I'm starting a big-ish project. I've read all the pixel art and animation articles, buttt graphics are not my thing. This is the main character on a frame of his stopped animation. Please critique this junk (any kind is welcome).
(hovering animations are easier than running cycles )
I'm willing to spend any amount of time necessary to make my graphics nice, any tips on shading/proportions/anything else are appreciated; this stuff doesn't come naturally to me.
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First thing - NEVER save pixel art as a .jpg
It introduces all kinds of nasty artifacts that make it look bad.
.png is the best format to use, but noone's gonna complain if you use .gif or .bmp's either (since pixel art is so small).
The sprite itself is actually pretty good though. The light source is mostly consistent - the near side leg is perhaps a little flat and too straight. His biceps are a little skinny, but I guess that accentuates his shoulders and fists. The outlines may be a touch dark, but that depends on the background, and whether you're going for a cartoony look.
The only other thing, is it's hard to tell what he's made of, with him being blue and all. I wasn't sure if he's meant to be metallic or zombie-like.
I'd say his legs and feet(?) could use a little more work, but overall it's very good.
Your dithering is fine. My only issue is that your flames do not match as good as they could. Either lower the saturation or add a brighter color within the ones you have chosen. It more or less reads as just blue. Try adding some bright colors within the middle to give a glow feel to it. The placement of your darkest shade could use some work as well. My suggestion is to look at how anti-aliasing works in order to help you there. But other than that, for someone who is not big on graphics you did very well. Keep it up.
Thanks everyone for the good advice. I've lightened the outlines, shaded the near leg, tried to fix the jets, and saved as a png. Hopefully it looks more metallic now.
The flames still seem off; I've failed multiple times already. The third picture is closer to what I was aiming for (glowing blue from his 'feet') but I can't seem to reproduce it in an active object. The alpha channel object is a possibility, but I'd rather keep it simple (there will be many animations...)
You should be able to achieve a glow if you make the bottom part of the legs the same colour as the flame. If you make the center of the flames brighter, then that should also give the glow impression.
Agreed. Maybe even lose the dark line at the bottom of his legs. Also, I think the flames should "go out" more, if that makes sense - kind of like an upside-down teardrop shape rather than a triangle. I'm sure it will help it look better once the flames themselves are animated too.
Originally Posted by JustinC I would say for things that are supposed to be bright like flames use more white and bright colors surrounded by a darker shade like this:
This blue dude looks pretty good. What game is this sprite for, and what kind of game will it be?
Originally Posted by Yami That's more or less a small detail you could add. I would probably not do it simply because it would double the amount of work.
I'd say the front end looks a bit flat, probably because only one leg is visible and that is not too well shaded. The rest looks very good though. How about a tail?
RE: hoping nobody notices - you can actually get away with quite a lot once the sprite is animated and moving. If you only have one frame for standing still, that's the one that has to look super-good.
Plus I'm going to have trouble animating it as-is. It turns out running animal limbs must be quite flexible while mechanical parts aren't. :/
Should the second front leg be showing? I was playing with perspective and thought one leg made more sense, but the second leg will certainly show in the running animations.
I would add the fourth leg. Having a strange fourth leg show up when you're running would just look weird. Good thing it's the front leg that isn't shown, though
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