There is some behind her clothing actually... I even have a write up on it.
But yes basically it is a long shirt/short dress (for lack of a better term). It is cut a little short here due to the characters stature.

Anyway, I tried to depillow the hair, and reduce the contrast on the shirt. I also tweaked the ears a little.

I think that's a bit better.

There's some banding in places
http://www.pixel.schlet.net/#C2
Try to get rid of it

The face/eyes are quite low considering how much head space is on top. I'd either move the face up or shrink the head down a little bit. Or maybe both, I guess it just depends on what looks best.
I'd like to see you play with your colors too. Everything's so desaturated. Try to see what types of colors games use or something.
The closer sleeve seems significantly wider than the other, and I don't think any amount of perspective can account for that much of a difference. By wider, I mean how much the sleeve droops down. It might be easier to see if you temporarily remove the tail.

That tutorial on banding is very enlightening, and mine definitely has some banding, still not entirely sure how to fix it yet. But i'll give it a shot.

As for the head, your right of course. I thought it was a problem with the face. But it is probably more of a head problem, since I have already tried moving around the face.

I am not sure what to do about the saturation.

Ah, no I thought the sleeve looked a little odd myself. Wasn't sure if I should shrink the near side or expand the far side. But tweaking the far side seems easier.

Edit: Edited to re-add some of the lost contrast.

To decrease the saturation, just make your colors (mainly the purple) more gray-shaded (drag the color picking thing more towards the gray area), but make sure not to go too gray. Playing around with colors to get better, more balanced results is the best thing. You also need to play with hue-shifting, if you saw it in the spriting dictionary, since shadows are never just a darker version of the base color. There are often reddish, bluish, even greenish tones mixed in. Just experiment and you'll start to develop better color choices. Researching color theory might also be a good idea. I think someone posted a graph about that somewhere but I don't know where.

Considering your avatar, too, it seems like you don't know shading that well. Its purpose is to give volume to something, and if the shades don't do that, then something is wrong.

So, shading is not covering a side of the sprite with dark shades; it is much more than that. The shading considers shapes, placements, texture and clothing to give the sprite depth.

I'll try coming with a sprite edit when I'm home.

(10-30-2012, 10:29 AM)Mighty Jetaku Wrote: To decrease the saturation, just make your colors (mainly the purple) more gray-shaded

b...but I said to increase saturation, not decrease it...

From here I'm not sure how to be very clear without giving an edit, so hopefully gorsal will have something nice for you. But good work so far. Sometimes banding is hard to keep an eye on even if you're trained to look for it, so I'm glad the tutorial's helping you learn how to recognize it. Keep reading and learning about all sorts of things, I can't emphasize enough how much reading can help your art.

Also, if you wanna learn more about colors, I think it's useful to paste some sprites in paint and just check out the color values of what other people use. I mean, don't get stuck on thinking that only one small set of colors is right, but it just helps to see other approaches.

Making the middle shade of the skin more saturated would probably help. Darker shades do tend to be less saturated than the main ones, but I think it's too dramatic of a decrease here. It does look better now, though. If you put them side by side, the old one looks kind of sickly in comparison.
The purples still could blend better. I always have the hardest time shading dark blue and purple myself. Like I said, maybe seeing how other people do it will help you.

Oh... I thought by having problems with saturation he meant it was too saturated...
welp I should read better
hope I helped somewhat anyway.

Okay, is that better, increased the saturation of the midtone on the skin, but then I also had to tweak the brightness of the line a bit. Trimmed back some of my excessive shading a bit. On a whim I tried moving the leg over a little, it looks better to me. But I am starting to doubt everything.

I went to get some of this, but I was all out. So I did the only thing I could.

The darker shades of the noodles should be darker. The same goes for the chopsticks. Also, I'm not an expert on noodles, so I wouldn't know--- are they that saturated? All noodles I've seen (except if they have melted cheese) are paler than that.

Saffron or curcuma maybe?

The brighter grey shade you threw in solely for the outline of the onion thing is too bright, you should've just used one of the darker shades you have anyways. The bowl is quite jaggy, you should refrain from using 2-1-2 patterns, 2-2-1 and 2-1-1 are preferable. Generally, your shades need a good portion of more contrast.

Yeah their paler, but I wanted to contrast the chopsticks. They also looked kinda sickly when they were pale. I gave it another shot, it looks a bit better then my original attempt.



Thought they still look a bit dull to me.

---

Ah sorry Previous, I missed your message...

The bowl was particularly challenging. I wasn't sure how to approach making it. I see what you mean and i'll try and reduce the jaggies there.

I'll try and correct the other problems you mention as well. But I pretty much need to redesign the edge of the bowl first.

---

Okay, I tried to repair the edges of the bowl to reduce jaggies. I also tried to increase contrast a bit on some things as well as try to make the noodles more noticeable by making them paler. I tried to fix the onion as well.



The chopsticks still bother me for some reason. Is there actually anything wrong with them?

now I want to eat some noodles
but not with sticks thats too hard!!

Well, the chopsticks are jagged and are basically lines outlined (the outline dominates the color inside). Try giving them more shape and make the pattern of the lines consistant (1-1-1-..., 2-2-2-..., etc.).
Also, you shouldn't worry about contrast too much when it comes to color (you mentioned the noodles and the chopsticks). In a limited palette, some objects have to share colors. As the sprite looks now, the chopsticks and noodles are easy to recognise, regardless of color.

Puzzling over how to give more shape to chopsticks. Making them wider doesn't look very good. I tried making them progressively wider instead, that didn't look good (and produced what as I understand are called jaggies, 1,2,2,2,2,repeat).

I fixed some hard to detect jaggies on the back side of the bowl. I recolored the sticks to be the same color as the noodles. I redrew the sticks to be... better.



Also, I started using chopsticks when I was a kid, because I thought it was cool. So I know how to use them 'okayish' today.

Edit: Also after some digging, I note that the spiral thing isn't an onion, but a type of fish cake (Narutomaki). I learn something new everyday.