E-Man's Sprite R & D

[E-Man]

Since I didn't get a reply in awhile and this topic is starting to become a bit buried by the others, I thought replying to my previous post would be called for in this situation. Please don't get too frustrated with me over this.

Anyway, I looked into my shading and decided to to whip these balls up for research. I didn't number these, so I will talk about them from left to right.

Note one

This is the ball before any shading is applied. It is bland, uninspired, and nothing to write home about. Still, it's a start!

Note two

Here is the ball with three values. Since the mid-light/mid-dark values are not going to cut it, I used the lightest and darkest values. It's the bare basics, but is this shading style acceptable by the site's standards?

Note three

If I had my way, this would be the variation I will use without second thought. It looks relatively appealing, but Gwen is telling me that it makes it hard to see the values. I wish I could keep this method, but if no one else finds the appeal within it, I may as well drop it.

Note four

This is another variation using only three values. Since it would not make too much sense to only do it for the lighter values (I think it would make the sprite look flat), I decided to only use the darker values. The only reason why I use highlights at all was due to a suggestion someone gave me ages ago. Personally, I have no gripes about not using highlights and only saving them for shiny surfaces.

Note five

This variation of the ball is one of two that uses four values. While I only used the lightest value as a highlight, I stuck with two values for the shading. For some reason, this one looks very appealing to me.

Note six

The other variation with four values is the opposite of the previous ball. This time, the shading has only one value, while the highlight has two. I am not sure how appealing this one is, but I don't care for it myself.

So, what do you think of my thoughts on this one?


EDIT: Oh! I didn't even need to double post! Thank you, StarSock64! Anyway, to respond to your critique, I'm assuming that you would like the values to be darker, right? (i.e. darker shading, brighter highlights) Like I said in my art topic, I choose to avoid making my values look too intense because I think they would not look so good, but if you want me to experiment with them, I don't see why that can't be arranged.

EDIT2: I placed all my thoughts into spoilers. Sure, they are shorter than the thoughts of my first post, but you can't be too careful!