The VG Resource

commas and periods are your friends.

all you did here was to increase the GBA sprites and pixel over them. You have no real notion of shading, you just eyeballed it from the original sprite, as with the animations. You still have a lot to learn.

uh that not true i only referenced them your implying that i traced over the originals unless i'm reading you wrong but your right i do need to learn more about making my animation more smooth.

nope, not at all

you need to learn literally everything concerning pixelart and probably drawing as well

you don't know how to make a curvy line, nor knows how to pick colors that gives your sprite depth, your shading is hideous and the animations don't have any logic to them, making them look like an ugly mess.

Please check this section's Sprite Dictionary and give it a good look. Most of the flaws can be seen there, and you'll nkow why you should avoid it.

As for the sprites, you should start from scratch using YOUR style instead of a chimeric, stomped version of the official sprites you are showing us.

i wouldn't call the shading hideous i know its not great and that most of the curves don't look right.i know i should be a little more open to being taking criticism but i don't think that i'll redo all of the sprites for right now i will just leave you with this i know its not much of a difference but i fixed kirby and made him a little more round and got rid of those unnecessary black pixels i do apologize if i seem stubborn.

They're pillow shaded because they are shaded on all sides, instead of following a light source. I forgot to mention that they also have a lot of banding, where the shading follows the outlines exactly.

oh i did try to get ride of the shading on the sides but it looked better with shading and with the banding i though that i was supposed to start with the darker color following the outline and use the second color following the shape of the character.

(04-25-2012, 02:09 PM)plasmakirby Wrote: [ -> ]well actually i use the original sprites as a reference for the shading.i never could pull off a non black outline it never turned out well but glad you think there ok.here are some animated ones for the meta knight one i use game maker for the sprites but websites only accept gifs so i have take each sprite's sub images and save them one at a time and then animate it but some images are smaller and get blurred so i apologize for that.

About the black outlines, all you need to do really, is make a very dark variant of the main color of the sprite (take yellow kirby for example, take the yellow color and make darker version which is near black, but which you can still call yellow and darker than than the rest of them). Take that color and outline the sprite. It's simple accually! :p

GOD NO SHUT UP the hell are you talking about.


this thread has been nothing but horrible recolors and edits, why do i still keep it open. and for god's sake OP, use some god damn commas, your posts make me think you're not even 7.

My apologies to plasmakirby here, but I'm going to have to be blunt with this post.

I think we all agree that they aren't very good at all. Pillowed, banded, and not a single curve looks right. I'd suggest taking a single character and working on that. I'd also again suggest removing the shading outright and just working on the lines. That way you can focus on one area without being distracted with fixing the shading. Shading can come later.

I'd also suggest less talk more spriting and showing.

Or if you want to take another route, attempting to remake them from the beginning might do you some good too. (this one would also cool a few of the nerves around here)

==============
And TSR? Calm down. He's a beginner. Fixing these is good for a beginner of his level, regardless of how they came to be. Edit-resize or badly eyeballed they would have the same curve flaws, and he clearly needs help fixing them.

(04-26-2012, 01:51 AM)Meta Wrote: [ -> ]GOD NO SHUT UP the hell are you talking about.


this thread has been nothing but horrible recolors and edits, why do i still keep it open. and for god's sake OP, use some god damn commas, your posts make me think you're not even 7.

Calm down Meta... He's just a noob spriter asking for your advise. It would be nice to just give him gentle criticism for now (I'm not saying that noobs who don't do a good job at what they're doing don't need criticism, I just mean that we shouldn't knock down his self confidence).

[Meta: i was asking you to shut up. that "use a darker color" bullshit is what he has been doing so far, and its exactly what we're sugesting him not to]

the thing is that he's passing said eyeballed sprites as custom, which isn't true. What's the point of making a "custom" work that carbon copies the official art with shittier lines, colors and anims.

Carbon copying sprites isn't custom sprite work because you aren't improving your techniques at all; you aren't learning the basics behind those techniques.

(04-26-2012, 10:15 AM)BlueBlur97 Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-26-2012, 01:51 AM)Meta Wrote: [ -> ]GOD NO SHUT UP the hell are you talking about.


this thread has been nothing but horrible recolors and edits, why do i still keep it open. and for god's sake OP, use some god damn commas, your posts make me think you're not even 7.

Calm down Meta... He's just a noob spriter asking for your advise. It would be nice to just give him gentle criticism for now (I'm not saying that noobs who don't do a good job at what they're doing don't need criticism, I just mean that we shouldn't knock down his self confidence).

