Kami's Fluffy Pixels

[Kami]

Started to work on my TFR character... again.
The Skirt was bugging me with my sprite so I tried to fix it, I'm still unsatisfied with it.


Crits?

[Bombshell93]

arms are far too small, shades on the white need more contrast and the feet look like blobs.

[Virtuaboy123]

I think its too skinny try expanding her more.
tried making a battle ready stance too.

[Thumbtacks]

Well he can't do much with the colors because of the TFR palette

I'd suggest you study up on anatomy, unless she's supposed to have stubby half-arms.

As for the skirt, clothes usually aren't made out of plastic. They've got folds and they flow around, draped over the body, rather than just "there".

[Kami]

Gave it some work, I Messed with VirtuaBoy's edit.

pre-pewpew stage(What else am I going to call it?)

Edit:
Made a fireball... (Though I was originally working on the walking frames, whoops... )

Sheet So far:

[Kami]

ISOSORRYFORDOUBLEPOSTING

pewpew.gif(Quite literally too)


also, random gameboy color limit thingy I started while I was bored.

[Previous]

I'd say the tFR sprite is overshaded and over-antialiased. Also, some of the lines (especially the shade transition on the skirt-thing) are rather jaggy and could be smoothed.

[Gors]

the main problem with your character is that she is really boring, character-design wise. You could give her a more eye-catching feature, right now it's just a girl with cat tail and ears. Also you still need to brush up on the anatomy (it's not an easy task, I know) and therefore, how body parts animate.

i made some scribbles which could help you, the important now is not to make it tfr style, it's about improving your drawing.

[Bombshell93]

I wouldn't say the character is boring, any character if made in the right style can look interesting, I'd say the only thing wrong is the anatomy (which is very wrong) fix that and liven up the animation (at the moment its like an effortless shove and a flash of light) and it'd be great.

in terms of anatomy it can take a lot of study to get it right, so don't try rushing, you need to honestly study it or you could end up missing important details.
in terms of animation you need to put more load and recoil,
typically an animation to make it look believable and exciting it goes in 3 stages,
Load - pulling your body back before a punch, crouching before a jump, jarring your head back before a headbutt, etc.
Fire - extend your arm rapidly, spring your legs out, swing your body and head forwards, etc.
Recoil - arm bounces back, legs return to relaxed positions, head bounces from the hit, etc.

it can take some playing around to get it right, but so long as something has a comfortable load, fire and recoil arc, it'll look interesting.

EDIT:
proof of concept, the character is not boring (though I might have screwed the arms a little bit)

[Gors]

it still looks plain to me, even more now with the really straight 'skeleton limbs'. I'm having trouble to read the black dot on the face (nose? mouth?); otherwise the anatomy is better than the first attempt. I'm not sure about the pink eye though.

my scribble might not be very readable, but I tried giving her a kimono and a fox tail (since his ref seems to be a fox lady, not a cat). The kimono skirt doesn't allow for poses with opened legs, so i tried working it. In fact i'm not sure if it's a skirt or baggy pants like you made it look like.

[Bombshell93]

yeah I have problems with arms and my browsers being a bit funny with pictures so I didn't see your sketch,
still my point was the only real issue is the anatomy, arguably the pose, more could be added to the character but the simple costume makes it an ample candidate for exciting animations (which just out of personal preference, I find good animations can outweigh a thicker design)

[Gors]

me too, but one thing that i've learned not too long ago is that a good character design, especially for a "protagonist", there should be something that makes it pop.

I'm not saying to bloat the design with belts and zippers, but to give her an actual clothing instead of blobs of fabric covering her body. Notice that the simple inclusion of sewing lines already gives it a more lively look. Try finding the sweet spot between design/animation, then you'll have a winning design.

[Kami]

Before I restart the sprite later, I want to know it this is somewhat of what you were talking about:


And since i'm mainly focusing on improving myself, I started working with a different style to try and improve myself as a whole.

I attempted an Octoroc in ML3 style.

[Bombshell93]

I think I can see the bland design problem and just taking guesses as to what could be the issue / solution,
The skirt thingy I don't think works very well, not to mention it doesn't fit with the sweater because its very revealing and the sweater is not (unless you want to make a pin-up character I'd say stay away from skit-ish things. Dresses and skirts aren't good for fighting, unless its a short skirt in which case enter pin-up character.
The sweater itself is fairly boring, just 1 solid colour, even with the lines on it it still just looks like an ordinary sweater.
the hair also, is just long and white, its not in any style its just... there.
your also putting too much detail in the shading for a TFR sprite, don't shade a TFR sprite based on form, shade it to show the difference between forground and background (E.G my speedo joe TFR sprites only shading is the entire far arm and far leg)

if I took a quick stab at livening up your character, I'd say short hair, baggy pants, the front a dim colour the back a vibrant colour and a sweater vest, no sleaves / short but baggy.

[Kami]

I'm going to focus on other things right now to improvemyself more, before I take another go at my TFR Design.

So a Skype conversation sparked an Idea, though I'm having a little bit of trouble designing the title for it.
This is what I have but I'm iffy on how it looks, I feel it's way to generic.