Blue Knight (Castle Crashers) (WIP)

[Sephy3100]

It's my first time spriting in well over a year... So before I went out of my way to make a bigger sheet, I wanted to see what people thought of what I planned to make it look like:



I noticed there was a lack of Castle Crashers sprites online, and the ones I found were either bad quality or lacking poses to make them useful. Not exactly trying to make Blue Knight in any particular style, just wanted to make a good sheet and palette swap him to make the other three knights. I'm open to all C+C!

[megaMasquerain]

You're using too many colors - you could probably get away with 6 colors or so. Try merging your color ramps and cutting down on the number of colors you're using, especially in the blue and yellow.

[Sephy3100]

You're using too many colors - you could probably get away with 6 colors or so. Try merging your color ramps and cutting down on the number of colors you're using, especially in the blue and yellow.

Thanks, I'll try to work on that. When I first started coloring it in I tried using less colors, but it had more of an 8-bit/not-so-decently-shaded vibe to it. I have a pretty bad habit of shading a ton on drawings, so I guess it just kinda carried over with spriting as well haha. Thanks again though!

EDIT: Is this a little better? I would get rid of the darkest shade of blue, but the edges turn out a little weird (EG: Shield against head, sword against shield)

[megaMasquerain]

If just getting rid of it looks weird, try combining it and the darkest shade of yellow. You're using yellow for one part of the sprite only, really, so it shouldn't look too bad if you replace it.

[Sephy3100]

Like this?

[megaMasquerain]

Well, I meant just combining the darkest yellow shade with the darkest blue shade, but that doesn't look too bad.

[Sephy3100]

Ah, I get what you mean. I mixed those two together, and after looking at it for a bit I thought the new color could replace the black as well as the dark yellow.

[Cobalt Blue]

partially transparent brushes =/= carefully picking colors.

[Sephy3100]

I suppose that looks better, but again it looks like it's 8-bit colors. I know 8-bit uses only black, white, and two other colors, which isn't exactly how your version is, but I was hoping to make Blue Knight more 16-bit than 8-bit.

[Cobalt Blue]

explain what does 16 bit stands for you, so i wont asume that 16 bits only means "more colors".

in any case, i'd invite you to read and study this.


PS: with a better use of contrast and saturation, you dont need so many colors to define your character. not doing so not only leads you to clump it with unnecesary details that , in a sprite of such size they end up being redundant.

[Sephy3100]

Well wait, is 16-bit what's used for SNES and some GBA games?

Like take for example this:


Granted, I'm not saying SMW Mario sprites are top of the line, but clearly there are more than 5 or 6 colors used on the entire sprite (12). I'm just trying to figure out why to use only 5-6 colors when it looks a lot less blocky with 10 colors.

Thanks very much for the color ramp tutorial by the way. It seems pretty useful!

[Gors]

obs: more colors =/= better sprite

[Dazz]

No but more colours can mean a better sprite - And I do agree with him on this. Combining both CO2 and his, could make for a decent sprite - but certain changes that CO2 made to the sprite are nicer looking in my opinion.

[Cobalt Blue]

No but more colours can mean a better sprite

nope, its just a sprite with more colors. the whole point of color conservation is to improve readbility by a well defined contrast between each shade.

sure go ahead and add 70 more colors between each main tone, but thats not really going to make the sprite more smooth, i'll only end being blurry.

[Dazz]

That's true - And I agree that the first sprite could have colours reduced, and I believe that at the end there it was a good state.
But there's no reason to start removing colours to the point where it lacks details such as shading. Which I'm not saying your last edit lacks, but it's more a case of his has bolder detail that is more readable to my eye - perhaps this is increased to me personally because of my lack of colour vision in one eye, but that's just my opinion.

You've also changed the colours by your form of shading on certain areas such as the feet, and also removed the shading from his body. The shield also lacks any real shape.