Nick's Pixels'n'stuff

[NICKtendo DS]

Enter Alphares, the Interdimensional God of Life also known as the Prime Template. Alphares is the first lifeform of the omniverse and is the source and base of all life. Evolution is but a process of shaping into one of Alphares' many avatars. Alphares is actually a green star, which is the absolute primordial soup. It controls millions of skeletal bodies bearing resemblance to various lifeforms as all is destined to become images of the Prime Template.
This is the face of one of the deity's many avatars. Again, I used Gors' palette for tFR. Maybe I'm too lame to make my own, but it's not my fault it's a nice palette to work with.


Bistro, because cuteness. Perhaps he could be a spectator in Neko's Stage (Bouncy Park) in tFR.
Yay, tail animation!

[NICKtendo DS]

This is going to be quite an SMK project. Mammoth Mogul in a custom car called Volcano, inspired by the Triceratops.
Why is this SMK project so big?

The resolution is big, and for a good reason: Mammoth Mogul is one big beast.
I thought it'd be cool to challenge myself and have a great product as a result.
Don't expect as much rotation angles as the most of the sheets I recently made; it'll probably be 8 including mirrored frames (which is 5 without).
I will animate the tires, because of the size, but that's hardly any trouble.

Yay, 2 more angles to go!

[Baegal]

It looks like you have banding on the arms, but the actual line work is done pretty well!

[Ton]

I love it!

[NICKtendo DS]

That's one more down, but I fear I have to add another angle for steering. So that's still two more to go.
The banding, I tried to fix it, but it's kinda hard to fix something I don't really see as 'flawed'. If you could be more specific (which frame, where, etc.), I'll know how to tackle it properly.

Edit:

OMG it rotates! (Some frames are outdated, but doesn't influence what I'm trying to demonstrate much).
Still needs a slight angles frame from the back for steering, but thank goodness, I need just 1 more frame...
...until I have to animate the tires and make the win and lose poses.
Did I mention he's big? Cause he is. This project is already entering day 3. Never had I a SMK project that was active for over 2 days. Did I mention he's big?

[Ton]

It's looking great though!

[Baegal]

The banding, I tried to fix it, but it's kinda hard to fix something I don't really see as 'flawed'. If you could be more specific (which frame, where, etc.), I'll know how to tackle it properly.

No problem, sorry about that.

Circled in blue is banded areas. The worst offender is the tusk in sprite 3

[NICKtendo DS]

Hopefully fixed:

EDIT:
Animated wheels and full rotation complete! All that's left is victory and lose.


EDIT 2:
Victory finished. All that's left to do is lose.


FINAL EDIT:
It is... FINISHED!!!

3 days of work paid off: Mammoth Mogul is ready for the tracks.

[NICKtendo DS]

I'm here to officially announce the beginning of Princess Fantasy Catventure's production phase.
The gameplay will remain a secret; money could be made if done right (so stop spying >.> <.<). I still lack a programmer to do this in a portal-friendly language (so no Game Maker), which isn't strange seen the fact that I'm currently the only one working on it.
Concept art was made, some final designs can be seen on my (Cyber Maroon's) deviantart.
This is the main character, Princess Princess. She is out to find her kidnapped twin brother, Prince Neko, so she visits the many Kingdoms scattered around Fantasy World. Their rulers will assist Princess in-game.
Princess:

The name Neko might have given it away, but this is a spin-off of Bouncy Cat, with more human incarnations of Bouncy Cat characters, including Neko, Princess and Mao. The kingdom rulers are all inspired by my friends and former classmates. Princess is inspired by a good friend of mine who collaborated on Hazumu no Neko: Bouncy Cat.

