E-Man's Sprite R & D

[Iocus]

It's alright, I understand that you might be concerned.

-Even if you like bright colors, contrast is important to make the lighter shades stand out.

-I guess not all styles would demand the presence of that shadow, but I think it looks slightly better with it anyway.

-I see, so you intend to give it a range of emotions... I guess I can see where you're coming from. Then again... (actually, looking at this, maybe making the eyebrows thicker might help.)
And yes, generally, cross-eyes look strange, but as these pictures show:
http://www.mariowiki.com/images/8/85/Goomba-SSE.png
http://www.mariowiki.com/images/a/a8/SMB_Goomba.jpg
http://www.mariowiki.com/images/8/86/Spi...r_Door.png
http://www.mariowiki.com/images/8/88/Gol...ros._2.png

it's a common trait of the Goomba race and fits them well enough.


-About the AA...well, I suppose, in general, AA is applied to make an object seem smoother against a surface. In the case of an outline, for instance, the inner AA helps to seem rounder against its inner color.



Please take a look at this image. There are three objects that can be identified: the left curve, the oval in the middle, and the right curve. The oval shows a complete AA against the pink surface. The right curve, on the other hand, only exhibits AA on its inner surface, since it's the one that remains constant. The background, presumably, would be changing colors all the time, so it would only look right against a certain surface color. This can be seen on the left curve, where pixels of darker shades of white AA its outer surface. The curve might arguably be even smoother, but only against this surface. If used on any other surface, it might end up looking something like this: , which is not appealing.

An actual style that has used outer AA is the M&L: SS style. while it looks fine on light backgrounds, the grey pixels really stand out against darker ones.

Darn, didn't expect to give such a long-winded explanation. Hope you got something out of it though.