Concept sprite, looking for opinions.

[Bearded_Beast]

Hello, I have a couple sprites here for you.

This first set of them is where I started, and have been debating over colors. The one with fire is an alternate form, more on that later.

Now, this is a redesign of the above sprites. "Clay" as he is called is an intelligent construct, a golem that can think for itself.

What I'm looking for is some opinions, perhaps critique of the second sprite displayed. I would like to keep the metal collar and gauntlets, and the flesh tone. Though, I would like to cement a style for it too, something readable and interesting. I'm not sure I've totally accomplished that here, yet.

I intend to have a number of forms for this guy: one made of brick, another with the pot spouting fire for a head, anyway there's a bunch. But I'd like to keep the collar and gem. If any of you viewers have any suggestions, critique or creative. Please post them.

[update]: the aforementioned forms.
[update]: some fixes implimented, color and pose.

[Bombshell93]

you need to work on the arms, the shape is odd. the head also doesn't read so well, I'd advise a dome and define the eyes within it rather than like you have the left eye interupting the lineart.
the shoulder muscley thing (I don't know any muscle structure names but I've done a massive amount of anatomy study) will tend to be a lot more of the shoulder, as opposed to sharing space with the arm itself.
the upper arm needs to be thinner or the shoulder bigger,
the forearm doesn't fit well with the elbow, in fact it looks like there is no elbow and that the arm just folds around and into the forearm, a bit of tweaking to give the elbow a more defined point should fix this.
I like your colour choices a lot bar the red, typically you want to lower saturation on red because vibrant reds don't shade well.
also your character has balance issues, hes leaning too far forwards, if he moved an inch he'd topple.

I think the leaning problem is one with the design, with that collar you dont expect a neck, as such the head for the sake of balance should stay in an idle position, as if he were to always have a straight back.

[Bearded_Beast]

you need to work on the arms, the shape is odd. the head also doesn't read so well, I'd advise a dome and define the eyes within it rather than like you have the left eye interupting the lineart.
the shoulder muscley thing (I don't know any muscle structure names but I've done a massive amount of anatomy study) will tend to be a lot more of the shoulder, as opposed to sharing space with the arm itself.
the upper arm needs to be thinner or the shoulder bigger,
the forearm doesn't fit well with the elbow, in fact it looks like there is no elbow and that the arm just folds around and into the forearm, a bit of tweaking to give the elbow a more defined point should fix this.
I like your colour choices a lot bar the red, typically you want to lower saturation on red because vibrant reds don't shade well.
also your character has balance issues, hes leaning too far forwards, if he moved an inch he'd topple.

I think the leaning problem is one with the design, with that collar you dont expect a neck, as such the head for the sake of balance should stay in an idle position, as if he were to always have a straight back.

All of these are very good points. I wanted his head to be free to move around and the collar to obscure his mouth. I didn't intend him to be so top-heavy (like Potemkin in Guilty Gear though it is where I got the idea for the collar ) I had him leaning back a bit more in his concept sketch, like Zero does in his idle stance from Megaman Zero.

I'll try a sleeker design a little later. Thank you Bombshell.

I'll come clean on something though, the idea was inspired by a friend's suggestion: To do Mega Man in a Fantasy setting. I just don't want him to look like Mega Man so much.

[Bearded_Beast]

you need to work on the arms, the shape is odd. the head also doesn't read so well.

I looked at some other poses, and tinkered with it.

what do you think?

[Vipershark]

Looks like an MMZ edit.
Way too much airhump.

[Bearded_Beast]

Looks like an MMZ edit.
Way too much airhump.

I was looking at MMZ at the time. Ugh, I can not think of a good pose to use for this character. I've been at it for the last two days. I've looked at every game I can think of with decent poses. Any suggestions?

[Bombshell93]

this is a goofy suggestion but its what I do and it works usually,
pretend your the character, play out some actions you expect it to do, role play a little in your head, copy the poses you take,
I'm a peculiar person in that when I imagine up a character I'm usually playing with a pen, pretending the end of the pen is their fist and a bit of the pen is their arm, I flipty loop and play around with the pen like a child, pretending the character is on whatever adventure, even talking to myself in funny voices to pretend their interacting with different characters.
Now this could just be the autism talking, but playing pretend like this gets ideas flowing, the personalities filled in and the characters building for me (and hence their attitude fleshed out, which will effect their pose.)

