08-09-2012, 01:03 AM
The biggest thing for me when I first started spriting was to take an art style you want to replicate and then copy it. It'll teach you things like style, work flow and colour palette. I copied Megaman X style sprites for a long time and when I tried to make a sprite without any base or reference it was a lot more natural and I had a sense of what I wanted to do (albeit, it was still terrible 
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In regards to your sprite the most important thing to consider when creating a character is its silhouette. Imagine if that sprite you had there was completely black. How easy is it to read/tell what it is? Forget any colour or shading and work primarily with shapes. You can mold the pose and shape your character takes using distinct, flat colours and then once you got the base down you can then consider the light source to dictate shading. The common rule of thumb is that the light source always comes from the upper right hand corner.
Hope that helps!
)In regards to your sprite the most important thing to consider when creating a character is its silhouette. Imagine if that sprite you had there was completely black. How easy is it to read/tell what it is? Forget any colour or shading and work primarily with shapes. You can mold the pose and shape your character takes using distinct, flat colours and then once you got the base down you can then consider the light source to dictate shading. The common rule of thumb is that the light source always comes from the upper right hand corner.
Hope that helps!