Quirby's seemingly clever assortment of Pixels

[Quirby64]

(OH SNAP I HAVE A NEW SPRITE THREAD OHMYGOSH)

Blarghle I made so many random sprites.

Some I worked harder on others, but Critique on any of them is appreciated nevertheless.



Kind of a betemup style Mario, along with some other random stuf from the series. As most of you have seen from most of my sprites I don't do human/oid characters that often, so of course this one's the worst one here. >~<




Quote from Cave Story. I used thew base sprites as you can see from it, but I think I did a pretty good job on it, though.

And finally (for now)...




Kirby and Meta Knight! I sprite Kirby way too much, and I did the best on this one really. XD Meta, however, is the 2nd worst one here IMO, mainly because I can't get the sword right and it looks like he's wearing white baking gloves. I made jokes about it in a chat yesterday...Also large image .-.
...
I am prepared to be bombed with critique. *Puts on helmet*



Meta Knight's Cooking Extravaganza - Weeknights at 5:55 PM to 6: 37 AM

[Zadaben]

Okay so your meta knight has a couple issues
and Im sorry to say that you should probably scrap it and start from scratch
I made a quick meta knight of my own and am going to try to give you a step by step, keep in mind that my process might not be the same as yours and that is ok
there will be a lot of typos cause I dont have a lot of time

1. Okay so the first thing is that meta knight is a circle (or sphere technically whatever), so I started by just drawing a circle
following that, I overlaid metaknight's mask, which is also a circle, over that, and drew on the eyeholes
2. Following that, I added his shoulderplates, eyes, hands, feet, and part of his cape, and started plotting out where my lightsource was going to be, shading with basic colors and employing mild hushifting
3. here I had to make my first Artistic Decision, because I noticed that the white of meta's glove contrasted too much with the rest of the pallete, so I had to decide whether or not to darken the white or lighten the next shade, both choices work equally well the decision is totally personal, I decided to lighten the next shade of grey because I wanted a pure white in my palette.
4. Subsequently, I began working on the sword, drawing a crude shape where I wanted it to be, and figuring out vaguely where the light should be hitting it.
4.5. I decided the cape was going to clutter the image too much and removed the part of it that I had already made
5. Now that I had all of my shapes figured out, I began outlining them, and working out the sword as I did so
following the style of many kirby games, I used a lighter color to outline the sword because it is such a small accessory at the resolution that the sprite is set at. I also noticed that the shoulderplates where not the correct shape, and modified them, and altered the feet slightly.
6. I fully shaded the piece, heavily shading the metal features to convey texture, and lightly shading the softer features such as his feet, I also adjusted the colors slightly
7. I did some final touchups, and laid the piece to rest. I personally believe that no piece is ever truly finished, as everyone is constantly growing artistically, and there is always more that can be done, but I did not have much time left to write this post, and I was msotly satisfied with the work for now, so Im calling it finished.

I might edit this post a lot later as it was very rushed, but Im going to work now, I hope this helps!

[DioShiba]

I know that this may kind of sound harsh, but I gotta be honest and say that a lot of your sprites really feel rushed and just don't look all that great.

There's a lot of anatomy issues with Mario, the Quote sprites feel very rushed, and to be honest you could have done a lot better with the kirby and meta-knight sprites. (That and I really don't know why you posted your meta knight sprite at such a large scale.)

Assuming that you are a beginner at this, don't fret, we've all been there at some point. My honest suggestion to you is to look at the spriting dictionary (this can be found within the sprite discussion boards under the important threads). that may or may not give you a few pointers on what you can do to improve your skills as a sprite artist. Once you get a better idea on the concepts and terminology in that thread I'd try to make something new from scratch and just focus on making a single sprite instead of trying to make a ton for the sake of showing them off.

I'd also try to avoid making more kirby sprites as well and try to do something out of your comfort zone. Maybe it could be Link, Maybe it could be Sonic, or it could be Samus. All I'm saying is try spriting something that isn't just based on a circle.

I hope that this may help you for the next sprite you make.

[Quirby64]

Hello again my fellow VGR-ers--

Alright, so after looking at the Spriter Dictionary 2 times and looking at the critique I got, I tried making some more sprites. Also, nothing here is Circular and Starts with a "K".



It's Robby O. Robot, either that or it was Robert or something-*shot*
The things I tried to focus on here were Contrast and Readability, but I think the dithering ruined the latter one around the arms. >~<



It's Sir Miles-Per-Hour -- I MEAN Tails. This was based of of is Sonic 2 sprites, And even then I'm having trouble with Tails' Tails. (PARADOXES--)

...

And, on the subject of puns on Sonic names, have a Nissan Rouge.



