Midi's Sprites

[Kelvin]

Sorry I haven't been around much lately. Anyway, I just found this and thought I should show it.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12633685/
That's the pose I was going for with Trey, just with the left arm pointed forward.

[Kelvin]

Decided to try trimming the color palette a bit, and make sure all my colors are coming from the same source so there's no overly-similar colors between sprites. What do you guys think? The left side is the newer side.

I think a lot of my sprites could benefit from a palette trim, especially the Pikachu, which could easily use only three shades of yellow (I think there's, like, five on it right now). I might go back to four shades for the broader parts of the body, like Midi's tail and pants, but overall, I agree that fewer is better.

[E-Man]

Good to see you back to making sprites, mate! I'd say that you're making a wise choice by trimming the palette.

By the way, how about giving that hat you have a little more contrast?

[Kelvin]

Good to see you back to making sprites, mate! I'd say that you're making a wise choice by trimming the palette.

By the way, how about giving that hat you have a little more contrast?

Yeah, I kinda like the bluish green, but the outline kinda blends in with his hair. I'll see what I can do with it. Thanks for the feedback.

[Kelvin]

OK, so I was working on the color palette, but the problem is I've gone through a bunch of palettes before I came to this most recent one. The one on the left is the old sprite with a palette swap, an edited hand and shoulder; the one on the right is with the palette trim. The problem with the 3-shade version is it's always too dark or too light. The new colors on the 4-shade have a better contrast than before, but people keep insisting I try to do more with less. I'm just afraid it's not working out here. I also added an underside selout for the hat since E-Man said it didn't stand out well enough, and I couldn't find a green that worked well against Midi's brown.


Also, here's a palette trim on Pikachu. Again, not sure if it's working out. The outline seems too dark in some parts now.

[Gwen]

Not sure if this has been addressed, but bottom row Pikachu is noticeably skinnier than top row Pikachu.

[Kelvin]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll fix Pikachu in a bit, but first, an update on my OCs:



Top left is the old version of Shacklebolt with the over-buff neckless body and too many colors. On the upper right, I've reduced the colors, given him a slimmer build, and in the lower right is a test of his fight pose. Just to the left is a red-eyed variant of shadewings, and beside that is his overworld sprite. Lower left is Midi. I've tweaked the color palette so now his fur has a better contrast since it looked too flat before. I might change his jacket a bit later, dunno.



And here's a test of some newer tiles. I made all new trees, and I had an idea: if the sprites are gonna have less shades, I'll give the environment more so the actors stand out better. Obvious P0rtal reference is obvious, but I won't be using that style of portals in my game... maybe.

[Kelvin]

OK, got a lot to show here today! First off, I took my old avatar and turned it into a sprite, the process of which you can see here:


And did the same for my friend, Foxboy83, who does the art for my game, as well as changed his sprite to fit the new palette constraints.


Then I changed Midi's color palette. The fur color was fine on the sprite at first, but it didn't look right enlarged, so I changed it, along with making his jacket red instead of orange, and making his underfur color richer.


I also did a little improvement on my Mario sprites, but I'm gonna wait until I have some new frames before I show that. I'll be doing more fixes for my other sprites soon, including redoing all my OCs so they're conformed to my shading rule set, and then I'll be fixing Trey's legs, getting rid of those tiny nub hands, and then making some new stuff again. I'm also thinking of doing Chell in my style, since I seem to suck at Metroid Fusion style.

Hmm... Super Steam Bros. Heheh. Smash Bros. with PC characters. ^^ Someday...

[Level 1]

The RPG sprites look like you took Pokemon sprites, and pasted Tails's head on, and then recolored. I am no saying that's what you did, but that is what I see. Maybe enlarging them, and adding your personal details and style would help make it stand out from the generic RPG sprites that many people use as references. Also, your main character, is that a hat, or a leaf on it's head? Because if it's a leaf, it looks like a flatten out balloon, and if it's a hat, it looks like a beret.

[Kelvin]

It is a beret. And I'm doing Pokemon-like sprites on purpose; the game is supposed to have a retro feel. Many 16-bit games had sprites that size. And no, I did not just stick Tails's head on there. There's even a bunch of frames you don't see in Pokemon games, especially the diagonal ones, and the sprites are neither Fire/Leaf nor RSE style, they're something in between that I made myself. I tried just editing Pokemon sprites before, but it didn't turn out how I wanted it to.

[Level 1]

I see, well with what I see, your character have a lot detail, many features that stand out, which are hard to show in sprites that are just so small. This is a shame really, because at that small scale, the eye misses that detail that you worked hard to display, like I said, maybe using a larger reference would be better to showcase the detail and color of the character. Also, since it's a beret, I see no depth for it, here is a good reference to showcase what I mean. In that image you can see the depth of the beret.

[Kelvin]

I was working off the lineart my friend made for me, so I didn't notice that. Thanks for pointing it out. I hope this doesn't sound like an excuse, but I'm not concerned if people miss the small details in the overworld sprites because they're not meant to convey them, anyway. If someone does notice them, good for them, but the point of the OW is just for narrative and moving between locations without having to traverse too much platform land.

I've found that in some metroidvania games, particularly in Megaman Zero/ZX, travelling anywhere you couldn't yet teleport to got really tiresome, and having already been in one big platform stage, I didn't find myself stoked for the next one; rather, I just wanted to get to the next part so I could get it overwith and continue the story. That's why I'm using the Zelda 2/Gargoyles Quest formula: to keep the platforming scenes from getting stale.

[Kelvin]

I took a closer look just now, and realized Midi's bangs are in the way of the fold, so how do you suggest I better illustrate that's a beret? I considered putting a groove on the top, but that would just make it look like a leaf or a green tongue.

Also, quick test of a hammer.

The straight up pose is the beginning, then it tilts back for the anticipation before swinging down and coming to a stop.

[orochii]

Work on the shading. Vary the thickness/width of the shaded area that gives it volume. Berets are made of cloth, and cloth is soft, so it gets deformed by gravity.
Final Smash's pic was nice, but let's have a look at a lonely beret (?):

It's pretty soft, but notice the shading. It gets some "roundiness" by varying the "shape" of the shade.

By now, I feel the beret is too rigid for being made of cloth, hence I feel it is more like this thing on his head


(Like this, but maybe softened by use).

EDIT: Images taken from Google for illustrative purposes, I don't claim ownage of them.

[Kelvin]

Concept art of another of my characters. Yes, I do my concept art with sprites. Bite me. Shown with and without wings in comparison to Shacklebolt. Counting his ears, this is my second tallest character.

This is Silver Windstreak, a bluejay/snow leopard gryphon. He's training to be a police officer, and is very distrustful towards Shacklebolt due to rumors surrounding shadewings, and very protective of his friends, Justin, Skyla and Dexter, which adds a lot of conflict. As a side character, he'll be playing the role of "distrustful semi-antagonist turned ally", but I'm not sure if he'll ever call Shack his friend or not.

With the exception of water fowl, Kyrodian gryphons are made of all sorts of avians and felines, not just eagles and lions. Though their feline half is shaped like a "big cat", they even have some house cat designs. Nudity taboo also does not apply to quadrupeds (the only reason penguins go naked is because their thick feathery covering hides their no-no parts, and because it's necessary for them to handle warmer climates), so clothing is optional for gryphons, dragons and shadewings.

The reason I'm making platform sprites for him is because I have him planned as a half boss when he lashes out against Shacklebolt out of suspicion. How you defeat him is a surprise, though.