Style and Shading Development

[GrooveMan.exe]

I figure it's not something worth putting in Sprite Discussion, since I'm not trying to produced a finished product, but I'm working on a spriting style for a project.


Pay no attention to the sprite itself, it's more about the use of colours and shading; I just chose a random large-ish sprite to practice on.

In brainstorming with someone else, we decided the style should have the following
- Desaturated colours
- Hue Shifting
- A method of shading that uses a dark colour to 'block out' things that are in shadow
- Outlined sprites (selective outlining in situations where it's appropriate)
- 4 shades per colour, with once colour being the shadow/outline colour

I felt that what I've come up with works, but I'm concerned about whether using a colour that's not black as the shadow will work every time, how I should go about developing a palette for this style, and how to go about doing highlights. The 'square' highlights that I've seen 1up use work well, and make her lycra suit look shiny - but that's probably not going to work out for other materials.