First Sprites I made: Darkrai

[Cobalt Blue]

Nope, sorry.

This is getting increasigly difficult to do without a handy link to something on Colour Theory (help me out, guys?); but pure black is often a bad idea unless working with some restrictive conventions (8-Bit being the most obvious example). In your case you could use a very dark red or purple and that would work much better.

As for pillowshading, that's your fault, not your pallet. The colours you use have little to do with you shading poorly (though bad colour choices can make it more obvious).

just to clarify, there is no such rule agaisnt the use of pure black(#000000) on sprites. either by hardware limitations or by stylistic choice pure black is used in a sprite and they do work perfectly fine.

however(this is purely by experience) the use of pure black, just like dithering) should be as limited as posible. black is well known for being able to blend easily with almost any color of any saturation. therefore, its recomended to use a few of it as posble because it will not only stand amoung other colors surrounding it, but it will make them blend with it, eventually "eating" its surroundings. something that on small areas can result in a really undesirable effect of lack of space(and in spriting and pixel art, every single pixel well used is a world of difference between perfect readbility and shit)



first one is exactly what you should NEVER do. using black to outline every single detail is simply a terrible idea. and not even because its black, but also because every pixel you use for an outline is a pixel you cant use for anything else. to give you an idea a black pixel will equal to all four pixels adjacent to it.

while on the second the outline was used to a less degree, it still stands out too much, but it isnt as harsh as the previous one. the outline still stands out too much because the colors near to it lack the contrast and the saturation to stand next to it, turning everything black into a separate object effectively splitting your sprite in two.

on the third case, the pure black outline was replaced with a color that did blend better wuth the rest of the sprite, turning the outline into an element that could also be used as part of the shading without making it gather all the atention from the viewer and also allowing more room for other details to stand out.

all in all, this is one huge reason as to why one, as a pixel artist/spriter should know early as posible how and when to use its colors. pure black is not a sin, it can be used perfectly as long as you make a good and wise use of its extremely high contrast wich can provide a great difference when working on situations when you need to make your sprite stand out more.(Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow uses pure black on its sprites but you'd never notice it!)