Re: Xiphophorus helleri

On Friday 27 December 2002 23:39, Monty wrote:
> Hi, I do have a few comments.
>
> The first is that the original xfig files for the Fish are still here
> if anyone wants those to play with.

See below why this might be a good idea.

> Second, it's fine to have the page up.

Thanks.

> Finally, the design nitpicks.  When I originally drew the Fish, I did
> make extensive use of splines, but in most cases, having no corners or
> any perfectly straight lines whatsoever was unappealing.  I went to
> entirely straight lines, as the mix of splines and straight line
> segments looked inconsistent.

Ok, I didn't expect such an elaborate answer. I have to admit I don't know 
much about how fish look. And I also didn't expect that you wanted to keep 
specific anatomic details while clearly others are disregarded, for example 
the eye "sticking out" of the head, the mouth/lips being strongly emphasized 
and the colors reduced to two.
You haven't explicitly stated it, but I guess that while creating a 
stylization you wanted to keep a streamlined look.
My main goals while creating the new fish were to adhere to the current design 
as close as possible while reducing the "crude" look, well, and making it 
look cuter.
As becomes clear from your comments, that what I have called "crude" is 
actually a design choice made by you. I still have the feeling that the 
current version looks like a printed, scanned, and again vectorized (and 
thereby making splines into lines) version of the one it is supposed to look 
like. Remember that I haven't seen the xfig files yet so I can only speak for 
the 400x400 JPEG image I started out from.
When reading my comments please also bear in mind I'm not a native English 
speaker so I had to look up quite a few of the words you used below... ;)

> Specific corners and straight lines that shoyld not go away:
>
> 1) basic fin edges; fish have most of their corners in their fins, and
> swept/tightly angled fins give a greater impression of streamlining
> than do rounded fins.  Think 'tuna' (champion swimmer at speed)
> vs. 'lobefish' (ugly and mostly extinct).  The fins all have at least
> one straight horizontal line intentionally.  The pectoral fin's
> corners are intentional.  The caudal (tail) has a straight-line notch
> and sweep to keep the fish from looking like some primordial species.
> (Admission: the Xiph fish is actually based on a rift lake cichlid,
> not Xiphophorus helleri)
>
> 2) The lips are also constructed carefully of line segments such that
> the shape looks intentional (and also swept to match the finnage),
> rather than 'bulging balloons' at one spline extreme and 'I can't get
> it to bend any more precisely' at the other.

I didn't like that part either but while rounding the upper lip was close to 
the original I was afraid to also round the lower lip since it would have 
looked too different.

> Yeah, the fish is pretty heavily stylized, by the stylization is
> intended to be consistent.  What I don't want to happen going to a
> more rounded look is that the fish move toward looking like a balloon
> animal.

Do you think this is already the case?

> The overall job on the tail and pelvic fins was good (the straight
> lines were preserved).  You lost the straight lines, intentional
> corners and basic shape of the lips and pectoral (side) fin.

While I'm willing to change the fish to meet some of your intentions put forth 
in this mail, I like the pectoral fin as it is now although I have to admit 
that the previous basic shape is lost. Unless the remainder of the fish is 
changed completely I can also not see how straight lines could be put back 
into the mouth's shape.

> Last nits, the dorsal (top) fin it too peaked, as is the fish's back
> (fins and bodies are different; the dominant straight horizontal line
> in the back of the fish is out of place).  Ideally, I'd like to see a

I can't follow you here. Unless I'm misunderstanding "peaked" (which may well 
be possible) I can't see anything in the fish's body or dorsal fin that's 
peaked.
Regarding that straight horizontal line: In case you mean that diagonal 
straight line in the back of the fish then yes, that _is_ out of place.
If not, which one did you think of?

> few intentional corners creep back into the fins, especially the
> pectoral.  I'll draw a few circles for suggested spots tonight :-)

Again, I tried to stay as close to the JPEG as possible and the dots actually 
_are_ rectangles in that image. I just didn't dare to round them any more 
since it would be too different from the original.

On a sidenote, I can not quite understand that part of the fish where the 
caudal fin meets the body. It looks anatomically incorrect since the fin 
seems to be behind the body. If it's not clear what I mean I'll send a 
picture describing this.

> Monty

Great thanks for your comments!
I will try to change the fish a bit to your liking (taking SwiftBiscuit's 
comment into account whose mail I received while writing this mail), but I'm 
not an artist and can go only that far (without spending too much time on 
this, that is).

*phew* Didn't expect that to be so much work...

Greetings,
Marcel
-- 
 . .
/ V / Marcel Martin   Bielefeld   OpenPGP public key:
\   \ [email protected] Germany     http://w148.de/~mmartin/public-key.asc

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