Midi's Sprites

[Kelvin]

I see what you mean. His back leg looks stiff and his front leg looks like it's disappearing into some kind of shackle portal. XD I'll fix that next update.

For now, here's me trying TFR style. I found a better brown in the new palette, but I'm having trouble shading it since the contrast on the palette seems inconsistent, and some of them are darker than the "black" color.


[EDIT]
Trying out the dark brown as a substitute for the regular outline color. Now I can shade the red parts, but even then, the inconsistent contrast on this palette is killing me.


[EDIT 2]

OK, how about now?

[TheShyGuy]

TFR shading is based on depth. That means you gotta flatten/remove the mutiple shade on the tail, head, beret, and front leg.

[Kelvin]

Wait, you mean make it totally flat? But I've seen others shading their sprites.

[EDIT]
Hold on, I think I see what you mean. Here:

It still looks like I'm wearing a pink jacket. |:[

[TheShyGuy]

That looks better but he's also too small.

ranmaster, you need to upscale and brighten up a little



this should make it easier to see how your dude isnt in style

_____

Oh yea, the pose could be more "battle-ready" too.

[Level 1]

Well to be honest you character's pose looks like a platformer's, not a fighters. If anything the animation of him in your signature has a more appropriate pose. Also, compared to other character that are in the roster, your character's size is just awkward, remember that the theme of the game is a cartoony style, so you can expand on that by enlarging some features.

Edit: Well ShyGuy here already demonstrated what I meant, but yeah just keep the scale in mind and remember to play around with your color choices.

[Kelvin]

That pose is just for testing. Also, I have no idea how tall the other characters are (in terms of real life measures, not pixels) so I don't know if he should be smaller or the same size or what. He's only four and a half feet tall.

[TheShyGuy]

If you don't want to make him taller, just make him wider/thicker. He doesn't have to be gors-thick, but you can use the depth (and maybe exaggerate some body parts) to make him look alot larger without making him look too tall.

[Level 1]

I'm sorry to do this, but, Midi, I feel like you are using excuses to not make good progress. I say this because in the beginning you didn't wanted to enter this forum's game because of the color palette. That says a lot about you, you put restrictions on your work, which is never good. And now you are saying that a cartoon character, needs "real life" measures in a cartoon game? Okay, let me give you the benefit of you wanting to stick with the original character design. That's fine, but, the theme of the game is a cartoon style, with that stated, many times I might add, you should allow for your character to expand into many shapes and forms, Des re-created your character in his personal style, and in it, he stayed within your character's main features. You can do that here, you just have to expand on the character's style. I am not asking you to change your character completely, but don't restrict yourself to what you are comfortable with. Trust me, I learned that the hard way, and you don't want to walk that path buddy, it sucks.

[Kelvin]

I am NOT making excuses. As you can see, I have learned to work with the palette. And I'm asking for measures because I don't want my character to be oversized or undersized compared to the others. Some of the other characters entering are human and have similar heights, so I'm assuming there's some kind of standard beyond the pixels here. I never said I wouldn't make him taller, in fact I even did make a taller sprite to see how it works. I'm not making excuses about the pose either, I know it's not at battle-ready stance, it's not meant to be; I use a basic standing pose to test size and proportion before attempting something more complex because it gives me a standard to work from. I get that the game is cartoon style, my own game is cartoon style. You could have just said "we're making everyone about the same size for simplicity sake" and I would have taken that, but instead you say I'm making excuses, and I'm not; I'm trying to work through this.

*sigh* I'm just going to stop my rant there before I say something I'll regret. Just, here's what I have so far:


I made a larger version that is 200% the size of my original platformer sprite. I also did the TFR test sprites in my shading style as well as my original sprite in TFR shading style, just to see how it looks.

[Level 1]

Okay, first of all, I said "I feel like you are using excuses" not that you are, you took that too personal and ranted too much on a personal opinion, no need for that, but I'm glad to see your point on the matter. Secondly, look at this image here. See, in this image you can notice a lot of different characters, some humanoid, and some that aren't, Chris's character has a human-like body, but in a large, muscular style. Now look at Crappy's character, his character isn't muscular, or huge, but he up-scaled it to match the size and height of the rest of the roster. Your character just needs to be in the same scale, in your latest edit, you are in the right path for it, so good work on that. Though your character feels sorta flat, I mean, I look at him, and I don't see depth. This isn't due to the shading you are giving the sprite, but it has to do with the pose. As you can see in the image I linked, most of the characters there show both eyes, a full mouth line, a clear view of the chest area, and you can clearly see both arms and legs. In your sprite, I can see the arms, the legs, and the chest, but the head looks as if was turning or something.