[Bearded_Beast]

this is a goofy suggestion but its what I do and it works usually,
pretend you're the character.

I do this quite often. Being a GM/DM/Narrator, I often have voices for, and act out, my characters. This extends to my character development. The problem is, I don't like what I come up with so far. So, at a suggestion of a friend I've been chatting with, I started doing this.

I'll continue to use examples, then start mixing the images. MMZ version with slightly less 'Air-humping'

I know the 'Classic' sprite is not 8-bit proper. This was done to see what it would look like. I'll probably do the MM7 and MM&B incarnations as well. I'll start reaching into other games as well when I get around to it. (Ghouls n' Ghosts, Castlevania X/SotN, Mario, etc.)

[Gaia]

I'll say go with the flow with the "Zero" experiment and see how that turns out. It might just end up being a new style entirely. Unlike me. Which in my last attempt wasn't going the distance, but squishing the original sprites and meshing it up with the ZX pallete. Not a good idea. And as for the character himself, experiment with a few kibbles here and there a bit more for quite an interesting result which would make him less "mega man edit" and more your own.

[Bearded_Beast]

I'll say go with the flow with the "Zero" experiment and see how that turns out. It might just end up being a new style entirely. Unlike me. Which in my last attempt wasn't going the distance, but squishing the original sprites and meshing it up with the ZX pallete. Not a good idea. And as for the character himself, experiment with a few kibbles here and there a bit more for quite an interesting result which would make him less "mega man edit" and more your own.

Well, the first sprite I posted of him, where Bombshell mentioned he was top heavy, was from scratch. These sprites here? They're using the Mega Man sprites as guides for Clay's sprites next to them. They aren't edits (though I could understand if someone thought they were). I can't picture a good relaxed pose, despite scrolling through thousands of pictures or personal visualization. Thus, the studies.

Any other sprites anyone could suggest for me to try my hand at? I'm trying to stay around roughly 40x50 px.

[Gaia]

If you want a relaxed pose, try working off from this. Sometimes it's helpful when you have a irl photo on-hand with these things. I know the common view is 3/4 with these sprites, but you can try to picture it from that general viewpoint.

And I apologize for confusing it for an edit. It's just the aesthetic that threw me off and reminded me of Toru Nakayama, the MMZ series' art director.

[Bearded_Beast]

If you want a relaxed pose, try working off from this. Sometimes it's helpful when you have a irl photo on-hand with these things. I know the common view is 3/4 with these sprites, but you can try to picture it from that general viewpoint.

And I apologize for confusing it for an edit. It's just the aesthetic that threw me off and reminded me of Toru Nakayama, the MMZ series' art director.

Hello, thank you very much for the link. And it's cool, it is really close to Zero. I'll try a sprite from the link provided.

---

try working off from this.

I used the perspective provided for now. I'll try the 3/4 or 2/5 view in a moment. Photobucket is being strange right now.

[Bearded_Beast]

Gave it another shot after doing some more sketchwork. Any better?

[Bombshell93]

leaning too far back, have the back leg stretching a little further so it looks like hes spreading his weight better (good for balance), also use the second pic the first one has a growth in its shoulder.
the red is also still showing off how poorly red shades, make the darker shade darker, the dark blue of the shorts also looks a bit too dark.
the shoulder also has a dark line I assume showing the deltoid, the deltoid will always be the entire shoulder but you've got that like acting as if its a tiny bit on top of the arm, if that were true not much would be keeping your arm from flailing around when your run.

[Bearded_Beast]

leaning too far back, have the back leg stretching a little further so it looks like hes spreading his weight better (good for balance). The red is also still showing off how poorly red shades, make the darker shade darker.
The dark blue of the shorts also looks a bit too dark.

Any better? I am sincerely becoming frustrated with this character.