Aw snap that joke sounded better in my head

[Vipershark]

Is this Kirby edited off of something, by any chance...?
I find it kind of odd how Kirby is rather round and has a decent outline and shading while Meta-Knight (who is the exact same shape) is a strange bulky shape which still has those straight lines that were all over the last Kirby sheet you made.

I'm not saying you didn't make the Kirby above, but like... even though it's a bit rough in some places it's a much higher level of quality than all your other sprites here (MK in particular) and it seems kind of strange to me how that one in particular sticks out so much.

[Quirby64]

Actually, somehow I DID make that Kirby, but In truth I edited the Meta Knight of of said Kirby.....which turned out to be a pain as you probably could tell from how bad it is. XD

It also may be the result of doing so many Kirby sprites that I improved somehow

EDIT : Also, I have some evidence :

[recme]

im sorry, but i call bullshit



the eyes are pretty much edited, the mouth and top of the head are exactly the same. the pattern on the top of the head for both of them is 2-1-2-8-2.

im also loss at how showing us the filename for your image helps us think its not edited :\

[Paladin]

Uhm, how is it not possible that the sprite was made from scratch using the official sprite as a reference?

[Virtuaboy123]

Looks like an edit or borrowed parts, the mouth uses the same color. Regardless I say the body/feet/hands of the sprite needs work anyways.

[Quirby64]

And thus, I return with stuff.
Stuff, stuff, and more stuff to be more exact-

HD Attempts -



Sonic in 3 colors (This was a "doodle" of the sorts) -



Stuff for a Jump! Rockman hack involving Kirby -



Honda S500 in the style of Top Gear Rally on GBC -



I have some more stuff, but I'll just end it here so I have more stuff to post when this thread get's left behind again.

[Kelvin]

Those HD sprites look like you just enlarged the originals and added a filter. The Megaman sprite is especially bad; he looks like Alex Kidd with a bunch of AA around the edges. If you're gonna do HD remasters, that's fine, but it's better if you enlarge the sprite, then draw over it yourself so you can follow what you know the shapes should look like.

The smaller Kirby sprites show some promise, as does the Honda car. Just make Kirby a bit more round and smooth, and it'll look nice.

I'm wondering if you're going for some kind of style with the Sonic sprite or not, but it doesn't look like anything I recognize.

[Quirby64]

Agh. Why do I wait until this thread goes to page 2 or more when I wait to have enough stuff? >~<

Anyways, onto whatever this post is about. Mostly new stuff and edits on the older stuff here.
As for the HD attempts, I mainly just thickened the out line at first, then tineed the new out line to one pixel and started shading and whatnot. Aaaaaand the AA thing was definitely true. And for no reason, I put the same sprites I tried making HD through the best enhancing feature i think I found on GIMP :

And on Kirby, I didn't really do much. I wanted to try to keep the Hi-Jump cape visible, so it was mainly rounding the feet/hands (which is pretty much what I was probably supposed to do in the first place.)

Also, Sanic. Much more Sanic.



And the only other thing I've worked on a lot in the chat so far : a mock screenshot of Cave Story on the original Game Boy! (NOT GBC, Shocking yes)



All I can say on this in particular is that I probably got the tiling wrong. But ih, I'm gonna wait for crits to see on that-





And the Intro Ball goes Boom.

[Koh]

When making high-res sprites, you should go beyond just scaling the original up. For example, what I do when I make my higher-res sprites is scale up the lower-res sprite x2, and place it a tile to the side and below for a point of reference. Then, I redraw the sprite in the space I left, this time taking care to add more detail and clean up the proportions where I can. Results in final sprites such as these:



With the extra space you're given within the double-size bounds, you're free to add more detail to the sprite that otherwise couldn't exist, like on Skale's poncho in the second one. No space to show the pattern along it on Lo-Res, but then I got some for Mid-Res. Or the bent knees for Koh in his Mid-res sprite, since I've more space to show that kind of detail.

[DragonDePlatino]

You know...Call me weird, but I actually like both approaches to making high-res sprites! Koh's looks a lot more professional, but Quirby64's art has that blobby MS Paint feel like the older art of MattMakesGames.

Oh, and that's a nice GBC mockup, Quirby64! It's simple, but functional. I would try building the wall textures out of 16x16 tiles, though.

EDIT:

And on the subject of the "edited" Kirby, does it really matter? I mean, how many different ways can you draw the same character in the same style in the same low resolution? Not that many...

[Kelvin]

@DDP; the number of possible kirby drawings is bitDepth ^ (spriteWidth * spriteHeight) - emptyPixels. Of course, that's assuming you're not limiting it purely to pink Kirby and don't have any hats on him. </smartass>