The VG Resource

Hey there, the name is David, and I am new to the community, I have been creating pixel art for a few years now. I decided to join you all here to improve my art skills to be better. Here are some few things I have made.

Just a self portrait

A character I based off a friend of mine

I was testing out creating characters with only a few colors

This one has no transparency because of it's AA

I will be posting more of my work as I make it, I do have a lot more pieces on my Blog over at Tumblr for those interested. Any remarks are welcome.

Looks good dude, nice to see you're using colors in the general sprite for anti-aliasing. I'm liking how you posed the characters, you can really read their emotion.

If you're looking to improve, you could try delving into other styles or trying more ambitious works (Like concept screenshots, pixel paintings, large sprites, animations, etc). Looks like you've got those styles down. Just a suggestion.

And welcome to the community!

Appreciate the warm welcome, and yeah, animation is probably the one skill I lack. So later on I will start working on trying animation.

Here are more things that I feel like I should put up

Bunch of doodles, nothing too special really, I was mainly working on facial features, but these are old so I have improved far from what you see here

I made this as a small project over at my blog, I started playing Pokemon and I felt like the sprites could use some more luster, soo yeah I made these for practice.

Here is a much more updated version of what I showed previously, I forgot I had it in my laptop's hard drive.

And here is a bunch of doodles again, I was working on some cute, chibi-like styles here.

I really like your style, guy! Nice choice of colors.

I wanted to say a couple of things about your large characters there.



I'll start from left to right, alright? First off, your self-insert.

-I don't really get this hairdo, but in any case, it kind of looks kind of uneven, like there's more on the right than on the left. That bottom corner towards the sideburn is kind of messy, too, and it has this circular-looking strand that looks a tad out of place.

-I don't use glasses or anything, but I think the bridge is supposed to be closer to the upper area.

-I think you could go a little easy with the sel-out, it can make your outlines jittery if you overdo it.

-I'm detecting a little unease with folds here. For the first guy, all those folds across his torso are a little excessive, and they might even be going on the wrong direction. For t-shirts, I'd say the hinge point is the chest since it has the highest elevation (generally), though it could be less slanted if it's a tighter shirt.
some examples:
1 2
I suggest you at least skim this, it could be helpful.

-All that shading on the sleeve makes little sense to me, since the light should be hitting there. Also, the sleeve should be overlapping the torso, but it doesn't give that impression here (that black cluster there is clearly the culprit)

About the red/pink-headed guy(?)...

-I think you should move the mouth up by one pixel, since his face looks way too elongated that way.
-I think you should add more hair on the back, right now the shape makes it looks a tad uneven, like he's missing a part of his head.

And with regards to the other guy-- You used this sort of shading with the previous guy, but it's more evident here. It kind of seems as if that part is at a different elevation than the right half, not very natural, really.

I hope that wasn't too much at once. Welcome aboard!

Thanks for the nice critical points, I have been meaning to actually re-make these characters, since I made em about a year ago, and I have gotten a lot better, so expect that later.


Here's a little project for myself, I saw that this forum has a community game, I liked the style so I tried to imitate it, I even used the color palette given to it, I will try and animate this once I get the character looking right.
The right sprite is the original character concept.

I'm getting some Hunter/1up deja vu here

ahahahaha I was gonna say that

(04-01-2014, 01:06 AM)StarSock64 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm getting some Hunter/1up deja vu here

Weird that you mention that, back over at PJ there was a lot of people saying that too, kinda the reason why I stopped using it, most of the people that looked at the work, mentioned him and gave me no help on how to improve. But I guess I can see the resemblance from his work that is just now showing up at PJ.

Well, I'm seeing some comfort-zone patterns

Your stuff isn't bad to look at from a glance because there's plenty of flashy stuff to make it look nice enough, but it's sorta shallow in some ways. There are some areas I bet you could improve at a lot. I hope you aren't avoiding them because of an imbalance, like, "when I do x thing, I'm great! but when I do y, I'm awful and it makes me feel really bad." I used to be that way...but really, the longer you hold off those things you suck at, the worse off you'll be. That's a really hard habit to kick. Doing stuff you suck at hurts, but it's so important... I dunno if this even applies to you, but it doesn't hurt to say it for everyone else anyway.

It's not fair to make assumptions based on just this stuff, and sometimes I do easy comfort zone stuff too when I'm trying to be fast, but do you make sure to practice other things?
The poses here are all kind of similar, especially the legs.

So you could try poses that show more characterization, or animations, or what have you...it would just be good to be more functional, I guess is what I'm saying. It might be good to try some designs that have different proportions as well. More body types, more fun.