The thing is, if they aren't harsh with him (don't think anything about that, blunt crit. is a standard here. We do it for the benefit of the spriter) then he'll just keep doing what he's doing and not applying our criticism to his work, and that isn't getting him anywhere.
We want to help him, but not if he's not going to listen. He can be better than this, everyone can so that's why we're doing what we can to assist him. But if he isn't going to try out what he's learning then he's obviously not going to improve so that's why we need to get the message through so he can be on his way to getting better instead of dwindling around in the beginner's level when his potential can go beyond that.

the thing is i have been listening and i understand it but don't you think that there is a thing as being to harsh even if your trying to help and what meta said didn't help at all.all he did was say they were horrible recolors and edits.i can agree that they are not the best but it's not like i didn't try and i did not just edit or recolor the originals so you no what after being insulted by most of you even though this is a place for criticism i'll take my business else where so good day to you all.

(04-26-2012, 10:16 AM)Arisa Wrote: [ -> ]the thing is that he's passing said eyeballed sprites as custom, which isn't true. What's the point of making a "custom" work that carbon copies the official art with shittier lines, colors and anims.

Carbon copying sprites isn't custom sprite work because you aren't improving your techniques at all; you aren't learning the basics behind those techniques.

I agree with this. Carbon copying sprites takes very little thought at all and you learn about the same amount of technique as staring at a sprite without doing anything.

But even though making the sprites in the first place may not have improved his technique at all, he made these flawed enough that he might learn quite a bit from fixing them.

As long as he's not pixel for pixeling the curves from the original sprites he's probably going to have to either study up on just how to make a proper sprited curve or go through plenty of trial and error. Both of which will help improve technique. Same goes for the shading.

We just need to encourage his next project to be more ambitious.

This may just be my own personal preference though. I tend to like to just steer beginners using what they're already doing rather than trying to convince them that boot camp is the way to go.

As for another issue, harsh crit is perfectly fine. Not ideal most of the time but we're not professional teachers here (to my knowledge). However, some of you are starting to lose the crit part of harsh crit.


[edit]
I don't know if you'll visit this thread again but in case you do I'll address this.

Quote:the thing is i have been listening and i understand it but don't you think that there is a thing as being to harsh even if your trying to help and what meta said didn't help at all.all he did was say they were horrible recolors and edits.i can agree that they are not the best but it's not like i didn't try and i did not just edit or recolor the originals so you no what after being insulted by most of you even though this is a place for criticism i'll take my business else where so good day to you all

Please have some more patience. I know TSR's a little jaded, and takes their personal definition list WAY too seriously, but insulting you has never been the intent. It's just there's been one too many beginners over the years that merely think of that TSR is a place where people go to either show off their work, or a place where you get advice to make any sprite you make look wonderful. The first impression is outright wrong, and the second only happens as a side result of what TSR really wants to do. TSR wants to develop better spriters, not better sprites. And they want to do it as fast as possible. But they see so many spriters that just don't care to improve at all, or those that purposefully stay on a stagnate route never trying to reach higher.
So when they see someone trying a slower route to improvement, such as yourself, they try to push you towards a faster method. But a lot of people resist and ignore them, so they try harsh crit to try to get past stubborn egos. Throw in a few years of this repeating endless, and most of them just skip to the harsher crits if any hint of resistance is encounter.

Just think of TSR as one of those grumpy mountain hermits heroes train with. Is a little strange to a beginner, and seems unusually brutal, but after a while you find out they are a pretty cool guy with a sense of humor and their methods really DO work even if they could afford to be a little nicer with them

(04-26-2012, 01:03 PM)plasmakirby Wrote: [ -> ]the thing is i have been listening and i understand it but don't you think that there is a thing as being to harsh even if your trying to help and what meta said didn't help at all.all he did was say they were horrible recolors and edits.i can agree that they are not the best but it's not like i didn't try and i did not just edit or recolor the originals so you no what after being insulted by most of you even though this is a place for criticism i'll take my business else where so good day to you all.

Chill out man, geez... We're not trying to insult you. All we are doing is giving you some advice on how to fix up your sprites. Mighty Jetters is right, no matter how much the criticism (gentle or harsh), it will help you find your mistakes. Sure, what Meta said didn't help... But it isn't something to get pissed over. The name of this thread is "Kirby custom sprites", yet none of these sprites are 100% custom. You have to work on your sprites. Try making them in your own style. Most importantly though, try working on accepting criticisms. You won't get ANYWHERE if you don't learn how to accept them.