just something i'm working on..

[E-Man]

Sprites with many shades typically look better from a close up view, but here on this web site, we are more interested in seeing sprites that look good at 100% scale. If you view sprites like that, the ones with limited palettes actually look better, while the ones with lots of colors sometimes look blurry and confusing.

If you can make it work, go ahead. Otherwise, it is better to cut back on the colors and just use shades with good contrast.

[zye1984]

that's what i thought; i asked a couple times if you guys take in consideration of it being in use in a game (such as snes and such, not things like handhelds) or not. thanks for clearing that up

Sprites with many shades typically look better from a close up view, but here on this web site, we are more interested in seeing sprites that look good at 100% scale. If you view sprites like that, the ones with limited palettes actually look better, while the ones with lots of colors sometimes look blurry and confusing.

If you can make it work, go ahead. Otherwise, it is better to cut back on the colors and just use shades with good contrast.

[Vipershark]

Oh, I didn't see that edit that you made.
...ignoring the "flawed" from your friend,



I'm going to assume that the reason for posting Akuma was so that your friend can show an example of what he's trying to emulate, but putting them side-by-side just shows how much better the official sprite is than your friend's.
For one thing, you've put twice as many colors on a sprite of similar size

and you've got redundant colors there like that tiny sliver of peach in the ear and the eyes. That one sprite with all the clothes on it is so obscenely ridiculous that I won't comment on it but apparently talking about color count makes people angry so I won't go into that anymore.

Regardless of color count, you[r friend] simply do[es]n't have enough hue shifting or saturation changes, and the contrast is almost nonexistent with certain shades.
For example, the two darkest blues are so close together that the darkest shade simply gets lost because it flat out can't be seen.
You might like it when the sprite looks like that and has flat colors, but that is completely wrong. That's not personal interpretation, it's wrong. Light is made up of an entire spectrum of colors and simply doesn't work that way.
Your friend seems to have a decent grasp on shading as far as the shapes and such that light makes, but his color usage is incorrect.
Let's look at official sprites that use dark colors. King of Fighters is a good example of a series with large sprites and lots of shades.

http://www.spriters-resource.com/playstation_2/kofxi/



Each of these characters is wearing dark clothing (Ex Kyo's pants are debatable but close enough) and yet they're still bright enough and have enough contrast that they're easy to see. I don't have to try to look for details because they're all visible. Even the Akuma sprite above (which, again, I'm assuming your friend is trying to emulate) does this.
Your colors are so dark and so close together that the just bleed together, which in your eyes might make it seem like they're more detail, but it actually has the complete opposite effect. Instead it makes all your colors just melt together into one blob of color and all the details get lost.
Contrast makes things pop out and look appealing. Lack of contrast does the opposite.

[Garamonde]

What I don't understand is why you need to worry about what they look like zoomed in if they're going to be used in a game. Most games use sprites at x1 zoom, so that's proooobably the ratio that you should be worrying about how they look... Of course it's going to look different zoomed in. But that shouldn't matter at all because you're trying to make it look better zoomed out, right? The point of what we're all saying here is so that you can tell what's going on in the sprite without needing to zoom in. For example, in those sprites Vipershark posted, you can see the details, thus rendering the need to zoom in completely pointless. If you're insistent on shading them based on how they look zoomed in, th-then uh, might consider re-thinking that?

[Bastendorf]

I never intended on getting involved, but I've been coaxed off the sidelines. I am the friend, I am the one who did the sprite work you criticized.

In any normal case, I would have laughed off what you said and gone back to work. But this is a special case. For months, I have been helping Zye to become the best spriter he can be, and he was getting there until he linked me to this thread. I've been helping him to understand the advices given, and telling him when to use them and when to skirt them. Such as with 'pillow shading'. You all seem to treat it as a negative thing, here. I could be wrong, but pillow shading has its uses, and have have very positive results.

Allow me to clear something up, before I go any further. I've had to learn everything I know on my own. I have never had help, and there were no college courses to take on the subject. So everything you see in my sprite work has come from 11 or more years of figuring it out for myself.
With that out of the way, I can continue. Limited by what I was able to figure out by studying sprites, I can see no way of improving the clarity of my own sprite without brightening him, or wrecking his color scheme. And I have heavy doubts that you can, either.

