Doctor Grey's Sprite Thread

[Ton]

Yes. No air hump. Pretty cool so far.

[DoctorGrey]

Bumping this up to relevance with an update.


Direct Link.
(Obviously a heavy WIP. Use for anything other than criticism unwelcomed.)

Something Megaman related, again. Storm Eagle in X4 style (Roughly, I broke the pallate limits, but technically PSX games HAVE no pallate limits as they are True Colour display). I'm using his Maverick Hunter X design, the original sprite version is there for a general guide of scale.

Some of the shading feels iffy, the upper portion of the legs in the black area especially (I have some issues with shading according to lightsource in this style, and I'm out of practice generally). Torso/chest area might need to be a little taller. Some shaping on the legs might need a slight rework. I'll need to make him a head and get to the shoulder-pads next.

[StarSock64]

A few things stick out to me so far

First, when I put my face away from the screen, X and Zero light up quite a bit. Storm Eagle looks muddy and dull in comparison.
Second, there's no real sense of weight. The original has a healthy lean for that extra sense of power. Granted, there are no arms yet, but it makes me wonder why you didn't at least sketch in arms and make sure the balance was okay to begin with, before detailing.
Third, it might've been acceptable in the SNES era, but nearly-C&P legs that face in opposite directions and ignore the positioning of the body just don't look right at all.
Fourth, his upper body is looking pretty thin. Even the MHX version seems to have some bulk.

[DoctorGrey]

That is extremely helpful. Unsure of what to do about the shading. I have reshaded most parts twice now. I'll have to redo one of the legs and adjust the pose to give it a slight lean. The body, I currently like the look of, but if I can't make it seem bulkier, it feels flat probably as a result of the shading right now, I'll redo again.

The pose feeling so off is probably a result of the extremely inefficient way that I make each body section separately (instead of what I should do, creating larger shapes and refining them down). Being as rusty as I am doesn't help either, ha.

[DoctorGrey]

Haven't progressed on the Storm Eagle project. I need to look at Megaman X4's style in closer depth and relearn a few things about creating a pose from scratch before I get back to that.

However, instead, I poked myself to work on something else.


http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c10/Gr...Aquene.png

Personal character. I have needed to revamp her physical design for some time now in order to properly express gender characteristics.

[Iocus]

I'd suggest you go easy on the color count on this one, you have waaay too many greys. I think you can decrease the color count on the brown, too, but it's not as dire.



I edited part of your sprite to better illustrate my criticism.
-You must keep in mind your lightsource. You went overboard with all the lighting on the head, and it makes it look all flat.

-The fact that the strands of 'hair'(feathers?) were perfectly diagonal did not help with the flatness problem at all. Think about the surface and how the lines should travel across that surface. I'm not sure I nailed what her 'hair' is supposed to look like, but I think it has a better feeling of volume now.

-About that red notch on her eye, it's not necessary to use such dark outlines since it's not on a higher surface level than her head, it's supposed to be on the same surface.

-You used so many colors on the beak and they ended up all blending together...Simplify! Use just what you need, that's what spriting is all about.

-I'd argue that light blue on the eyes is unnecessary, but maybe you like that little 'gleam' effect it makes.

-Breasts are not just a pair of spheres glued together on a chest. Due to gravity, they tend to lean downwards, since they're basically sacks of fat, and there is a fair distance between them. I separated them a little to help out on that, but I'm sure there's a couple of other things you can do to make them look more convincing.

Hope that helps somehow!

[DoctorGrey]

You bring up good points. Although, the suit/outfit is supposed to bring in the body tissue, hence why I didn't go for making the breasts much wider than the body, but I'll think about it. The head-feather shading I'll have to redo, the beak too, because I was more concerned with getting something workable than too perfect. That would account for most of my errors with this sprite and style thereof.

But so too does being ridiculously out of practice in general, bleh. I'll see what I can do next time I can make myself work on something.

[Iocus]

I understand that she's wearing a tight suit, so the breasts would be squished somewhat, but if you look at some references of women in tight suits...say, this one: http://monstar.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451...970d-550wi

You can see that even then, her breasts are not squished together towards the middle, and that they still lean down. I get that you were more focused on design than shape, but always try to keep your colors as simple as possible, even if you are aiming for a detailed style. Start off with just three shades or so,work with that, and add more if you deem it absolutely necessary.

Don't get discouraged, it's all about practice!

[DoctorGrey]

My inspiration (and thus posts) are extremely infrequent. However, here's something completely different to look at.


http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c10/Gr...ustA-1.png
(Obviously, don't use this without permission.)

Dust and Ahrah from Dust: An Elysian Tail. Couple of self imposed rules for this one. First being, only colours that can be displayed inside of a 16 bit system (Super Nintendo or Gameboy Advance.) And the limitation of Megaman Zero "style", or atleast cap on the total number of colours associated with the player character. Pallate was obviously assembled from allowable shades/colours, pose drawn from scratch with a screenshot reference.

Finished product is decent, pretty happy with it. A few errors, I dunno if I'll go back to it and fix them.