Style Evaluation (Formerly: Non-Sonic Sprites)

[Shinbs]

I just wanna make it clear that I'm not mad or anything,I'm far from that.
I just think it's a bit of a dick move to go "fucking grey pixels" and then "lol littlemermaidderpface on something mostly unrelated",ignoring that I actually took the crit,makes it feel like I'm just wasting my time really.
There's a difference between "harsh" crit (which I REALLY don't mind),and posting reaction images against anything you try to say.

[Kriven]

From an outsider's opinion: The white/gray shine looks better than the light blue shine. The light blue shine just seems to melt into the face, and not having there at all detracts from the sprite.

[Ton]

In a shocking turn of events, TSR users squabble over style in a group project, halting any forward progress.

[Gaia]

In a shocking turn of events, TSR users squabble over style in a group project, halting any forward progress.

And the sad part is I know these members well.. from BOTH FOURMS no less. My point still stands though.

Gosh, reminds me of that ill-fated Smash Bros project! (comparison: Both projects went into serious amounts of facelifts and alterations, but ultimately never went anywhere)

But in seriousness, can we drop this argument before we kill each other?

[Ton]

Exactly what I was referencing. MFZ tends to have their shit together when it comes to projects though.

[Hege]

Should've never allowed Sonic to touch the sacred Mario huh

[Previous]

Please keep on topic and avoid picking a fight, no need to become hostile. Thank you very much.

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Felt like Peach's (and Daisy's) Beijing Olympics bodies look kinda twisted., the legs seem to face more towards the camera than the upper body. Also, the skin color contrasts look off, there's a lot contrast between the darkest shades, but little beween second and third (from dark to bright).

[Shinbs]

@Hege:
..that's uncalled for,I'll hope people just ignore it rather than start a discussion.
_____
Peach looks better,but she still needs some major shading clean up,specially once/if the ModGen style actually changes,and Deebs decides what she'll do of all this.

Also,while I do think your edit looks nicer,I think tweaking Peach of all things is kinda redundant right now,considering there's stuff going on with Sonic (the main guy of the style)that might change the direction of the project.
I'd just wait and see what Deebs decides before we go revamping any other characters.

[Deebs]

I got home awhile ago and I have put thought into this but at the moment I'm not really in the mood to mess around with pixels. Too much else on my mind.

I'll let you know my thoughts later. Sorry for making you wait.

[Kriven]

Sorry for making you wait.

[Shinbs]

In the meantime,Deebs said she might use my Sonic as an alt.
After all this,I'm really realizing how damn cluttered most modgen sprites really are,specially many of mine,so I've worked on this.

There,the shading feels much more clean and uncluttered,and the sprites are meant to be something fresh while still rettaining the spirit of S3K,blah blah
I think I atleast learned not to overshade things,but I'd like to know what you guys think about them,since this is where all this spawned anyway.

And as another example,I cleaned Previous' Peach further:

Mine is the 3rd one.

[Kriven]

I seriously feel like the uncluttered ones are lacking a depth that the "cluttered" ones had.

I really think this is all a preference deal, so whatever floats your boat.

[Xeric]

Sorry for making you wait.

This.. actually brings up a good point. The initial goal of the project is to create every character in the Sonic Universe into one unified style; for use in Comics, Flash animations, Fan games and rom hacks.

The edits that have been made are making the sprites extremely hard to use in rom hacks. By removing a shade of grey, and adding blue and red shades(Gors edit for example), you've made it so when the sprite is imported into say, Sonic 3, the entire pallet scheme of the game gets borked. Sonic's pallet line is shared with Tails and most background objects in Sonic 1, 2 and 3. I know of several projects using the style, including my own, and it would mean rewriting the entire pallet system which from what i understand is very hard and time consuming.

Just my 2 cents. I personally don't think theirs anything wrong with the sprites as they are. If someone doesn't like the grey/white shines, they can remove them or fill them in with the 'broken pallete' option thats added to all the sheets.

[Gaia]

Sorry for making you wait.

This.. actually brings up a good point. The initial goal of the project is to create every character in the Sonic Universe into one unified style; for use in Comics, Flash animations, Fan games and rom hacks.

The edits that have been made are making the sprites extremely hard to use in rom hacks. By removing a shade of grey, and adding blue and red shades(Gors edit for example), you've made it so when the sprite is imported into say, Sonic 3, the entire pallet scheme of the game gets borked. Sonic's pallet line is shared with Tails and most background objects in Sonic 1, 2 and 3. I know of several projects using the style, including my own, and it would mean rewriting the entire pallet system which from what i understand is very hard and time consuming.

Just my 2 cents. I personally don't think theirs anything wrong with the sprites as they are. If someone doesn't like the grey/white shines, they can remove them or fill them in with the 'broken pallete' option thats added to all the sheets.

I just wanna say that you could have said this earlier, thus preventing this madness in the first place.

That being said, please continue with your project. No use arguing like spoiled children over a broken glass cup who's contents is milk, recently spilt on the floor.

[Deebs]

Decision time. I had been planning to write a very long reply explaining each part of the reasoning of my decision but due to circumstances unrelated to the projects, I'm not exactly feeling well enough to write all that out. Maybe in the future I'll try to explain it.

Either way, I know this decision won't please everyone. Decisions like this rarely do. I don't want anyone to think that I had flippantly disregarded anyone in this matter either- I've looked at everything everyone's said and given it consideration. Visual aids had helped quite a bit.

In the end, I have decided that the issue here is predominately one of taste, rather than hard coded rules. This is not to say that the current style cannot be improved- I will be implementing improvements, but the style will not be changing as much as some most likely hoped it was going to, and I apologize for that.

Here is my list of changes I wish to implement to practice better 'spriting hygiene'-

- The highlights will be addressed. The majority of them will be eliminated, with a few kept only for emphasis (example, on Sonic's brow). This has been a frequent complaint not only on TSR but on other places, and I agree that there is likely too much of it. Toning this down will hopefully help.
- Shading on Sonic's head will be slightly altered.
- The palletes will be altered to Genesis safe colours and a few contrast issues addressed. I have spoken to a friend about the feasibility of this and he has shown me a conversion of the current sprites to a Genesis safe pallete, and the results look pretty good. But while the 'white' is brighter, it is unfortunately not pure/real white, due to that not being within the Genesis's capabilities. The closest to white possible is 238/238/238 in the normal pallete range for Genesis. 255/255/255 is possible using the highlight pallete, however that would force the rest of the sprite to also use a highlight pallete, which would wash out the entire sprite. Converting to a Genesis pallete however will adjust the whites to be brighter than current with the added benefit of making the sprites more rom-hack safe by default.

My apologies to those who these changes will not please. I know you've likely been hoping for more.