The VG Resource

Working on some sort of ecology project thing, so I decided to start spriting some of the stuff I've been drawing.

How this could possibly relate to an ecology project, I don't know. But that's beside the point.

I think the first, and biggest problem, is that it doesn't really look like anything. I can vaguely see the "frog" in the head, but the body, well, looks like a block. With yellow shoes. What even is that circle thing there, an arm? I'm sorry, but I just don't really understand what's what.

The biggest ART problem on it is that your light grays are, well, too light gray. By a lot. The top one is almost indistinguishable from white(f8f8f8 is not far from ffffff) and the second brightest blends into the white background until you zoom pretty far in. I understand the draw of white electronics, but I'd darken the grays a bit and increase the contrast.
You have a good feel for the basic mechanics of spriting(shading, AA, lightsources) but I note a couple of inconsistencies and issues. You have a lightsource contradiction on the outline of the eye, with the lighter portion being to the right, unlike the top-left lightsource. I also don't think it's a good idea to use the darker outline around the eye at all there, even to make it stand out. Your lineart in many places is simply uneven or boringly square.
I recommend making the upper jaw less round, as frogs don't have perfectly round heads, rounding out the bomb, and, well, making the body more interesting somehow. Also, the head looks huge on the body. The dithering you use up top is entirely unnecessary, and without contrast, unnoticeable as well.

I hate that blue you use on the bomb. Not how you use it, you actually hit the right contrast on that, which is hard, and ration it out alright. I just hate the color, I find it never looks good. When contrasted with the saturated red, it just gets worse. De-saturate a bit, it'll cool it out. I don't even know what that red IS. I'd assume its a fuse, but that doesn't make much sense as the robot lacks a method of igniting an external fuse.

Your outlines puzzle me. They're hard in some places, super soft in others. On bottoms you use black but never tops. I think that's crazy. As spriters, particularly starting spriters, some feel obligated to always use black at the bottom of their palettes. Just make the black another shade of your grays, and it should come much smoother. As it is, there's a huge jump between your last gray and black, and even more between black and the yellow on the tail. Its too abrupt. Also, if some are soft, all should be softer, if some are hard, make it all hard(don't mistake this for hard/soft shadows, that's alright, just make the outlines natural.)

One thing that is unclear to me; is he organic? Because he looks robotic(also organic creatures aren't born with bombs for jaws). But if he is artificial, well, he looks like he popped out of a plastic iPod factory. I, for one, would make him out of metal, and show off the metal as much as possible. Make it shiny, metallic, OBVIOUS, it'll define him as a robot. As it is, I can't tell if it's the wierdest species on earth or a deadly manmade weapon.

Also, your perspective is weird. The head seems perfectly horizontal, full profile view, while the body is at a, what is it called, 3/4 view or some such. Whatever it is, they don't match.

I've made an edit showing how I would change some stuff.

I didn't touch anything below the neck other than color, and I chose to keep the fuse for some reason(although I made it obey gravity). I hope I've helped!

This helps greatly, I've never been able to shade metal properly. I'll also get to work on the body designwise. Yes it is a man-made weapon, mainly used as land-mines, so I tried to fiddle around with something stationary. That red thing was actually supposed to be a light indicating whether it was armed or not. I guess I should have made some of this a bit clearer initially.

Ah! That makes sense as to why it would be there. Hmm. Maybe an interesting way to do that would be to make the eyes change to signal, in theory at least. It would be this orange-ish color for armed or a green for safe. However, without something on the bomb, it begins to look more like a blue bulb or frog throat, and loses most of its look as a bomb.
If you don't mind it not being entirely practical, you could leave a fuse or some such hanging so it obviously looks like a bomb. Maybe say that the manufacturer just uses pre-made bombs so the fuse is still attached.

Metal is a curious subject. How it reacts is all subject to the environment around it. Henning Ludvigsen gave a fantastic article on painting all sorts of materials(including chrome and brushed metal) in the October 2008 issue of ImagineFX magazine. Here's a quote of what the metallics from a copy of the article he put on his website.
"Chrome or Reflective Metal:
http://www.henningludvigsen.com/images/u...chrome.jpg
Reflective metal, or chrome, is all about reflections. When working with reflections, know what the environment your object is placed in, and make sure these two elements corresponds. If the environment is different than the reflections on the object, then the object will not seem to be a part of the image and look off. Getting into painting reflections is a massive study and can be hard to comprehend. Therefore, use references, to see how the reflections are behaving. Strong high-lights are naturally important when painting chrome. Make note of how the fingers reflect in the shiny blade in this example; a tiny detail, but still an important par to the overall impression.

