Holy crap Goemar is creating stuff

[Goemar]

I'm a sprite ripper, I don't do the whole drawing pixels thing. But over the years I've made some pretty decent games (from a technical stand-point. And well, they were more just single level things to see if I could do it) for my own amusement. Now after making single level things based of Ninja Gaiden, MegaMan and a horizontal shmup using R-Type and Metroid sprites it's time I start making something original.

As no game exist outside of paper, and this is purely for the sprites, I've place it here.



Yeah. I know there's shading issues and some rough edges, not really sure how to fix it.

I want to keep it very very (very) simple as I'm not much of a spriter so I'm aiming for the "That doesn't offend my eyes and looks kinda neat" bracket rather than "My eyes will never love another pixel"

Here's an unshaded one for anyone who fancies lending a hand:

[Frario]

I really fancy that shape. Your outline is great, there's few reason to fix it or 'maybe' tweek it a lil' bit.
You're aware of your mistakes and that's good. It's indeed the shading. I feel there's a lack of shading, and that makes the character seem flat.

[Koopaul]

Nice to know that you are trying some original stuff. What I suggest is you take a style from a game you like, change it up a bit and apply that style to your characters.

[StarSock64]

I'd say you should focus more on your lightsource. Since they're gonna be from the same game they should probably have the same lightsource, also. You have all sorts of banding, try to get rid of that and think more in terms of how light would hit the shapes. I know that's a bit of an "easier said than done," especially for beginners, but experiment a little. The simpler shapes, like the circular parts, would probably be a good place to start, since there are so many examples of shading on circles. That sort of dark yellow shade kind of reminds me of old Nickelodeon game sprites or something so you might want to look into hueshifting that somehow. If I can find the time to make an edit I'll do so!

[Goemar]

Nice to know that you are trying some original stuff. What I suggest is you take a style from a game you like, change it up a bit and apply that style to your characters.

The style started out from Monster World IV (Genesis, and that's also where the pallete is from) however the bigger sprites in that have dithering, which is something I'm not a fan off. And as soon as I drew the thing I knew it wasn't going to work. But yeah that sounds like a good idea.

I'd say you should focus more on your lightsource. Since they're gonna be from the same game they should probably have the same lightsource, also. You have all sorts of banding, try to get rid of that and think more in terms of how light would hit the shapes. I know that's a bit of an "easier said than done," especially for beginners, but experiment a little. The simpler shapes, like the circular parts, would probably be a good place to start, since there are so many examples of shading on circles. That sort of dark yellow shade kind of reminds me of old Nickelodeon game sprites or something so you might want to look into hueshifting that somehow. If I can find the time to make an edit I'll do so!

Going to sound like an utter noob, but - can you please direct me to these circle shading examples? Unless you mean simply what Google brings back (which I'm reading now - this, the scratch sprite section).

Will hopefully have time to make some progress later today.