just something i'm working on..

[Gors]

I never intended on getting involved, but I've been coaxed off the sidelines. I am the friend, I am the one who did the sprite work you criticized.

In any normal case, I would have laughed off what you said and gone back to work. But this is a special case. For months, I have been helping Zye to become the best spriter he can be, and he was getting there until he linked me to this thread. I've been helping him to understand the advices given, and telling him when to use them and when to skirt them. Such as with 'pillow shading'. You all seem to treat it as a negative thing, here. I could be wrong, but pillow shading has its uses, and have very positive results.

Allow me to clear something up, before I go any further. I've had to learn everything I know on my own. I have never had help, and there were no college courses to take on the subject. So everything you see in my sprite work has come from 11 or more years of figuring it out for myself.
With that out of the way, I can continue. Limited by what I was able to figure out by studying sprites, I can see no way of improving the clarity of my own sprite without brightening him, or wrecking his color scheme. And I have heavy doubts that you can, either.

I'm not going to go into why I'm rather liberal on the number of colors and shades I use, just because this would end up being a rather large TL;DR, however, I would like to challenge you to edit my sprite the same way you did with Zye's Jason, without brightening him, as he is meant to be a near-black, sapphire color, and without dulling him down. He is meant to be very vibrant. I did the best I could with what I've learned. There's no way to hue shift him, as he is far too dark in color for that, and much like Zye, I'm not willing to budge more than a few degrees on his brightness level.

This is NOT my way of being snarky, and it's not an attempt to seem smart or superior. I honestly hope that you can, though I doubt it, so that I can analyze the method and help Zye better understand what you've been trying to tell him.

As it stands, I believe that you cannot fix my sprite work without ruining it. Prove me wrong. I would love to be wrong.

This is can be considered on topic, as I wish to improve myself, and through self improvement, I can better help Zye improve his sprite work.

Man, it's been quite a long time since a newcomer's pulled the 'This Is My Style' card, and while I really want to help you, I think I need to shake up the things a bit.

Read here

I might sound rude here but insulting is not my objective here: I want to show you another point of view.

First of all,

In any normal case, I would have laughed off what you said and gone back to work.

Drop this attitude. This is not a style of doing things, it's flat-out arrogance. You are arrogant and this is not a good trait to have. Each c+c we give is not to be laughed off of, as they are made because 1-We also spent years learning pixelart, and 2-We took time to write it. It is our work to give you concise and valuable criticism, because criticism IS NOT an insult towards you or your work. Just acknowledge it and choose whether applying it or not. Just don't laugh off.

Such as with 'pillow shading'. You all seem to treat it as a negative thing, here. I could be wrong, but pillow shading has its uses, and have very positive results.

Energy balls and Lamps.

Breastplate is not any of these two.

I've had to learn everything I know on my own. I have never had help, and there were no college courses to take on the subject. So everything you see in my sprite work has come from 11 or more years of figuring it out for myself.

We're all like this. The only difference is that we've been generally much more opened to c+c, therefore we took less than 11 years to understand the main techniques of pixelart. We didn't take college courses, and pixelart was a fairly new art media at the time; we supported each other here with c+c to get enough knowledge to whip up the Spriting Dictionary. What we have all here were all fruits of hard work (much like yours, mind you), we're pretty much equal in this aspect.

We are helping zye with our knowledge, right? But you'll never be able to properly teach with such attitudes. Studying a thing for 11 years does not give you the rights of laughing off criticism.

Finally, it's worthy to note that old games like SNES/NES/Genesis also had learning artists who weren't proficient with pixelart, so they are really far from being a solid reference. The sprites were also meant to be shown in a CRT TV which blurs the zooming, making them appear 'HD'. This is why zoomed in sprites work on TV games. On LCD screens, however, it just doesn't work unless you zoom it in a non-decimal number (and chances are they'll look really low-res instead of getting the detail you so aim with all those shades of near-black sapphire).

As it stands, I believe that you cannot fix my sprite work without ruining it. Prove me wrong. I would love to be wrong.

As for the dragon sprite you made, the colors are so dark and close together that you probably could leave with 3 or 4 shades, without changing their hue.

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As for Jason up there, you still didn't understand how hueshift works that much. You aren't supposed to shade him flat out blue like that; it's adding a faint hue there, so it doesn't look extremely artificial.



he's my attempt at Jason's helmet, I've kept around the same number of shades (I removed one single shade and even then it doesn't look it lost any detail). Notice that the gray has a really faint reddish tint (to match with his suit). Usually, hueshift happens depending on the situation or place the object is (as Vipershark pointed out with his wallet pics). In Jason's case, I chose to use a reddish ramp so to fit with the overall piece without sticking out too much. Give it a closer look:



All in all, it's not arbitrarily giving the colors a tint, it's about making the color more lively by considering the piece as a whole.

Finally, I'm sorry if this sounded rude to any of the parties. I am here to help with pixelart, and I hope to see more from you in the future.