11-06-2013, 06:15 PM
Hey, nice stuff, man! I found a few of your sheets during an update and your work definitely stands out to me. You definitely have the SNES-Mario style down, for better or worse. But honestly, I think it might be good if you tried to branch out and make sprites even better than the SMW style! Seems to me you'd be perfectly capable of that and are holding yourself back a bit. Here, let me try a crit for your Dewott sprite...
![[Image: dewott_by_dragondeplatino-d6tah5a.png]](http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/310/f/7/dewott_by_dragondeplatino-d6tah5a.png)
It might pay to focus on your pixel clusters a bit more. If your shading something that's round-ish, try making the shading as simple as possible by using ovals whenever possible. And if your shading a smaller shape, stick with 2 x 2 pixel clusters. It looks cleaner and is much more readable than shading with lines. It would also be a good idea to eliminate "lone pixels" when you're outlining your shapes. An example of some of these would be the tips of Dewott's whiskers, the edges of the feet and the tip of it's tail. To fix these lone pixels, you should either soften the shape (like I did with the tail) or sharpen it (like I did with the whiskers). And one last thing, you'll only want to shade when it's absolutely necessary! As odd as this might sound, it sometimes looks better if you avoid shading a shape! It makes the sprite look more readable and will save you time that you could spend doing other things, like animating. If you want to be able to master this technique, you might want to study some of Kenneth Fejer's work: http://www.kennethfejer.com/pixelmockup.html
It might pay to focus on your pixel clusters a bit more. If your shading something that's round-ish, try making the shading as simple as possible by using ovals whenever possible. And if your shading a smaller shape, stick with 2 x 2 pixel clusters. It looks cleaner and is much more readable than shading with lines. It would also be a good idea to eliminate "lone pixels" when you're outlining your shapes. An example of some of these would be the tips of Dewott's whiskers, the edges of the feet and the tip of it's tail. To fix these lone pixels, you should either soften the shape (like I did with the tail) or sharpen it (like I did with the whiskers). And one last thing, you'll only want to shade when it's absolutely necessary! As odd as this might sound, it sometimes looks better if you avoid shading a shape! It makes the sprite look more readable and will save you time that you could spend doing other things, like animating. If you want to be able to master this technique, you might want to study some of Kenneth Fejer's work: http://www.kennethfejer.com/pixelmockup.html