sozraster's First Workshop

[sozraster]

Here is my first image: Wonder Woman!



It is not finished yet, but I just wanted some constructive criticism.

[MotorRoach]

It's a decent attempt, but you need to do something about the supposed shading on her face. It looks very noise looking, so I recommend going for basic dithering at least.

[Virt]

I wouldn't have been able to tell it was Wonder Woman had you not said anything. The tiara doesn't look quite pronounced I think is the word I'm looking for.

[Lexou Duck]

the temples wouldn't be shaded that way at all

also, seeing as it's wonder woman you might wanna change your color choices
i can understand the style choice of having the skin white and blue, but that doesn't suit wonder woman at all ; you'd rather want some warm/active colors that you can exaggerate accordingly

[sozraster]

Just to make sure, do you mean the area behind the eyes?

I will try to work on the issues that have been mentioned so far and put something up tonight. I will also consider changing the colors.

Oh, I see what you mean. The shading on her face is definitely wonky.

---

This is what I was able to come up with:



Better?

I have gotten rid of most of the dithering for now.

[Lexou Duck]

here's an edit i made, to show you what i meant by colors

[sozraster]

Oh, I quite like that. I agree now that cool colors don't suit Wonder Woman.

Anyway, I thought that the first image I put up was a bit ambitious for a first attempt, and I have read that larger works of pixel art are more difficult to make than smaller ones.

Here is my second work!



Several things inspired this piece: Pokemon, Lexou Duck's signature, the alien councilwoman from Lilo & Stitch, but mostly the Metarex baddies from Sonic X. This one kind of hurts my brain though. My brain wants to think its body is twisted, when it is not.

[Lexou Duck]

is it his back we're seeing ?

in any case its not very readable, because the arms and legs use the same single color and touch at parts
to fix this you can either make the arms and legs lighter with a distinguishable outline, or move them so nothing touches (like a flyswatted character even though it's usually frowned upon)

[sozraster]

Any suggestions? Looks weird to me. I am not sure how to do feet/legs.

[sozraster]

Help? Changed the armor, hands, and feet. Maybe his head should bob?

[Iocus]

Well, I'm not amazing at walk cycles myself, so I'll mostly give you suggestions for the idle sprite, but I'll say a few things about your walk loop as well.




Made some edits for the sake of convenience. Also added a couple of references from other games.

For the idle:
-First off, the pose. Usually, when a person is standing, they don't stand perfectly straight (their feet are at different angles, they might be angled more to one side, etc.) Good examples of this can be seen in the sprites from the Mana series, which I added to the picture above. In my edit, I spread his legs apart (and I guess the sprite might imply he's crouching a little?) to make him seem more battle ready.

-The angle. Usually, RPG sprites are from a "top down" perspective, even if it's just slightly. Your sprite's body looks entirely flat, and doesn't imply any particular perspective. The fact that the feet are just two blocks extending sideways hardly helps, honestly. I extended the feet vertically and shaded it (particularly the torso area) in a way that implies that the sprite is being looked at from above. Oh, also shifted the eyes a little for the sake of that.

-The shading and the colors. The shading on the hair is alright, but it's a different story for the body. The white and the grey shade contrast way too much. Personally, I'd use a light grey as the main color for what I presume is the armor, and give it a shade for lighting, and a couple more for shadows. On the flipside, the skin colors might not have enough contrast, but it's not as dire as the armor.

For the walk cycle:
-When a person walks, they not only move their arms, but also their torso. That is to say, their torso changes angle as a result of the movement of the arms. In your sprites, this is not the case, and that's one of the reasons why it looks unusual.

-The legs currently look like pistons bobbing up and down more than legs. There is no indication that the feel are leaving the ground (as is observed on the examples), so it comes off as this weird shuffle thing.

-Generally, I suggest you study a little the walk cycles of RPG's (such as the Mana series) to get a better idea of how the feet and torso should move.

I'm not sure what you're aiming for, so some of this might not be applicable, but I hope some of it helps you improve your sprite.

[sozraster]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the time and effort you spent on your post. It was very informative.

Are there any other RPGs you would recommend looking at?

[Iocus]

Well, it depends on how fluid you want your cycle to be. A lot RPGs go with the simplistic 3-frame walk, though others do 4-,5-, 6- and even 8- frame cycles.

I went ahead and fished out some references that might be useful. Mario's walking is supposed to look kind of silly, so I wouldn't go by the arm positioning in that one....
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...eet/29005/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...heet/6168/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...eet/13709/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/ds/lock...eet/29760/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/ds/mari...eet/25827/

Keep at it!

[sozraster]

Okay. How is this? I made changes to make the armor look bulkier, more knight-like. I added an intermediate gray shade between the white and the previously closest gray, and I tried to give a stronger impression of the typical "top-down-ish" perspective of RPGs. But I think it still looks rather flat.

[sozraster]

Attack animation with spear: