Sanji chibi (tried out a new style)

[StevenB]

So, I recently tried out a new style. A style with a little more 'advanced shading' (for me at least), and chibi proportions. So far, I haven't done too much in this style, but I made Sanji from One PIece in order to practise a bit:


So... what do you think?

[Iceman404]

His hair looks like he came out of the water (It looks sloppy)
Also, even in chibi form, one piece has that eye style thing where:
-Their pupils are small (Compared to other anime characters)
Sanji's eyes should look a little less large (Vertically), and more wide (horizontally). And put the cigar in front of his hand.
His cigar is also always white. And his hair should be less long.

Your doing okay though.

[Zabi]

I think the color of the cigar or the style of the eyes are not the problems you should focus on right now.

What I noticed first: You are using WAY TOO MANY colors. I counted something like 36. This is just too much. You could easily cut it down to ~ 10-13 colors. Maybe 4 for his suit, 3-4 for his skin and 3-4 for his hair, and maybe 2 for the cigar/smoke. Just try to remove all colors which are nearly the same (i saw something like 5 similiar browns) and give your colors A LOT more contrast.
The next problem would be the colors themselves. Some of them are just... horrible. You should not only change the brightness of a color when making a palette, but also the hue. Try to make the yellow more and more orange-ish while darkening it. This makes the colors less boring. The same goes for the skin. You could make it (slightly) more yellow in the brighter shades, and use more orange in the darker ones. Also try to avoid using pure black in your sprites. Here is a palette of mine as some example / inspiration for you: http://i40.tinypic.com/wtx5xz.png

Ok, now about the lineart... well, it is some chibi style, so I can't complain so much about proportions, but the form of the head could really use some improving. It looks like you based the head of a MS-Paint circle, which is NOT a good thing. Some lines also look like you used a tool to make them. You should certanly try to make your shapes less jagged.

The shading is inconsistent too. Your sprite seems to have ~4 different light sources. Try too give it ONE (drawing some light source may help) and shade it like that. Some parts (e. g. the ear) are not shaded at all.

Well, that's it for now. I hope that you don't get discouraged by that wall of text.

[StevenB]

His hair looks like he came out of the water (It looks sloppy)
Also, even in chibi form, one piece has that eye style thing where:
-Their pupils are small (Compared to other anime characters)
Sanji's eyes should look a little less large (Vertically), and more wide (horizontally). And put the cigar in front of his hand.
His cigar is also always white. And his hair should be less long.

Your doing okay though.

Ahh, thank you, I'll take a look at the hair as soon as I can. As for the eyes, when I 'made' this style, I came up with an eye style that would go with the Chibi proportions. The first character I did in this style, my own character Damian, has the same eyes. My plan was to give every chibi made in this style, the same eyes (with different colours of course). I don't know if I'm going to change this right now, but I'll sure keep this in mind.

(here's Damian BTW, first time trying out this style:

As you see, he has the same set of eyes)

And thank you.

*lots of good critique*

First of all: Don't be affraid, I do not get discouraged by critique. The whole reason I posted this here was to get some critique from good spriters

As for the colours, you are not the first one to say that. I haven't found the time to redo that yet, but I'm going to do that in the near future for sure. I'll try avoid black and too much contrast, and that pallete you gave me is very helpfull, so thank you for that.
The outline is being worked on at the moment, as well as the shading. I'm still a novice to shading and light sources and I hope that I can a bit more expierence here on tSR.
Some of the lines were indeed done with the line tool, but those are the lines being redone, this should take care of the problem. As for the head shape, it was not a circle, I believe I do have a head base somewhere, but I can't find it. If I come across it, I'll show it.

Thanks for your helpfull reply too

[Cobalt Blue]

thats your palette minus the green in the background. 41 colors. and by eye you can barely notice 10 or less. a good tip would be, every time you use a new shade, place it in a conveneilty palette organized by color hues next to your drawing. and reuse colors because despiet what common sense says, adding more shades of a color doesnt smooth anything, only using the proper set of them