08-17-2012, 06:57 AM
I couldn't explain what I did with more detail at the time due to me being at work, but I have plenty of time now.
You need to have better color choices. The number of colors you got would be fine for a big sprite, but in a small sprite, fewer colors can be used without negative impact. When choosing colors, be sure to have plenty of contrast between shades (his hair bangs are lighter in mine because I used the same light brown from his face; notice that this doesn't make the sprite bad - in fact, it makes the hair shapes sharper.
I also removed the lightest gray and replaced it with white instead. I am not fond of using gray in places that should be white, such as eyes and metallic highlights. It makes no sense considering that you aren't working with any weird palette limitation and takes out the high contrast that metal objects should have. Notice that with the inclusion of white alone, the axe looks metallic.
The yellow details had some redundant shades. If you have browns/oranges for hair/skin, use them to your advantage to shade. The red in the axe handle is pointless since the brown can do the job perfectly fine. Finally, it might be against the design but I removed the belts around his chest. It serves no purpose other than "trying to look cool"; it's not needed and it's a pain to render it correctly in a small sprite. Readability is important in sprites, so design your characters according to the sprite style's limitations. Check NES/SNES Final Fantasy games, for example. The overworld sprites are really different to their artwork counterparts due to console and size limitation. And yet, you can still recognize them. Removing some of the elements from a character in order to increase readability can help you a lot when making sprites.
You need to have better color choices. The number of colors you got would be fine for a big sprite, but in a small sprite, fewer colors can be used without negative impact. When choosing colors, be sure to have plenty of contrast between shades (his hair bangs are lighter in mine because I used the same light brown from his face; notice that this doesn't make the sprite bad - in fact, it makes the hair shapes sharper.
I also removed the lightest gray and replaced it with white instead. I am not fond of using gray in places that should be white, such as eyes and metallic highlights. It makes no sense considering that you aren't working with any weird palette limitation and takes out the high contrast that metal objects should have. Notice that with the inclusion of white alone, the axe looks metallic.
The yellow details had some redundant shades. If you have browns/oranges for hair/skin, use them to your advantage to shade. The red in the axe handle is pointless since the brown can do the job perfectly fine. Finally, it might be against the design but I removed the belts around his chest. It serves no purpose other than "trying to look cool"; it's not needed and it's a pain to render it correctly in a small sprite. Readability is important in sprites, so design your characters according to the sprite style's limitations. Check NES/SNES Final Fantasy games, for example. The overworld sprites are really different to their artwork counterparts due to console and size limitation. And yet, you can still recognize them. Removing some of the elements from a character in order to increase readability can help you a lot when making sprites.
![[Image: deT1vCJ.png]](http://i.imgur.com/deT1vCJ.png)