Spark's Sprites

[Hoeloe]

The problem with No-Face now is that he has a ridiculous colour count. Try to keep it to about 16 colours or so. I'd also work on one sprite at a time. Kiki's anatomy is a little bit off, for example. Her legs are too short, and her head is too far back on her neck. Here are a few pointers for human anatomy:
1) In general, the length of the leg is approximately the same as the height of the chest and the head
2) The head connects to the neck at the back, leaving space for a chin.
3) The arms, when straight, should reach approximately half way down the upper leg.
4) The width of the hips should be approximately equal to the width of the shoulders.
5) The hand, when splayed, should just cover the face.

A lot of those you've done fine with, but I'll draw your attention to numbers 1 and 2.

[Gors]

Anatomy is the part you should pay more attention to, because if you don't study it enough, the results will not be favorable. Acknowledging the proportions, such as leg length, hand size, etc. will improve the quality of the sprite.

Kiki's hair is kinda spiky at the bangs, but try representing it as groups of hair instead of trying to reproduce every spike. Trying to do so results in a far messier hair.

Pixelart is also about ignoring small enough details and keeping the important elements to make a character recognizable even in a small resolution.

[SparkMouse]

I'd say No Face looks quite a bit better in the whole contrast department and the same goes for Kiki's balance issues. Her CSS sprite is still a tad wonky though. Her cheek buldges a little too much. Here's a little list of somethings I think might help:

1: Smooth her chin.
2: Center her mouth.
3: Lower her nose.

I also think you should center No Face's CSS sprite a little more. It would give it a more uniform feel in comparison to the rest.

Hopefully that's better.

The problem with No-Face now is that he has a ridiculous colour count. Try to keep it to about 16 colours or so. I'd also work on one sprite at a time. Kiki's anatomy is a little bit off, for example. Her legs are too short, and her head is too far back on her neck. Here are a few pointers for human anatomy:
1) In general, the length of the leg is approximately the same as the height of the chest and the head
2) The head connects to the neck at the back, leaving space for a chin.
3) The arms, when straight, should reach approximately half way down the upper leg.
4) The width of the hips should be approximately equal to the width of the shoulders.
5) The hand, when splayed, should just cover the face.

A lot of those you've done fine with, but I'll draw your attention to numbers 1 and 2.

Anatomy is the part you should pay more attention to, because if you don't study it enough, the results will not be favorable. Acknowledging the proportions, such as leg length, hand size, etc. will improve the quality of the sprite.

Kiki's hair is kinda spiky at the bangs, but try representing it as groups of hair instead of trying to reproduce every spike. Trying to do so results in a far messier hair.

Pixelart is also about ignoring small enough details and keeping the important elements to make a character recognizable even in a small resolution.

I redid the legs starting from extending the original skeleton to be as long as the chest and head combined, as you said, then refilling it in the same steps as the rest of the sprite. They're a few pixels longer now, and I'm unsure of whether or not to detail her knees in or if they're just barely covered by her dress.
I also edited the head slightly, moving it one pixel to the right to accommodate your suggestion for the neck (@Hoeloe), and also smoothed her hair out toward the bottom (@Gors), however I kept the bangs as they were.

About No Face, I need a good way to show gradual transparency for his body. The reason there are so many colors is because I used a gradient in Photoshop for the newer version; if you have a way to do it with just a few shades, I'd appreciate it.

[Terminal Devastation]

Gradual transparency is best left for the game's engine to take care of more than the sprite itself, in my opinion, so I'd just leave the whole thing black.

I'm sure there's ways to create the illusion of gradual transparency just with the sprite, but the only one I can think of, dithering, is likely to be a worse option that what you already have. I'd need someone that knows the technique to chime in about that though.

[SparkMouse]

And today's next project...

Nausicaa!

(solo with palette)


and progress image

As well as...


