The VG Resource

I'm a newby here.
I need someone to try to see if i make good sprites.
You don't have to be nice if it's terrible and is no solucion i'm ok.
So i gonna post the max of my sprites and you, in a scale from 1 to 10 say how is my sprites.
And a reason why(optional it's just to i know what i do rong).

So:
1º
Description:
8 Bit Sprite
Uploaded from Photobucket.
Duck's



2º
Description:
8 Bit Sprite
Uploaded from Photobucket.
Hunter Small Version(Super Mario Kinda)


3ºDescription:
8 Bit Sprite
Uploaded from Photobucket.
Hunter Big Version(Super Mario Kinda)

None of these are 8-bit. Please learn what that means before trying to apply it.

I'm sure now he knows what 8-bit actually means!

As far as I know - and I very likely could be wrong here - in spriting terms, 8 bit refers to certain rules about the colors you can use and the size of your sprites. A single sprite needs to fit into a box with multiple of eight sizes (e.g. 8x8, 16x16, 16x8, 24x32...). You can only use four colors (from a limited palette I think, depending on the "system") per 8x8 square, one of them being transparent.

About your sprites, you have some readability issues. With sprites this small, you need to make sure the viewer can recongnize different elements. The yellow shirt blends with the skin a lot, making it hard to distinguish shirt and face or hands.
Furthermore, that grey thing (whatever it is) they hold shouldn't be darker at the top, but rather brighter as it just looks weird when the light appears to come from the bottom.


Either way, there's no real point in doing "8 bit styled" sprites when you don't know how to make them properly with adequate colors and readability yet. I can see beginners think it's great to begin with as there is barely any shading and whatnot, but trust me, it doesn't teach you much in the long run.

One last point, you don't need to cramp your sprites onto tiny sheets, you can give them a little space.

Why does 40% of the internet think 8-bit means low-detailed, ugly, non-shaded, unreadable, and tiny sprites in general. Why

8-bit is limited to three colors plus the background color, to be exact on the colors.

(07-24-2012, 03:10 PM)Iceman404 Wrote: [ -> ]Why does 40% of the internet think 8-bit means low-detailed, ugly, non-shaded, unreadable, and tiny sprites in general. Why

From our good friend Smithy!

(07-24-2012, 03:50 PM)Shiyadezubuzu Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-24-2012, 03:10 PM)Iceman404 Wrote: [ -> ]Why does 40% of the internet think 8-bit means low-detailed, ugly, non-shaded, unreadable, and tiny sprites in general. Why

What 8-bit should always be

From our good friend Smithy!

Smithy showed the internet what true 8-bit is.

Also, I just realized smithy's Wagner is missing his lower jaw.

You guys make it seem like the original NES developers didn't make extremely detailed/gorgeous 8-bit games.

for the sake of actually posting content relevant to OP's interest

Your sprites are fine, despite what the elitists buttfaced just said. however, they are extremely simple and don't really prsent any challenge at all. you should consider moving on a more elaborated concept that would both grant you more freedom to develop. either it be inspired by classic 8bit sprites or not. but dont limit yourself to this particular format just because you're afraid of doing something else.

They remind me more of Atari than NES sprites to be honest.

And all the sprites are too small. You should consider trying to advance to making bigger pixels. Also, you should consider some shading technique, or if you like: Go all the way Atari. It helps alot either way

Once again people use 8-bit instead of 4bpp.
8-bit has nothing to do with the graphics, but yes, NES sprites use 4bpp (4 bits per pixel) meaning that a sprite can only have 4 colours (one being transparency most of the time).

However, the sprites themselves: The duck's flying looks really odd and the colours used on the people make them hard to see. Specially the gun (the 'being fired' sprite I though was a spade at first). It's not a stab at it but I'd clean up your design, either making a bigger sprite or a simpler cleaner one.

I think that 8 bit is 8 colors a sprite

N-no.

There are many thing that 8 bit is not and "8 colors per sprite" definitely is one of them. Why would it even? A colour is not a bit and a bit can hardly be a colour unless you are in monochrome.

As people have covered: There is no "8 bit" for sprites. There are 8 bit consoles (computer architecture, memory cell / bus size), 8 bit per colour palettes, 8 bit per pixel sprites, but no "just 8 bit" whatever.
Many people use the term for sprites that are supposed to look as though they were from old consoles like the NES but technically, the term makes absolutely no sense.

then you're thinking wrong. completely wrong.

8-bit sprites don't use 8 colors per sprite; in fact, 8-bit doesn't even refer to sprites themselves, but rather the console's processor. "8-bit sprites" are just a colloquial form to refer graphics rendered in said hardware, so using it as 'style' is pretty erroneous.

This being said, if you're using NES limitations for your sprites, the console can render graphics with colors in this palette:



Also, three colors plus transparency can be assigned to each 8x8 tile of the sprite, though there are limits on how many colors the NES can display at a given time. Briefly, an usual NES sprite needs to be done with only 3 colors plus transparency.

---

This is if you were aiming for NES sprites, since NES is pretty popular. But just for comparision, several other game consoles such as Master System, Game Gear, Gameboy and even home computers such as MSX and Atari series are 8-bit, and each has different limitations graphics-wise.

(08-03-2012, 08:43 AM)Previous Wrote: [ -> ]As people have covered: There is no "8 bit" for sprites.

Most people who have any idea of how these thing work usually seem to use the term to mean using the NES palette Gors posted, even though it's only a 6-bit encoding, and a limit of 3 colours + transparency per 8x8 tile, or per sprite.

As Previous has said, though, there is no such thing as just "8-bit". A bit is a single binary digit in a computer system. For example, a 1-bit system can only store 2 different states of data (1 or 0). A 2-bit system can store 4 (00, 01, 10, 11), etc. An 8-bit system can store 256 different states. What those states mean is entirely at the discretion of the software using it. Just saying "8-bit" is simply referring to the amount of data you're using to store something, it doesn't have anything to do with sprites unless you attach that to something.