The VG Resource

I figured a fair bit of retooling of mario would be helpful seeing as I made the other one more than a year ago, and as I've been spriting a bunch of other things my style has evolved.


I made a couple very minor changes to mario and made a luigi.


I'd really like to make these look as top-notch as possible before I start animations, so I would really appreciate any critique!

New version+other things:

Why are you shading something so small so harshly?

Remove the un-needed brown AA on the mustaches, and remove most of the AA on the noses, it's just un-necessary and looks unclean.
EDIT: Also, leave the hat logo's white, right now it looks like they're wearing McDonald's hats.

I'd like to stress that C&C isn't just pointing out flaws, but also mentioning stuff that's good/worthwhile; These sprites are pretty good and a clear improvement over the old ones,
so I'm very unimpressed by the fact that all posts so far are composed 100% of "this is wrong, fix it".

As I said, I think these are a clear step up from the old ones, I think that the AA, although fairly heavy for such a small sprite, isn't necessarily a bad thing; On the old sprite it didn't have any function, it had a lot of AA but ..well, it looked ugly, the new one's AA is placed in places where it works, so I'm not gonna begrudge you for applying it in a functional way.

A few points of actual critique:

1. The brown under his moustache isn't bad as much as that he looks somewhat chinless right now, I think you can give him more of a chin whilst keeping the brown, if not, it might need to go. (increased highlights is what I'd go for to fix this.)

2. The back end of his hat is far too dark, this isn't due to the darkest shade as much as it is due to the lack of any "backlight"; I'd try to add a small red rim of light around the back end to avoid half his hat blending too much into darkness.

3. I don't like the ear at all, to be honest; not on Mario and especially not on Luigi, personally I think a whole new ear might be in order, but I'll leave that choice to you, feel free to disregard this one if they seem fine to you, of course, it's partly a stylistic problem for me.

Hope this helps, I'm digging the style you've got going here, I'd love to see you tackle some of the bigger guys in it, like Bowser.

You can cut down on a few colors. I will tell you to start off with the red. You have 5 shades, yikes.
Okay 1 through 5 being darkest to lightest. Get rid of 5. If you want a light color to AA the white of the M logo you can actually use one of the light skin shades (it's what I do it I ever do that.) Get rid of 3 and make 2 a bit lighter. Like a 2.5, that'll help.
With such a small sprite many colors do seem quite unnecessary.

You have a good shape going on. The arm has weird shading. I like the way you shaded the arm in earlier sprites, where it's mainly the main color and the darker shades just AA the lines and maybe a true shadow here or there.

Also the shoes seem awkward. I also like the shoes in the earlier attempts. I would suggest using that style, but don't add up on the legs to maintain current height when adding more. Work down and add more from the bottom.

And there's lots of other things like corrective skin highlights and just the way things are shaded that I would approach differently. For now this is all I know how to explain, I hope it helps.

inb4 other edits :B

Edits

its me, or there was a facebook game not long ago that featured that exact sprite

(10-16-2010, 01:11 PM)/■/ Wrote: [ -> ]its me, or there was a facebook game not long ago that featured that exact sprite

Not to my knowledge. I did this without references and only by expanding on my old sprite, so I was in no way copying it.


Thank you all very much for your feedback. I tried to incorporate a little of what everyone told and showed me and I think it's looking a lot better!

Although I'm not sure whether the arms should be longer or shorter and where the straps for his overalls should start. I'm leaning more towards the one on the left myself, but I'm slightly undecided.
Your thoughts?

This is coming along nicely.

The one on the left looks better, and the arms are fine the length that they are.

I agree with Neo about the ear looking a bit weird. I think it just goes to far inward on his face towards his eye. To my knowledge, Mario's ear doesn't do that.

Thank you!

I think I fixed the ear up, and I modified luigi to fit the style.
Any other issues I should address?

Luigi is not Mario with a strange chin and stretched stomach.
He's actually taller, thinner, has longer arms, a different mustache, a slightly longer nose, and a stretched, thin neck.

EDIT: I also think you should keep their legs/feet the same size.

(10-17-2010, 12:36 AM)Iceman404 Wrote: [ -> ]Luigi is not Mario with a strange chin and stretched stomach.
He's actually taller, thinner, has longer arms, a different mustache, a slightly longer nose, and a stretched, thin neck.

EDIT: I also think you should keep their legs/feet the same size.

What do you mean 'stretched stomach'? I'm not too sure what's wrong with it...
I fixed him up slightly by fixing the chin/neck area and lengthening his arms. He already was taller and thinner than mario.

As for for the mustache nose area, I can't seem to figure out how to make his nose longer without in consuming his face. And how is his mustache different?


Also, if I keep the the legs on luigi bigger, it just looks like he's wearing really baggy pants, just because his body is thinner than mario's. I'm not sure how I should go about fixing that. I personally think his legs look fine enough, but I don't really know.

(10-17-2010, 07:02 PM)Fez Wrote: [ -> ]

(10-17-2010, 12:36 AM)Iceman404 Wrote: [ -> ]Luigi is not Mario with a strange chin and stretched stomach.
He's actually taller, thinner, has longer arms, a different mustache, a slightly longer nose, and a stretched, thin neck.

EDIT: I also think you should keep their legs/feet the same size.

What do you mean 'stretched stomach'? I'm not too sure what's wrong with it...
I fixed him up slightly by fixing the chin/neck area and lengthening his arms. He already was taller and thinner than mario.

As for for the mustache nose area, I can't seem to figure out how to make his nose longer without in consuming his face. And how is his mustache different?


Also, if I keep the the legs on luigi bigger, it just looks like he's wearing really baggy pants, just because his body is thinner than mario's. I'm not sure how I should go about fixing that. I personally think his legs look fine enough, but I don't really know.

It looks like he has a gut. Just bring it in a pixel from the right hand side is all.
Leave the size of the nose alone it's fine. Through the stache does need differentiation. You'll just have to play around with it because it's hard to explain (main point is you should have it identical to Mario's.)

The legs are fine when compared to the two brothers he means both legs on the same person should be the same width (my fault.)

(10-16-2010, 07:32 PM)Fez Wrote: [ -> ]

(10-16-2010, 01:11 PM)/■/ Wrote: [ -> ]its me, or there was a facebook game not long ago that featured that exact sprite

Not to my knowledge. I did this without references and only by expanding on my old sprite, so I was in no way copying it

actually, i think someone used your sprite. the game is gone(and the website behind it too) so there is no way to tell if it was or not. welp.