Runouw's sprites

[Runouw]

I have been playing too much of this game called Kerbal Space Program...

Anyway, I drew some sprites inspired from that game. Maybe one day I'll create my own spaceship game, who knows...

Edit: I've decided to change the name of the thread in case I post more sprites.

[Runouw]

Bump(?)

I'm trying to draw a strong female character for one of my game concepts. But something doesn't feel right about it.


Can anyone give me criticism?

[Ton]

I think it's mostly her legs. They're not proportional to the rest of her body.

[SmithyGCN]

That and the animation's really weird. Who does that kind of motion?

I wouldn't have her thrust in that way just for her idle animation.

[Koopaul]

It doesn't look like she has hips either. Like her legs are attatched to a spine and not a pelvis.

[Kelvin]

Not sure what the animation is supposed to be. It looks like a fighter stance, but the way she moves looks like she's dancing. Unless she's one of those dance fighters, then it looks OK.

[BMSantos]

And the way her hair is stopped looks weird. Try to put it more behind her.

[Runouw]

I meant for that animation to be a transition from idle to a fighter stance. I guess the way I made it loop it seemed weird.



Alright, I made her legs longer, changed pants color to blue, hair is behind her head more (and i also made the face 1 pixel wider).

[Gors]

this is bad, I'll tell you why



pixelart is a art medium where you need to be really precise: after all squares don't really allow for smooth lines, especially when less resolution is involved.

The problem with your pixelart, though, can be divided in two:

1- Unreadability, and
2- lack of anatomy.

Unreadability is a problem that happens more in pixelart, I think. Due to each pixel carrying color information, it can be easy to add more arbitrary colors (especially when computers allow you to pick more shades with relative ease compared to traditional media).

Pixelart works with pixels, but it's not a pixel alone that really matters: our brain groups similarly colored pixels into clusters, and those are what gives your character shape, silhouette and shadow.



The one in the right is a really crude 'diagram' of how the clusters work in your female character. Usually when making character designs, it's wise to paint the limbs and limb extremities differently to the body and skin to improve readability. (which I believe you did just fine).

The main problem, though, is the excess of shades to make such a tiny character. Small sprites like these don't need a lot of shades, because they inadvertedly break the clusters int osmaller parts. That makes it harder for the brain to read the image, making it look uglier.

Most starters think that by adding a lot of shades, you can achieve a better sprite, but I don't believe in it. It's all a balance, not too few, but also not too much. Remember that fewer colors mean less work to shade, thus meaning more consistency and ease to reproduce and produce.



I used my shoddy cluster diagram as a base for my version of the sprite. As you can see, mine uses half of the colors in your sprite, and even yet, it's perfectly readable and detailed.

Tips when spriting small things:

1- Think on groups. Don't try rendering hands with separate fingers, but cconsider them as mitts. In a small scale, it's inviable to pixel the divisions between the other fingers, so simplify there. It'll be detail enough if you do.
2- Add a new shade of color, then zoom out to x1. Does the color make a difference? If not, don't keep it. Steamline your palette, make it as efficient as possible.
3- Use colors from pants to shade the eyes, the hair color to shade fabric etc. This is called palette efficiency. Having an efficient palette reduces the number of redundant colors even more, which means less work for you while keeping sprite quality top notch.

As for the pose, I winged that out, but I fixed her anatomy by giving more face space, meat to the body and making the legs seem connected to the body.

Notice that this is only a way to make a sprite and my way is not the perfect way to do so, I hope you learn a thing or two regardless of thought though.

[Runouw]

The problem with your pixelart, though, can be divided in two:

1- Unreadability, and
2- lack of anatomy.

I'll agree these are some of the things I was most worried about when drawing this sprite. To fix the anatomy, all I can think to do is keep practicing with pencil on paper and using references.

Thank you for this incredible tutorial, btw. I didn't expect to get help in so much detail.

I started drawing by using a pixel outline rather than defining blobs. I think my use of colors went way out of hand because I kept trying to anti-alias and add shades and texturing in between steps, all while my lineart was pretty bad to begin with.

I tried following your advice and your example sprite, can you tell me if I am doing this correctly?

Edit: I made a few changes after that:

[Paladin]

I think you should have kept it at the original width. It looks too squished now.

[Runouw]

I made the character's head and arms thinner because I was asked to try to fit closer to the styles shown here:

On the far right is Shanoa from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and in the middle is the main character of my Last Legacy series. My brother designed the sprites for the Last Legacy character a few years ago taking Castlevania as a source of inspiration. Due to the small size of our character sprite, we could not figure out a way to draw a decent looking face on him. So we hid the main character's face in a hood.

Right now, I have tasked myself with re-creating the game's art style and characters, in order to make the game look better and give ourselves more creative freedom with the series. I would like to make the character have similar dimensions as before, but I am free to change anything else. 

Now that all that information is out there, do you think this style is the right path (and more importantly, am I doing it right?). I don't want to move forward unless I can get approval that the new style is indeed an improvement.

[Paladin]

Those sprites are thinner because the body parts are slighty smaller. Your sprite is too tall compared to its width, and that makes it look squished.

[Runouw]

Here's another comparison to other NPCs in the game (that may soon be replaced if I can lock-down the new style):


I guess I have two choices then. Either I make the character wider again, or I make the character shorter to compensate for how thin she is. I like the current width of the arms and hands tough.

Edit: I attempted a another character:

And here's me trying to make the female character shorter:

[Runouw]

Fixed up the outline shading a bit, adjusted the both of their poses, removed the weird buttons on the guy's shirt, changed the palette a bit, changed the look of the item pouches.

Does everything look okay now? I might start animating them soon.