[triptych]

I'm here to officially announce the beginning of Princess Fantasy Catventure's production phase.
The gameplay will remain a secret; money could be made if done right (so stop spying >.> <.<). I still lack a programmer to do this in a portal-friendly language (so no Game Maker), which isn't strange seen the fact that I'm currently the only one working on it.
Concept art was made, some final designs can be seen on my (Cyber Maroon's) deviantart.
This is the main character, Princess Princess. She is out to find her kidnapped twin brother, Prince Neko, so she visits the many Kingdoms scattered around Fantasy World. Their rulers will assist Princess in-game.
Princess:

The name Neko might have given it away, but this is a spin-off of Bouncy Cat, with more human incarnations of Bouncy Cat characters, including Neko, Princess and Mao. The kingdom rulers are all inspired by my friends and former classmates. Princess is inspired by a good friend of mine who collaborated on Hazumu no Neko: Bouncy Cat.

hope you don't mind, i made a small edit to this sprite
don't worry though it comes with WAY TOO MANY WORDS so you can understand why i did things
at first i had just changed the colors because they seem to be working against your sprite more than anything. a cartoony style should have bright and 'cartoony' colors to match!

but then i noticed some areas that were bugging me, mostly around the face, i highlighted them here for you

none of these are anything huge, but there's enough of these little mess ups all over the sprite to really bring down the quality. basically, what you're doing in all of these areas (except for the one instance of the wonky lineart of the skirt) is trying to cram WAY too much into tiny spaces, and it makes everything look extremely busy and unreadable.
here's what it looks like after some quick edits to all of those problem areas. i also changed the colors around some more just because to be perfectly honest, all i did was up the saturation a ton to illustrate a point

everything looks much more readable with all those tiny problems out of the way! (although i kind of destroyed the face, oops)

basically, when using pixel art to make small sprites like this you need to make sure that everything is still completely readable - and to do that you need to use larger spaces than you may feel comfortable using

also, on the subject of some of the techniques you were using
banding (which is extremely visible around the ears in your version) is where you create bands of color that do nothing but make everything look blurry - look out for that, it's a big no no and drags down the quality of your work immensely

anti aliasing, while a useful technique to know, shouldn't be used as a crutch like you were using it. when using pixel art, you want to make sure your lineart looks good before doing anything else. all aa does it hide that problem and stops you from actually learning to improve your lines

selective outlining is the task of coloring your outlines so that they're brighter in areas that are affected by a lightsource. i would explain why this one is bad but
just
dont do this
dont do this until you know what you're doing, and even then don't do it
it looks bad a HUGE amount of the time because very few people actually use it correctly



anyways my giant post is over
if you don't feel like reading it, here's the alt text: abuh buh buh buh

[Medevenx]

I can give crits too!

she looks like she's about to fall over move the feet a bunch of pixels hehehe

[NICKtendo DS]

Thanks HtE, I'll take care of some of the points. The hair and shirt are supposed to be more silver-ish than purple, so that's going to stay. I will deal with the palette, though.
The circled part of the dress was a design flaw, so I'll fix that. The balls on the crown, that was because I first worked on 64x64 and simply neglected when I switched to 80p height in favor of the legs.

Well, time for me to get back to work!

EDIT:
->
Princess just got better looking.
I had to lose the blushes for readability's sake, which is a bit of a shame, though it was a minor detail anyway.

EDIT 2:
Got an idle animation finished.

[Virt]

That one edge on her crown is really bothering me. Try and keep it consistent please.
Also, her right leg is really distracting. >.< It's moving a little too much. Maybe make it not rotate?
..I really don't know what you were going for with the arm, though. It looks like she's doing something akin to "Swiper no Swiping! Swiper no Swiping!"

[NICKtendo DS]

She has her arm ready for firing magic bullets.
I'll tweak the animation later. I've been working on the Game Maker program (for a playable prototype) and tileset. I also have to do a jump and land animation, the latter can probably be used for ducking.
She does not move horizontally, so there's no walk-cycle. It's all part of my top secret gameplay.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

What 1up/HtE was saying is that you use lines and clusters that have 1px clusters/thickness in them, which creates noise (jagged lines, sharp edges, dots, etc).
You've got rid of most of it but there's still some there. I made an edit to boost the contrast between elements:

The animation looks odd because the feet movement and the bobbing of the rest of the body don't make any sense together. Why does the other hand pinch the air? What's happening to the crown? You'll have to work on a way of making it all synchronize together in a movement, and not individual parts.
I hope it helps!