Thread Content Archive (best to do it early!):
=====ORIGINAL FIRST POST=====

*places a small handful of pixels on a nearby desk, thereby starting the stack*

Um... yeah. I have sprite-like things and not much to say. It's been a while since I've done this, but that's just a useless excuse. I like to think I'm a decent pixel artist, but I need to know where I really stand.


^ Reflect Man, one of several of my Robot Masters.

^ Fakemons. From left to right: Tadpod, Floatoad, Minaga, Shelm, Candlite, Phantern

***

This is more of my own creations than I usually put onto forums... * Reflect Man is the largest single piece of pixel art I've ever done as far as I can remember. I did it to see how well I could do on something a little larger scale than I usually do. Might have gone overboard on the dithering, though.

I intend to use those Fakemons in an Advance-style Pokémon fangame along with numerous others. They're a little aged, but I intend to pick them back up, even start again from scratch if I have to, if they're not up to par.

Thoughts?

Amusingly, the large pixelart is overall better than your fakemon. They suffer from the same kind of noodley-lineart issues a lot of fakemon have; and some show pillowshading and banding in a few places - especially Phantern's arms.

For the large piece:
I like the idea you had going with reflections off the boot's metal. But I don't think the dithering has been used to good effect. It makes it look "dirty" instead. For the chest, the way his left side is shaded implies that it is very flat. I would create a curve to the dark shading for the lower half of the breastplate to give it more shape. Actually, the shading overall is all too "straight", I guess. You should think about the shadows other body parts will cast on each other to give it better shading, and if they are there, you should strengthen them. It's relying to much on that primary light-source and makes everything every gradient-y. On a positive note, the lineart, while stiff, is far superior to the fakemon.

I like the Robot Master you've made.

The skin palette could use some work and the hands could be reshaded to match the rest of the shading.

(09-14-2010, 05:57 PM)GrooveMan.exe Wrote: ... They suffer from the same kind of noodley-lineart issues a lot of fakemon have ...

Um... can you define "noodley lineart"?

(09-14-2010, 06:10 PM)thernz Wrote: I like the idea you had going with reflections off the boot's metal. But I don't think the dithering has been used to good effect. It makes it look "dirty" instead. For the chest, the way his left side is shaded implies that it is very flat. I would create a curve to the dark shading for the lower half of the breastplate to give it more shape. Actually, the shading overall is all too "straight", I guess. You should think about the shadows other body parts will cast on each other to give it better shading, and if they are there, you should strengthen them. It's relying to much on that primary light-source and makes everything every gradient-y.

Actually, the foot part of the boot is supposed to be a rounded mirror. Guess I didn't get the effect going clearly enough.

"Too straight"? I'm guessing you mean there isn't enough curvature to the shading, which I can see. And taking into account shadows cast by the subject onto the subject... that's always been one of my biggest weaknesses in general when it comes to coloring, even when I'm not pixelling. Let's see what I can do about it.


Is this any better?

Have a gander at the limbs and extremities of your fakemon. The tails and arms and tentacles. The lineart for them is often quite 'lumpy' in places, the curves not smooth. It makes them look thin and wobbly, like noodles. This is for the most part quite easy to fix.

Look at the Spriting Dictionaty stickied thread. That has an example on how to make your lines look cleaner.

dont dither. you dont need it at all.

(09-15-2010, 03:23 AM)GrooveMan.exe Wrote: Have a gander at the limbs and extremities of your fakemon. The tails and arms and tentacles. The lineart for them is often quite 'lumpy' in places, the curves not smooth. It makes them look thin and wobbly, like noodles. This is for the most part quite easy to fix.

Ohhh... I see, I see. Pretty simple.

I redid Minaga a bit to make sure I was following you correctly and I definitely saw what you were talking about. I have yet to figure out what that lump was in its forward paw and how its tail got broken in two places. XD

(09-15-2010, 10:43 AM)Francisco Cifuentes Wrote: dont dither. you dont need it at all.

Hrm...


I see. I don't know which version I like more, though, and I certainly can't mix them. It's mostly the big open areas that I'm not sure about. I like the smoothness of the dithered versions in those parts, but there is that "gradient-y" quality (as thernz put it) about it that doesn't match up with the rest.

I think it looks better, but I think the problem is also with the colors. The most glaring example to me would be the second brightest red. I would lower its brightness, because the contrast is too high to be used smoothly. I think it would help if you tried to AA it to smooth things up even more.
Also, I noticed that the uh, things on his upper arm are shaded differently enough that they seem different form-wise.
The shadowing is a bit better.

Contrast, huh? That problem always comes up when I make a palette from scratch. There are a number of shared shades, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Anti-aliasing for smoothness might be, though, what with my self-imposed limit of sixteen colors.

The shading on the upper arm parts... has been a bit of a puzzle for me, and one I'm not sure of the answer to. Since the (intended) light source is from the upper left and slightly in front of the subject, one of the parts is getting hit almost head-on while the other is getting hit from the top. Making one match the other would make it come out all wrong.

certainly smoothness doesnt come from AA or dithering, but instead in a proper use of your colors. even if you want to set yourself such an unnecesary restriction.

(09-16-2010, 12:24 AM)/■/ Wrote: certainly smoothness doesnt come from AA or dithering, but instead in a proper use of your colors. even if you want to set yourself such an unnecesary restriction.

Hrm... Sounds like I have a long way to go yet for large-scale pixel art. I'm still not 100% sure what I'm doing wrong. I think I might just go ahead and start over completely on him in a pose that's a bit easier to shade properly (and a bit less bland). That upper arm piece is still baffling me.

On a side note, Fakemon. In all the stuff going on with Reflect Man, I still haven't really gotten feedback on my modifications to Minaga and I'd like to know if I'm doing it right. In the meanwhile, though, I've done the same thing to Phantern now; touching up the lineart and doing a full reshading.


Difference isn't quite as big as with Minaga, if you ask me.

Hate to doublepost, but...

*another handful of pixels to the stack*


^ No need for introduction, I'm sure.

A sprite project with somewhat loftier ambitions than single-frame Fakemon. This is about a quarter of the cast of characters I'll be doing in this style: the remaining being five from existing games (one representative from each of the NES games plus one other) and five of my own creations. I'm just showing these to see how this stacks up before I start on the others, then get started with full sheets.

If they live up to standards, I'm thinking of submitting them when/if I finish. The preexisting characters, anyway.

Some of the poses feel unbalanced - Elecman's especially. The position of the feet don't feel in line with his body, and there are no knees to speak of. However, Quickman's looking very good - the best out of them.

Bass is too dirty, clean him up

also avoid using too much black pixels