References used:
proportions, clothing details, css face

I'm aware that her legs have the opposite problem Kiki's did, in that they're somewhat longer than they should be, but they're still shorter (proportion-wise) than in the official art. Her torso is tiny compared to her legs. :T

Not sure if I'll move onto Yubaba next or go back and fix the other sprites first (after critique and fixes on Nausicaa, of course).

[Hoeloe]

If I were you I'd work on one sprite at a time. None of these is perfect, and they could all use some work. Instead of making more and more sprites, try fixing up the problems with one at a time.

[SparkMouse]

I'm not aiming for them to be "perfect". This is more a learning experience for me than anything. Once I've finished Yubaba I'll be going back and improving them one at a time, but I can't get critique on something if I haven't made it yet.
I've addressed pretty much everything brought up in this thread so far (and threads on a couple other forums and chats as well), and I (usually) don't know what to improve if I don't have someone critiquing me on what can be improved.

I also don't plan to use these sprites for a game for quite a while, which leaves plenty of time to improve the bases further.

[Iceman404]

Pretty sure it was obvious he didn't mean "perfect" in a literal sense. It'd be a good idea, deadline or not, to focus on one thing so not everyone is scampering to give C+C for everything they see there, as none of these are of standard quality to be honest. The way to fixing something is to focus on it specifically, not jump from foot to foot around to each and every sprite at the same time.

[Gors]

While it's true to do as many things you can for practice and experience, doing a bunch of "half-jobs" don't count as complete works, if you know what I mean. Try working on them, one at a time, in order to squeeze the most of your abilites; this way, you will learn more about pixelart and consequently do better jobs.

[SparkMouse]

Sorry for the late replies, I've been away at a convention for the last couple days.

So if I'm gonna shift to focusing on each character individually a bit early, I suppose I'll go in CSS order and start with Totoro.



What sorts of things can I improve on with him? Shading? Anti-aliasing? Lineart? Palette?

[Hoeloe]

Let's start with the line art. The pose is very stiff (I'm aware he uses a similar pose in the movie, but this is still too stiff). His back arm and leg are also positioned oddly, and his front leg appear non-existent, which causes some jaggy outlining around that area. There are a few other points of jaggy outlines, too (try not to change the pixel patten too sharply) As well as this, the perspective of his face and stomach is different to that of his ears and body, making it look really quite odd.

[SparkMouse]

Alright, I did some work on the Totoro base.


Things I addressed from your post, Hoeloe:
-Moved the back leg further back and shifted the toes/claws to display a different angle.
-Shifted the claws on his back arm to show a better angle.
-Redid the ears and leaf (need help doing the shading on and around the leaf, although that can come after the lineart is refinished).
-Shifted the mouth, eye and nose further to the right to better align with his belly.
-Smoothed out the outlines near his front leg.

I think I still need some help smoothing out the parts of the outlines where the pixels are transitioning from a 45 degree angle.
How would I go about making the pose less "stiff"?

[SparkMouse]

Figured I'd plop this down here.



Yuuta (left) is 100% custom, Rikka (right) is edited from this with custom limbs and face.

Yuuta reference, Rikka reference.

[Gors]

1st guy looks off-balance. the mix of black and gray on his clothing also looks weird. Use the black clusters wisely, try simplifying for readability. Also, use a darker for outline, the light-brown thing doesn't work.

the girl looks accurate but her head should be placed a little more to the right. Also, that antenna hair could be smoother

[SparkMouse]

Couple things.

First:

I changed the outlines back to black for both Yuuta and Rikka. Haven't addressed the clothing shading yet.
If by off-balance you mean his stance, he's leaning back. When I was still working on the outline and pose, the feedback I got was to have him leaning back somewhat (he was standing straight up at first), so that's what I did. If you mean off-balance in another sense, then it would be nice if you could elaborate.
And obviously, there's a third character there; Dekomori. Here's the frame I used for the pose reference, the colors for the outfit were taken mostly from Rikka's (the outfits are identical except for the socks, shoes and bows).

Also this.

Concept/base preview thing for a game idea a friend of mine and I came up with after reading The Oatmeal's strip on mantis shrimp.