'd be glad if somebody else helped 93 out here a little   I'm not the gfx master of the community.

Date Posted: May 10, 2008, 07:22:53 amAnd another idea, give the bad guys spikey hair and maybe like horns?  and you could make the black head into a squarish shaped helmet, with horns attached to that?  I'm just brainstorming ideas here I dunno how much would work.  Sorry if I'm overloading you I know I'd be wayy to lazy to do as much as im asking right now

[Espadon]

Also I'd be glad if somebody else helped 93 out here a little

I think this calls for Lord Frunkamunch, seeing as I'm 'too busy running around squelching new modders.'

[STM1993]

Thanks =D

Hmm, I tried the good guys with the dark-blue effect for their head and hands. It doesn't look good, so I decided to just make the good guys look darker, while the bad guys lighter. The good guys' eyes look brighter, while the bad guys' eyes are darker.

Torso... it is 7 width, 6 height pixels.

[Lord Frunkamunch]

Also I'd be glad if somebody else helped 93 out here a little

I think this calls for Lord Frunkamunch, seeing as I'm 'too busy running around squelching new modders.'

For some reason whenever I read that I get an image of your Master Chief person frantically playing whack-a-mole.


I'd try to help, but my last attempt at a gostek is better left unmentioned and all of the ideas mentioned sound better than anything I could think of.

[STM1993]

Okay.

Hmm, I may not be able to continue at the moment, now I've got to do lots of work (damn school!). But I would definitely try and find time to do more.