I know the feeling might be, "how many ways can a person even stand?" But there are a lot of ways to redistribute your weight while standing, which requires you to move your legs/shoulders, and this can add a lot of character. There is also the spine, which seems to be sort of leaned back on all three of those bigger characters you did. The postures are too uniform as they are. It seems like a common problem in spriting or something, ahah.

That's just general advice. Iocus gave you a good place to start for specifics, I think.

edit:
jeez i'm pretty incoherent right now, sorry. I'm running on 2 hours of sleep and it's 2 am and help me

I'm trying to say that
my intuition tells me you might be getting too complacent. That's the vibe I get because a lot of this stuff is so "safe." I feel more of an emphasis on style and looking good and not necessarily an emphasis on learning. That's okay every now and then. I mean, it's fun to do stuff for your friends, but it's not too satisfying to stop there.

I'm just being so forward 'cause these are problems I had and I wish someone would have told me to get more serious 'cause I'd be a much better artist by now.

I wanna encourage you to supplement your stuff with studying art if you aren't. Anatomy books and light and shadow and real life and all that jazz. Try something different every now and then.

I guess I can see what you mean by the same pose, well here is something I am going to try.

I will re-make the pose into a more dynamic pose for a fighting stance, any tips? I am having a lot of trouble with the legs and hands.

(04-01-2014, 01:06 AM)StarSock64 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm getting some Hunter/1up deja vu here

sorry to keep getting off topic
but the fact there's a 1 in that username doesn't help the fact
it's just emanating "hey remember the greatness"


(it lives on through the air hump)

hunter went on to do some p. great things and, like all pixelartists, if you keep on the path you will too buddy! it'll pay off \o/


also I'm sorry I'm not contributing actual crit or anything (being iocus pretty much hit everything) but I just love the heck out of that style too ): help

just kidding i have a little crit, it seems that your tFR character's hair suffers from the hair sliding back, too (like it's all trying to retire to the back of his head). If you try uh, how to put it - "rounding it out" so that the hair seems well distributed? like bringing the front half of the hair a few pixels out, making the curve look a bit more rounded, it'll look a little more evenly distributed i guess

(04-01-2014, 02:31 AM)Level 1 Wrote: [ -> ]I guess I can see what you mean by the same pose, well here is something I am going to try.

I will re-make the pose into a more dynamic pose for a fighting stance, any tips? I am having a lot of trouble with the legs and hands.

A stance can say a good deal about your character. For one, the battle style may become evident through a battle stance; even if you're not a martial arts savant, you can often tell what sort of attacks to expect from just the stance. Does your character have a weapon? Are they flaunting it about, or keeping it hidden? Are their punches at the ready?
The stance can also be a good show of personality. Are they standing proudly, defiantly, sternly? Or maybe their stance shows insecurity? Maybe they don't think much of their opponents, so they have a cocky smile, a lax pose? Perhaps they're even shady-looking, like they might try playing dirty.

I'm just talking generally of course; it's entirely possible for the stance to tell us nothing about the character as well, but then you have to wonder if you have a worthwhile character in the first place.

So yeah! Maybe you should ponder on what properties define your character, and cast it through the stance.

Be honest. There's nothing wrong with holding 1up's work in high regard and referencing it - I think the resemblance is anything but coincidental.
Anyway, I edited your sprite:

First of all, your characters have this thing where their eyes are pretty wide apart. The result is rather uncanny.
Secondly, the first pose is pretty static - hands in the jacket's pockets, straight legs bending forwards, posture overall straight. The second pose has your character leaning back a bit more, which centers the head between both feet, so something still very straight and stable.
In my edit I tried to get rid of as many single pixels as I could. I changed the face's proportions. I rotated the body around, to break the continuity with the head, thus creating tension. You could also mess around with the torso's position further back or forward, and with the limbs.
Hope it helps!

Appreciate the help guys, and here are some things I've come up with

I tried rounding up the patch of hair on the back, and I am working on new poses to add variety, at least until I am happy with a pose that I am happy with.

Also, in regards to my work being compared to 1Up's, it feels bitter sweet at times, I will admit, his work is amazing, and being compared to his style is kinda nice, but sometimes that distracts criticism.

I feel like you're way too comfortable with the "relaxed" pose you give your characters in that their torsos lean back even when they're not really trying to.

Take the top right pose, for example. It's a fighting stance, but it looks so... nonchalant. Your character should be leaning forward more and at least look somewhat aggressive.

This is a pretty exaggerated example and I think the guy is leaning way too far forward for what I'm trying to convey but it's the same basic pose.

Lean the torso forward and have the arms come up and forward to look like they're actually ready to defend something.

Your top middle one looks more like a retreating pose or a transition frame for when your character is about to enter its hurt animation because it's so passive looking.