Post Your WIP Screenshot Here

I've seen the whole track, not even close to a copy. How about give some CC rather than just slating the s h I t out of everything

 

View attachment 21676 View attachment 21676

k, being a copy aside, the contour lines are disconnected and disproportionate and the rocks dont become bigger as the midground melds into the foreground which leads to a loss of the 3d feel. also the fact that this layers upwardly so quickly messes with the dimensions. U need to establish a landscape contour before u start drawing always
this is the current contour btw (i literally just traced over his existing lines and continued them), the lines don't flow well and the scaling of the accesories doesnt help
this countour seems the most natural to me if u wanna make the hill this tall without doing any scaling or redraws, to match the countour you'd have to eleminate all the horizontal lines.
this countour is the most complex, in order to pull this off, you need to establish the contour more and maybe do a fe redraws in the foreground to make them bigger.
rn that one contour line in the top left cucks most of the flow, so prolly get rid. then all these disconnects also break flow. if u wanna keep that disjointed feel but also keep flow, at least use gray lines

onto the rest

the rocks have muffintops for some reason, im assuming its snow. draw an outline for the rocks before drawing snow. Snow piles onto rocks vertically not horizontally, so keep that in mind.



these are all problems i see everywhere, trackmakrs on this game. teamphantom has big issues with contouring, same for zwinxz, eli, etc. the reason jefes new track looks stupid is because his contouring has a weird ass flow and it doesnt look natural. and for this zwinxz track, pls just draw bigger. zwinxz, u used to be good at these tracks. now ur falling into the same dilemmas as the crappier artists.


tldr; draw better contours, and as has been said over and over on detailing threads, draw bigger and connect lines

 

Aight thanks for the cc. I appreciate that you've taken time to give such a detailed reply.

With this, could you then replicate this into a feature worthy track?

 

condescending isnt the same thing as wrong

ofc, anyone could

 

Alright I want one by a week after the contest ends. Cheers buddy

 

zwinxz has priorities when it comes to making the track. the ride comes before anything, details be damned. if it doesn't play well, it doesn't work. now building the track vertically creates the problem of not looking realistic. it goes up quickly because of the ride, creating a flat look. personally i dig that 2D feel. not everything has to look hyperrealistic. max has been doing it forever. i've been doing it for a good long while too.

on that raising vertical thing, terrain does indeed raise quickly like that. been living in colorado long enough to see stuff like that, especially in the mountain towns.

you don't have to fill in everything to show how the layout of the terrain works. my guy here has done it so those contours are implied, so less work with the same basic function. there's also the fact that the damn landscape is covered in snow. it's white. keeping it blank makes sense lol

there's also the problem of trying to actually finish the damn track on time. if he had infinite time and motivation to make this frankly pretty big track whenever he wanted, maybe he would fill in every detail. but it would turn out looking a lot less clean than what he's got now. prioritizing his time to finishing the thing is more than making one little piece absolutely perfect. i should know that by now. you should too.

muffintops happen on rocks. it's cartoonized here, but it happens often. jefe's new track looks dope, i like the way he draws it. is it REALISTIC? no. but it still is bomb.

also, just because things have the same imagery doesn't mean they are copies. "wow, it has snow on stuff, must be a copy". take basaprei copses. "oh there's one filled in stream that's black, must be a copy of maple." oops, that stream was copying maple. nevermind then.

all in all, dude tf. you used to be a decent member of this community. now you're falling into the same dilemmas as the crappier people on this forum. you made one actual track that took a lot of stuff from better people, and then got carried by shep for the other. if you want to lecture everyone on how they're better, you damn well be able to prove it.

tldr; don't be an asshat, and as has been said over and over in real life, treat others how you want to be treated.

 

100% agree with this. The actual critic that Ishu gave was fine but saying that zwinxz's track is terrible copy of Chillwind Woods is just dumb. The detail looks awesome even though it's not as realistic as possible.

 

more of a detail test than an actual track. thoughts?

