Faeldspr's Top-Down Sprites

[Jamuk]

Sorry, I've been slow. I think this looks more normal. The left marine is without the shading fix, the middle one is fixed with Previous' advice and the right one has the desaturated visor. I'm having trouble with the hand though. The two hands are different; the left is more blocky and the right is pointier. They are not final designs but I was just wondering which shape works better.
I'm also thinking that green's maybe not a good colour for these so I have chosen a sort of greyish-blue. Obviously the shades need tweaking but is this a better colour?

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

i like the new color.

though, i might be biased.

[Jamuk]

Yeah, I just didn't like the green and they look too much like the Master Chief. I don't want them to be electric blue though either, as I feel that's too cliché (as Warhammer and StarCraft have electric blue marines).

[Jamuk]

I've combined the two hands and made a rounded slightly pointed one. I also darkened the bright blue slightly as I felt it was distracting.

[Jamuk]

I'm starting on the tiles now. Here's my WiP stone floor tile.



I'm basing it off of the ALttP tiles here: http://spriters-resource.com/snes/zeldal...sheet/7590
I'm also using this site's cave stuff for inspiration, just scroll down and there's a couple of posts with cave tiles: http://tilesettutorial.wordpress.com/
I don't know how this has gone, so has anyone got any crit for this or pointers for tiles in general?

[Previous]

Make the gaps between the stones smaller. This kind of floor is meant to be lots of rocks in some kind of cement/beton.

The Halo's shading is still off, you don't have a consistent lightsource. Especially the head and feet need to be illuminated from top, not from the front. The things to either side of his hip suffer from banding.

[Jamuk]

Where would you recommend the light-source to be?

[Previous]

At the top, that's usual for top-down sprites. Front is always a bad choice as it results in pillow shading.

[Jamuk]

How does shading the hips and lower bits work then? Do I have to use the dark shade cleverly along the bottom or something?

[Previous]

You indeed have to use the shades cleverly, that's what it is all about

Think about where the lightsource comes from and where the light would hit the three-dimensional object you want to picture. For example, the whole shanks might be in the shade if they are bent backwards below the knees.

[Jamuk]

Here's the new marine. I shaded him from the top this time but I'm not quite sure how the hands turned out.


I also have newer floor tiles. I tried to make them look more cosy and put everything closer together. I also added a few more stones to it.

Here I darkened the background colour to make the stones stand out more.

EDIT:

Here's a look at the tiles in-game. I put them over a screenshot of a dungeon generated by the random dungeon generator. You may want to zoom in a bit.

[Jamuk]

First attempt at an 'item get' sprite. This was a quick one i just whipped up but how do I make the neck look more necky?

[Jamuk]

Here's the new item get sprite.

I'll start doing items when I figure out what items we'll need.

[Hoeloe]

The proportion of the arms looks really weird. For one thing, he has no hands, and for another the ratio of the length of upper to lower arm is way off. It should be roughly equal. I looks more like he has horns than he's holding his arms up.

[Jamuk]

Do you mean I need hands on all the sprites? The reason I left them off initially, was because it was pretty hard to make good hands. I guess if I only need hands on this one it won't be all that hard although I haven't got time to add them now.

Does this look better in terms of the arms?