The VG Resource

Yeah, I meant to make the wood lines lighter to contrast against the darker color behind it.

Oh, okay. I think I've got it now.



Err, how about this? I don't know, to me the lines look a bit too bright, but how do you think it looks?

Well you gotta play around with two colors until it looks just right. Good luck.

I found a better way to precisely check my colors, and I think I've got it right now!



What do you think? I find it easier on the eyes while still having a defined contrast. Do you think it's ready to shade?

Try making the darker shade a little more red.
Also, I know it's wood, but the jaggy lines make it look kind of messy.

Added some AA on the wood (and some other parts), I think it fixes the jaggedness, and makes it look a bit "smoother", if you get me.



Did I do a good job?

Square tool
Circle Tool
Don't use them
-ever-

The legs are alright, but the entire upper body is very bland and way too square.
Give him a more natural pose, not one like he's getting crucified.

Circle tool is the worse thing to make circles with. I'm sure there's a great circle tutorial somewhere on here, if you can't find it get some Kirby sprites and stare at them very hard.

First of all, do the circles look... err... bad? Because I actually didn't use the circle tool at all. Or the square tool, in fact.

The reasn why his design looks kind of bland is because I wanted him to have sort of a simplicity about him, and so that he'd more or less be easy to draw over and over again.

And lol, about the pose - if you read one of my posts from earlier, you'll know that this is just a generic front-facing pose meant solely for working on the design and shading.

You really should try a more dynamic pose. Right now, your character looks like a paper cutout.
The position you have him in is too static and symmetrical, it doesn't seem natural. It lacks life.

If you don't think it rude of me, I've made an interpretation of your character.



To be totally honest, I don't really like what I settled on finishing with, but I think
it illustrates my point just as well.

This is still a standard generic pose, but do you see how much more interesting to look at it is?
Don't pay attention to the shading, It's all off and broken in most places, but impatience
does that to sprites.

I guess my advice here is that you should take some time to work on a more dynamic pose for your
character, and practice proper texturing and shading. My example may be quite flawed in itself, and
I am by no means telling you to imitate it, please don't in fact. I love seeing new spriters, and the
progress they make along the way. I wish you the best of luck GG7.

Thanks a lot for the crits, and I'll take everything into consideration, but again, this is not a real pose. it is a working pose. I will not actually use this pose for anything, it is only for designing the character. However, I like some of the things you designed for him, and I'll incorporate some of them into the finished product.

I used to draw shapes pixel-by-pixel too, as I thought that was the only way, but that only makes things difficult and you don't get very dynamic results.
Instead, roughly sketch out the basic shapes. For the head just doodle a circle.



Then you refine the shapes and with with some minor adjustments, you will have a nicely shaped head.



Now try that with the rest of the body. Sketch out the arms and legs in a slightly more interesting pose, refine, and show us the result. c:

Just out of curiosity, is his mouth plate always in that spot or does it switch sides whenever he turns around? In any case, it's a pretty nice character design.

I agree with Jetters. Just draw the character as if you were drawing him on paper rather than going one pixel at a time. You can clean up the lines afterwards, right?

(08-04-2012, 06:24 PM)LunchPolice Wrote: [ -> ]Just out of curiosity, is his mouth plate always in that spot or does it switch sides whenever he turns around? In any case, it's a pretty nice character design.

I agree with Jetters. Just draw the character as if you were drawing him on paper rather than going one pixel at a time. You can clean up the lines afterwards, right?

Sure, thanks a lot. Also, yes, the mouth plate switches sides when he turns around. It sort of defies the structure of the head in a stylistic, cartoony fashion for the sake of always being able to see his mouth.

Also @Chaoxys, thanks, I'll try that!

(08-04-2012, 11:17 PM)Genogenesis7 Wrote: [ -> ]Also @Chaoxys, thanks, I'll try that!

But Chaoxys hasn't posted in this thread!