Also, piece of advice, don't rant man, it was just an opinion of mine, I guess ti was rude of me to just point it out, but I am sure that I wasn't the only one thinking the same, so from me, I am sorry if I offended you.

[TheShyGuy]

I think it's fine to rant/vent/express a bit as long as you remain under control and don't attack anyone else. As long as both sides stay grounded, things can be worked out. Otherwise, you're just bottling things in and it just builds up till you break.

Midi's just making basic pose to get a feel for the style, so I think he's doing fine for the most part. He's just easing his way in and he seems aware of most of his "mistakes" (the non-battle-pose). I say go ahead and keep experimenting till you're ready to commit.

_______

For the normal shaded sprites, it looks like you have lighting inconsistencies. The face looks like lights coming from the right, tail has light from straight above, the front leg and body has light coming from the screen-left (I'm not too sure about this. His body looks a bit rounded, yet the entire body is lit. The roundness makes me wanna think that lower part of the upper body should be shaded.).

Also, I noticed a perspective issue too. The head and tail are both orthogonal to the viewer, yet the body is at an angle towards the screen. I can see the head remaining forward, but it doesn't make much sense to me that the tail would too.

[Iocus]

Welp, everybody else beat me to pretty much everything but I made a quick edit


I agree with what has been said about the perspective; it looks pretty odd for his head to be completely sideways when his body is at a 3/4 perspective. (I unfortunately didn't make a fix for that sorry)

I did make a fix for his hat though-- the shape have there makes it seem as if it's frontward-ish? it's a tad odd (I blame it on berets and their totally unidentifiable shapes). In any case, I did my best to imagine what it'd look like from the side.
I also made some fixes on the eye. Don't mind the patch around it too much, I just though it'd look cool. That said, it does help the eye stick out better. IMO, it looks kind of strange how the pupil just blends into the sclera like that, so I made a fix for that.
The angle the collar of his shirt takes is kind of weird, so I fixed that up (made it more like your picture's collar, too). I think the undershirt shows the shape of his torso now with a little less shading on that right corner. Oh, I also changed the tails angle since it looks more squirrel-like standing more upwards like that (I used a couple of squirrel images from google for reference). That's mostly subjective though, so you don't really have to bother with that.

[Sketchasaurus]

I would consider moving the tail back and away from the body a little bit, it makes the silhouette look like he's got a big backpack for camping instead of it being a tail.

[Kelvin]

I agree that the side view head doesn't befit a fighter sprite like this, so I switched it to a 3/4 view, along with reangling the tail so it looks like it's behind him and not hanging to the side. I actually hadn't noticed the tail issue on the smaller platform sprites since they're so small; it could be seen either way, so thanks for pointing that out on this one. Sadly, I can't move the tail away from the body to avoid the backpack look and still avoid the hanging sideways look, but funny you should mention a backpack, because that's actually where my character stores his inventory.



There's what I've got. If that works, I'm gonna start on the battle poses. If it's alright, I'd like to keep the erect pose in the game too, as something he does after standing in one place for a few seconds. Like, he'll have the fists-up bouncing motion right after moving, then quickly get bored and stand normally. I have him do the same thing in my game.

Also, I know this is off topic for spriting, but in TFR, would he be allowed to plant mines? One of his techniques is he buries a nut that explodes when you step on it, and if he jumps while standing on it, it'll explode and make him jump higher. In my game, he can only have one mine active at once, so I'd use the same rule in TFR if it's allowed.

[EDIT]
I just realized Snaggy is turning my images into JPGs, and I apologize for that.

[Kelvin]

Sorry for bumping, but I decided to give the fight pose a shot, and I can't get the legs to look right.



Also changed Midi's mugshot so he has a more s**t-muncher grin... dude, what's wrong with the word s**t? S**t. S**T!... Ess. Ay. Ellllllll... Tea? That spells s**t--DANG IT!