 

guess i have to quickly address each point cuz u spent the time and i outa respect that.

i can say firsthand from experience that zwinxz tracks dont have the best ride. That aside, ride and detail are not mutually exclusive. No matter how good of a ride you make, if the detail isnt there, that means there is room to improve. And vice versa, maple makes some sick drawings but his rides are garb. Stylizing nature is fairly difficult, but no matter how abstract you go, your drawings have to be based in reality otherwise you blur the subject matter. So your tree can look like whatever as long as it still resembles a tree. That being said, calling it ur “style” isnt a valid excuse for a drawing that isnt great. Id characterize style as the shading, colors, lines and shapes u use, but what makes zwinxz’s trees criticizable is that they could be easily drawn bigger and better detailed without compromising his style. In reference to max’s detail, he doesnt use 2D. His stuff is cartoony, but still 3D. Yours is 2D for the most part, which works because you draw cave tracks. Zwinxz track is not meant to be 2D. You can tell because he tried to contour it.

Yes contour can rise like that, but the way its detailed doesnt fit the rise. First of all as i mentioned, there isnt any scaling between the rocks above and below. Secondly, the contour lines suggest that the rocks rest on a horizontal planes, not a rising one. I’m sure u know what i mean.

Yes i agree that minimalism can be good. However if u have clumps of very detailed sections and the rest is white, it doesnt seem like part of the art. In some areas he does detail the snow, so in the blank spots it just seems like he got lazy. You can allude to a certain contour for sure, but if u allude to one that doesnt make much sense, it confuses ur audience and loses dimensional consistency.

Being short on time isnt really an excuse for being immune to criticism. If u rush something, it wont turn out as good. Rushed or not, i am criticizing what i see not the effort that went in. Essentially, i agree that time is hard to come by, but it doesnt excuse anyone from criticism.

Muffin tops sometimes happen naturally as a result of erosion. But in the picture i saw, there was no water. Muffin tops do not occur naturally in the environment drawn. On top of that, rectangular rocks are very hard to come by in snowy regions. We usually have rounded rocks, if not flat ones. Jefe’s track is fine, but is it amazing? not really. Hes better with his style than zwinxz is, but neither of their contours dont make sense.

I guess calling people copies is taboo now. But it instantly stood out to me as similar. No it doesnt mean he copied, only he zwinxz can attest to that. Frankly, I dont really care if u copy. If ur track owns that detail, more power to you. But if the section stands out, it feels like the artist has tried to replicate something that has worked for someone else rather than something that works for them. When i made Basaprei copses i did take note of maples detail. However, that type of detail fit the context of the track in my opinion.

Im ngl this part kind hurt to read. I try to offer my thoughts, most of which are criticisms because thats what jumps out to me first. Maybe my standard is too high. I never compare others to myself when giving criticism, because how bad or good i am doesnt matter. I see something that could be fixed and I try to help correct it. imo Horror medley wasnt featured because of any of the detail aspects, the detail is subpar for both me and shep. It turned out good because it was curated well, and the styles fit together well. shep carrying me is questionable. Its not obvious, but i worked on a large chunk of the cave detail. The fact that people cant tell means we were able to meld styles really well.

Also the fact that i have one good track lol. I dont have many full length tracks, even fewer that ive published. Most of the newer detailed tracks are just huge without any quality detailing. Netsik is an example of this. Zgolex, talltexan etc. i respect the effort those guys put in, but i care more about the quality of the detailing than the quantity tbh. Thats y i used to post a lot of ntbfs because i spent ages working on a small section and then losing commitment to finish the whole track. Im sure a lot of people have the same problem. Rn me and xwinx are working on a track and struggling with that. Its a 1.3mb track atm, but probably half of those bytes are in a small fraction of the entire thing.

I also dont understand y yall are defending zwinxz so heavily. Unless, hes talking in a group chat somewhere, i dont think he cares. If he chooses to draw as is, the track will come out better than most tracks these days on the db, but it wont have any impact and he wont improve. Im assuming no one has any problems with my cc, but i guess my delivery is pretty awful?

 

I didn’t read what you said, but I had to admire the fact that you literally wrote 10 paragraphs on the forums of an unpopular online biking game

 

xD

 

Oh it's your delivery and the fact it's you doing it xD

 

^

i just draw for fun. improving is just a little side product. the track i draw atm will be better than my last works so it should be fine

 

oh goodness this is a lot of text. thanks for replying too, it clears up what i was wondering.

first and foremost this is a game. if you go and make a real video game and have the most beautiful graphics out there, it'll get a 6/10 unless the gameplay is there. take vampyr. the game is amazingly atmospheric, but man is the combat and gameplay just not fun after a while. very few tracks are able to get around the "game" thing and be something to look at. but on the whole, ride takes precedence.

damn, i do like drawing caves, don't i. never thought about that. anyway. max is 2D, outside of a few tracks where he creates depth. darkest hour for 2D, trip in the woods for 3D. as of the track i'm working now, a lot of it is 2D, but only to make the track layout make sense.

yes, it does imply a horizontal plane. i'm guessing because of the track. there's not much that can be done there. saying someone would be confused because of it is a bit much, though. you can tell where things are supposed to go pretty easily.

i've always liked jefe's style, and the way he draws his foreground and background is part of that. the contours don't look realistic, but they look good.

no, time doesn't make you immune to criticism, but you have to take it into account when looking at something like a contest entry. seeing how much someone can accomplish within a given time is a factor on judging for a contest, at least in my opinion.

snow is tricky. making it blank wouldn't look right, and coloring it in would certainly not show it's snow, not to mention how time consuming that would be. he's showing the tops of where the snow hits its peak, shows where the land is kind of laid out, and then leaves it be. lolz did the same thing, albeit he had much more scenery and still used grass. also, snow piling on top of rocks like that happens a lot. since i'm in the city and it never snows here, here's a pic of what i mean from google. it's exaggerated for zwinxz's purposes.

the trees are probably saplings, or at least young pines. pines take a while to grow, so they tend to be mini full grown trees after a few years. there's bigger trees in the track, or so i'm told. they're still recognizable as trees covered in snow, so not sure how that part feeds in. he kept the bottom flat, which is a no-no for making a rounded and full object, but seeing more of the track, it seems he's going for a rising track mostly on the same plane.

calling things as copies isn't taboo, but boy did you go the wrong way about it. go back and read what you said. look at it from someone else's perspective. it looks like you're bashing the dude, which is how i and a lot of other people took it. the snark afterwards made you look worse and full of yourself. this thread is about showing what you've worked on and getting better as a creator. cc is great when delivered well, but it needs to be constructive. while the og long post was constructive, the tone was condescending at best. you've done that to other people as well, me included. telling someone that their hard work is trash isn't a motivator. showing how to make something better is always the best thing to do.

standards are always harder on the person creating it. having high expectations is fine, i know i expect me to finish things in way too quick of a time-frame, and then never finish things. keeping your quality spread out and making a track that's overall really good compared to a little patch that's amazing is a tough choice, but the former always works out better. it might not be the best of the best, no, but it looks better to the audience. horror medley is an example of this. it was featured because it's a completed and full track that has some decently spoopy imagery. i had no idea you did any of the cave, kudos for that.

focusing on one little part at a time sometimes works, but they need to be extremely close together so they can be connected well. before this holiday contest i was working on a forest. i had about a minute of ride, did five seconds of the ride full detail, and got to 450k. getting things to a point where you can feasibly finish it is hard, but it's absolutely possible. most everyone has to work on that lol

zwinxz's thoughts have changed about how to draw things. i think we all have, really. his stuff is more streamlined imo, which works for him. that ntbf of the hero contest shows he knows how to do depth. again, snow is tricky. showing depth while also showing snow doesn't work well together, as snow ***** with perspective to begin with.

ishu, i wasn't trying to make you feel like crap when writing this. my goal was to get you to realize what you were saying was rude and a bit hurtful. i did go for the throat a bit, though. after rereading what i said, i'm sorry about that. i want to see everyone here succeed and produce the best stuff that this game has ever seen, even though it isn't as popular as it once was. not sure if i replied to everything but i've spent too much time on this anyway so i'll leave it here.

tldr; different opinions on how to draw things, and that delivery was a bit off.

let's get this thread back on track, shall we?

trying to finish this before the deadline, so hopefully that works out.

 

Welcome to Central Boxville. What do you guys think? (No detail because that "minimalistic" vibe is on purpose)

 

woa u just gonna work on a new track without finishing cuphead? disappointed.

anyway, to put in my last word about the zwinxz thing. No problem with having ur own style. But what opens you up to criticism is not perfecting ur own style. And just because something is tricky or hard to do, does not mean you shouldn’t do it.

 

cuphead was a looooooong time ago lol. could barely draw a circle for that thing.

 

Here's my first long-ish length track I plan on posting. Takes 2-5 minutes depending on skill level. Quite a few step-up's as well and some pretty cool boxes. Anyways, any feedback?