Some Critique, Please.

[SchAlternate]

Oh hey! Nice to see you around here!

EDIT: Update on shading.

Well, for starters, you use WAY too many shades, and they all are WAY too similar. I'd start by either making each shade stand out more or flat out remove some of them. Though most of the problems comes from the fact that even the lightest shades are ridiculously dark. You may want to lighten those up a bit anyway.


Here, I just lightened things up a bit. The shading itself is left intact.

(Also, try to avoid making your outline pure black, as paint often reads transparency as pure black. Try to use really dark blue/purple next time.)

[ClubbyBear]

Oh hey! Nice to see you around here!

EDIT: Update on shading.

Well, for starters, you use WAY too many shades, and they all are WAY too similar. I'd start by either making each shade stand out more or flat out remove some of them. Though most of the problems comes from the fact that even the lightest shades are ridiculously dark. You may want to lighten those up a bit anyway.


Here, I just lightened things up a bit. The shading itself is left intact.

(Also, try to avoid making your outline pure black, as paint often reads transparency as pure black. Try to use really dark blue/purple next time.)

Oh, hi Sch! Didn't expect to see you on here, although I kinda did...

The thing is, the style is meant to be VERY dark, because of the way it's going to be made, but the palette you made is really good. I think I can fit it in by tinkering with the lightest shades. I also will change the outline to a darkish gray, so it looks very similar, but not 100% black.

[Mag]

I'm getting World of Goo vibes from the last one dude, good job. ;D

I'd recommend changing the colors of the lighter colors of the bear to a more desaturated color to help bring the lighting out. Also think about combining colors for the darker regions of the sprite. A nice intermediate color between the pants and body could be a desaturated teal.

Also, consider adding a lighter color to the seams of the bear to bring out the contrast of the seams, they're difficult to see at the moment.

[ClubbyBear]

I'm getting World of Goo vibes from the last one dude, good job. ;D

I'd recommend changing the colors of the lighter colors of the bear to a more desaturated color to help bring the lighting out. Also think about combining colors for the darker regions of the sprite. A nice intermediate color between the pants and body could be a desaturated teal.

Also, consider adding a lighter color to the seams of the bear to bring out the contrast of the seams, they're difficult to see at the moment.

Thanks! Although I have not played the game myself, they are very similar. I'm pretty sure the one that Sch edited to help on the palette and show other flaws fixed most of the flaws, so I'll post a new version here with a few edits to fit into the style well.



If anyone's wondering, these sprites are going into a indie fighting game I'm making.

[Vipershark]

Okay, I finally got around to taking a look at this, and I immediately found out two things:
1) you have waaaaaaay too many shades (6? I think? for the blue and seven on the green but the black shades are so dark I honestly can't tell the difference between then but I think there are three.) and overall I counted 16 shades, not counting the pure black outline. For a sprite with so little colors, you could probably make do with like... six colors or so.
2) as stated already, your contrast is horrendously low so I'm working in trying to fix that a bit.

The thing is, the style is meant to be VERY dark, because of the way it's going to be made, but the palette you made is really good.

Can you elaborate on this?
Why does it have to be so dark?

[ClubbyBear]

Okay, I finally got around to taking a look at this, and I immediately found out two things:
1) you have waaaaaaay too many shades (6? I think? for the blue and seven on the green but the black shades are so dark I honestly can't tell the difference between then but I think there are three.) and overall I counted 16 shades, not counting the pure black outline. For a sprite with so little colors, you could probably make do with like... six colors or so.
2) as stated already, your contrast is horrendously low so I'm working in trying to fix that a bit.

The thing is, the style is meant to be VERY dark, because of the way it's going to be made, but the palette you made is really good.

Can you elaborate on this?
Why does it have to be so dark?

It doesn't NEED to be, I just thought it might help make the game a bit stylized and on the character's design, but if lighter shades could help the contrast it might work out better.

[Level 1]

Maybe if we knew what kind of "style" your game is going to look like, then maybe we'd know what you need to work on, that is sicne this character's look must be based on the style of the game.

[ClubbyBear]

Maybe if we knew what kind of "style" your game is going to look like, then maybe we'd know what you need to work on, that is sicne this character's look must be based on the style of the game.

Well, I did give most of the style a few pages back.

[Vipershark]

What?
There's only one previous page here and you've definitely not gone into the style in this thread.

[ClubbyBear]

Weird. Because the style has been changed alot recently, I'll try to work on the contrast, but the main thing was I wanted it to look half realistic and half cartoonish.

[Level 1]

Weird. Because the style has been changed alot recently, I'll try to work on the contrast, but the main thing was I wanted it to look half realistic and half cartoonish.

Half realistic and half cartoonish? What do you mean by that, you mean having the actual body of a bear, but having it filled with stitches and patches? Or a Cartoon bear with fur textures? This is really confusing.

[ClubbyBear]

Weird. Because the style has been changed alot recently, I'll try to work on the contrast, but the main thing was I wanted it to look half realistic and half cartoonish.

Half realistic and half cartoonish? What do you mean by that, you mean having the actual body of a bear, but having it filled with stitches and patches? Or a Cartoon bear with fur textures? This is really confusing.

A cartoon bear, but with more details than my old versions and a more realistic palette, although I think I might scratch that because by 'realistic' I meant really dark, with little contrast.

[Level 1]

Well, why not give us an example, see, since your character must match a specific style, we need to know that style to be able to help you match it.

[ClubbyBear]

As of now, this sprite;

The colors are brighter, as it's using an edited version of Sch's palette.

[Iocus]

Clearly, he isn't following a specific style reference, so I think we can forget about style and build off from what he has here.



I cleaned it up a little for you, using your latest revision as reference. I reoriented the lightsource (as you can see, you had a lot of conflicting lightsources there), and threw a couple of suggestions on how to shade the jacket (I think I'd pick the 3rd one, myself.)

Since black (or black-like colors) is a very dark color, you don't need as many shades as you would with other parts.