Brushed Metal:
http://www.henningludvigsen.com/images/u..._metal.jpg
Brushed metal is easier to paint than chrome, and you don’t have to go all out and paint every single reflecting object perfectly, but merely hint the reflecting environment using contrast and corresponding colours. For this example, in the end I used the smudge tool set to very low and used my speckled hair-brush to create a vague distortion with horizontal lines along the side of the pot, making it appear to have a brushed surface. Going over with a vague, think brush in the end will make for further detail.

Gold:
http://www.henningludvigsen.com/images/u...g_gold.jpg
Gold works just like painting metal, just with a strong colour overlay. Remember, gold isn’t plain yellow; in addition, use de-saturated colours, like greens, orange, grey, and white."

While he wrote the article with Photoshop & Painter in mind I believe, it applies in most situations. I'd take the brushed metal approach, using, as he said, "contrast and corresponding colours." Bits of light bending around the object from behind, touching the back with a touch of highlight, is another thing I've found to be quite useful.

And you're very welcome, I'm always glad to help out.

I actually thought of that when I started fiddling around with the body.

I tried to make the body more land mine-like, and I drew a mound of dirt to show what it would look like planted. The ball thing is now basically the power unit.

(don't mind the thing in the lower right, that's the next thing I'll be working on once I finish up on the bomb frog)

Wow, now it looks pretty neat! I really like the wires connecting there, it really gives it a mechanical look. I would switch which is armed and which is disarmed though, green for go! When you plant it though, I would plant the spikes all the way into the ground, so they'd be invisible under the dirt mound there. As a concept, the spikes are great, but in action they wouldn't be visible. That doesn't matter right now though. Also, go with the additional highlights on the one without the dirt.
Two things:
One: Like I said was possible, the bomb now ceases to be very recognizable as a bomb without the fuse. I have no idea how to fix this without rather nonsensically including a fuse. If this were for a game, the player would probably get it that these things blow up after triggering a couple, but they'd have a hard time figuring out the concept.
Two: That's my head. While I don't mind that you use it, I provided it as a guide so that you can repair your own, so you can learn and improve. If you just use the edit, you lose out on a valuable learning experience. Use mine if you want, but its better for you to make your own.

That green critter's style reminds me of old PC games like Jazz the Jackrabbit. Thanks for the nostalgia.

(04-23-2010, 01:25 AM)Ego Wrote: [ -> ]Two: That's my head. While I don't mind that you use it, I provided it as a guide so that you can repair your own, so you can learn and improve. If you just use the edit, you lose out on a valuable learning experience. Use mine if you want, but its better for you to make your own.

Extinguish thou jets, sire. Your head was there as a placeholder, I like to fix things one part at a time that way I can concentrate more on them.

I'd probably set an example in a game by having some other critter run into one first.


Head's based on a Poison Dart frog. Unfortunately the armed version looks like something out of Apeture Science.

I just think it cheats yourself to do it that way, and since you didn't say anything, I assumed. I've seen a lot of people just take edits and go with them.

And very nice, only real problem remains identifying it as a bomb. I would switch back to a blue color of sorts, that color at least has an association with bombs. The green just doesn't communicate it.

And looking like you're from Aperture Science is never a bad thing in my book.

his head doesn't look that frog-like now.

There still some issues: design-wise and work-wise.
First of all, I don't suggest you work on a white canvas. If your sprite is supposed to be in, say, a forest in spring, the dominant colours would be green and brown; in that logic you should work on a similar colour so you get a good balance between the sprite and the background. That was work-wise.
Now design wise: you said this was a project. I guess if you are making a sprite then you are making a game. Design is one of the pillars of a game. It's you who's in charge of conveying a message through symbols to a player, and this must be done effectively if you want the player to fully understand the game logic. With this in mind there are two important elements in your object/character, a bomb and an on/off light. Both need to be highlighted. The eye is small and its colour change not that noticeable. The bomb must be visible, it must strike as dangerous. You can consider colour coding, saturation, contrast and borders to prioritise elements of your work.
The rest is superficially esthetic.
Here's an edit, which is done purely on those two points, it was not made to look technically impressive:

added a panel to the chest for an indicator for armed or not/timer. Would it work? Going to have to make the disarmed more obvious and work on that explosion.

I think you took symbols and my example a bit too literally, but your idea works, that's the bottom line. It's important that this object is visible to the player, because for now some of the tones blend into the background (I'm thinking of the bomb, and the darker hues of grey); remember what I said about prioritisation.
The green creature lacks volume. Why so? Because of the way you shaded it. Why does the shading make it look flat? Because of the way you distributed the light onto the creature. This may be due to you being unsure of how the creature looks in three dimensions, it may be due to you not knowing what impact light will have on the volume. Either way I don't understand your creature's volume so I'll let you work on it so you can clarify.
What importance does this creature have in the game?