Agreed, there's not enough contrast in the background so the darker pixels blend together.

A simple solution could be to take the lightest red and just outline the back of the head, neck, and shoulders.
Another thing to mention, the lack of saturation/contrast, don't be afraid to bump the saturation way up, really dark for the shadows and nice and bright for the highlights.

(made a .gif so you can see just how much of a difference shifting the colors makes)

Glad to see you're still posting man!

something about the glasses feels off. Like they don't rest on the face, but more ...I'm not sure how to describe it, they look like a sticker? or are painted on? does that make sense? I'd suggest makeing them pop a bit more in 3d space, possible have it extend off the face a bit

Alright, I saturated the colours, added a light red outline, extended the glasses and added shadows to it to give it more depth, and tweeted a few minor details. I've always had trouble finding a good art style, but I think I'll be getting somewhere this time.

EDIT:

I changed the colours a bit more and added a different expression, along with a few other touches, also

Here's a banner thing, the tiny sprite is the original design I made. (Ignore the stretched pixels to the left of him, I dun goofed)

You've gotten wayyyyyy better than when I first saw you make this thread. Keep up the good work, and don't stop!

Well here's a Ganondorf thing (it's not based off a particular design, mainly OoT with a few differences)

And updates with these

EDIT:

Also this

(500 posts woot-woot)

I think Ganondorf's body has some readability issues, the black, green skin and dark orange blend together too easily. You should mess with the colours so the different parts are clearer. It could also help if you try to do a low colour version (i.e. no shading, just flats.) Also, if I'm parsing the arms correctly they look too long for the size, the jumping sprite makes it really noticeably (the arm on the right looks too long.)

EDIT: I redid the shading a bit.

A sprite for a game that I'll start, make an engine for, then never finis-- Actually, I better do it because I just spent $80 on GameMaker: Studio Professional


This is the Ganon colour scheme I use in Smash, so I'll be paying more attention to this one. I wasn't sure if it was better/worse than the regular one, though. But here's a (mostly) flat Sprite:

I left some shades since they were important to define certain parts.

I'll just drop in here and say my lord you got better!! Keep up

remember that it's ok to suck, there's nothing wrong in being bad at something. That's the first step for everyone, myself included, and only those who keep at it will be able to get better!

Just look back yourself and compare your recent endeavors with your very first sprite. It's amazing how dedication can make a huge difference!

But even then do not despise your first ever sprite, as it is what kickstarted you into the world of pixelart. Always be fond or your attempts and mistakes - the successes will then be a side-effect of your abilities.

(Everyone needs motivational words every now and then, but seriously, I'm really proud of you bro)

I redid the sprite a bit, but I can tell it needs a bit of work.
Keep the c+c coming for Ganondorf and my icons, too
EDIT: God the colours look so much worse not on my computer, I'll fix em up-- EDIT: Fixed em up on a good screen, I played with the colours and made em good

The head has a lot of readability issues. The shaded skin blends too much with the hair's basic colour, so it's hard to tell when one starts and the other ends. It would help a lot if you used the dark hair shade to separate the two. The area around the ear is also messy and hard to make out. The mask also blends with the skin; the highlight you added is lost because it merges with the skin, you'd have to move it away from the skin. Here's an edit to show off what I mean:

(06-30-2016, 02:13 PM)Joxon Wrote:
This is the Ganon colour scheme I use in Smash, so I'll be paying more attention to this one. I wasn't sure if it was better/worse than the regular one, though. But here's a (mostly) flat Sprite:

I left some shades since they were important to define certain parts.

The raised forearm definitely looks too long compared to the rest of the sprite, you'd have to raise the rest of the arm into an L shape (instead of a V shape) to keep the fist where it is. The legs seem short, the raised leg for example is barely noticeable. The calf should be lengthened so that the knee is more prominent.

The colour palette is really dark overall. If the red was brighter it would help a lot with the readability.

one upping on what x0 did, when making a sprite, there is a balance between "detail" and "readability".

For example, I know that you want your sprites to look detailed, and that's noticeable in the degree of shading you did. However, in a sprite this size, details eat up valuable space and thus might hurt readability.

Again, like x0, I used his philosophy on the body - I made the clusters easier to read, especially the pixels i colored in lime green. Part of the shading detail you did is lost, but now you have a clearer sprite, which requires no extra zooming to know what's going on.

---

a good way to improve readability is avoiding lone pixels. Lone pixels are very distracting in a whole piece and you should either erase them or improve the clusters around it.

How's this?
(The ear is mostly the same because having it use the light shade looks very jarring to me)

Yeah, that looks better. I used a lighter colour for the ear because in your old version you didn't separate it with the darker hair colour, which made it really hard to see but in the current version it's a lot clearer.

I spread the legs out to make the pose a bit more dynamic and I played around with the colours a bit more

Got advice and help from some other people and whipped up a new pallet and stance