I'm not going to go into why I'm rather liberal on the number of colors and shades I use, just because this would end up being a rather large TL;DR, however, I would like to challenge you to edit my sprite the same way you did with Zye's Jason, without brightening him, as he is meant to be a near-black, sapphire color, and without dulling him down. He is meant to be very vibrant. I did the best I could with what I've learned. There's no way to hue shift him, as he is far too dark in color for that, and much like Zye, I'm not willing to budge more than a few degrees on his brightness level.

This is NOT my way of being snarky, and it's not an attempt to seem smart or superior. I honestly hope that you can, though I doubt it, so that I can analyze the method and help Zye better understand what you've been trying to tell him.

As it stands, I believe that you cannot fix my sprite work without ruining it. Prove me wrong. I would love to be wrong.

This is can be considered on topic, as I wish to improve myself, and through self improvement, I can better help Zye improve his sprite work.

[Vipershark]

Allow me to clear something up, before I go any further. I've had to learn everything I know on my own. I have never had help, and there were no college courses to take on the subject. So everything you see in my sprite work has come from 11 or more years of figuring it out for myself.

That's fair! A lot of us here started out by learning on our own and then later learned the correct way to do things.
It's okay not to have formal art training and it's okay not to be fully knowledgeable of all the techniques and stuff. Everyone starts somewhere.
What's not okay though is to say "okay but this is my way of doing it, I don't care if it isn't correct". Whether or not you agree with what's being said, you should keep an open mind to criticism.

Such as with 'pillow shading'. You all seem to treat it as a negative thing, here. I could be wrong, but pillow shading has its uses, and have have very positive results.

There is a very few number of situations where pillow shading is the correct technique to use and even fewer situations where it actually looks good.
Pillow shading occurs when the lightsource is directly between the viewer and the sprite, straight on, and even then you don't necessarily have to pillow shade to show that.
I'm no expert in shading so there's no way that I personally can make a good example to prove it, but 99% of the time pillow shading looks bad because there are very few reasons why the light source would be coming from the viewer, meaning that it's out of place when it's done.

I'm not going to go into why I'm rather liberal on the number of colors and shades I use, just because this would end up being a rather large TL;DR,

I honestly kind of wish you would, just to see what kind of viable explanation there is for it.

however, I would like to challenge you to edit my sprite the same way you did with Zye's Jason, without brightening him, as he is meant to be a near-black, sapphire color, and without dulling him down. He is meant to be very vibrant. I did the best I could with what I've learned. There's no way to hue shift him, as he is far too dark in color for that, and much like Zye, I'm not willing to budge more than a few degrees on his brightness level.

That's not really a challenge I can take up, and there's a simple reason why: light doesn't work that way. White light is made up of an entire spectrum of color. It's not just "white", it's actually red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet all mixing together in various amounts to create the colors you see.
Of course the possible level of hue shifting differs on a case by case basis, but generally speaking, hue shifting is always possible because light is made up of different hues. If you look at something white, its darker shades aren't just darker versions of that same hue. If you look at something black, it's not just a flat sheet of one hue.

I'll give you a real-world example of the closest thing that I have to a "dark blue sapphire, almost black" color to show you how light works.

big pictures

This is my wallet. You can see that even though it's a very deep and dark blue color, it still has bright highlights and dark shades in it and lots of contrast so you can easily see the details. (I have these in GIGANTIC resolution if necessary)
"But that's under a sun lamp so it's a lot brighter than it would normally be! That's not fair!"

Okay, I'll accept that point.
So I took a picture of it with the sun lamp turned off and using the regular incandescent light in my room.

"That's not natural light, though! The sun wouldn't make it look like that!"

You're right, so I went outside and took pictures in natural, non-direct sunlight to show that it still works the same way:




Even though this is a bad way to make a palette, I picked out colors directly from part of the image just to show that hue shifting occurs naturally:

If you zoom in, you can see that the wallet isn't just blue; it's made up of a whole rainbow of blues, greens, purples, and other hues that give it the color it has.

As you can see, light naturally has highlights and shadows, and it uses hue shifting and contrast to make details visible.
Color is actually three-dimensional. You're changing brightness, but you're barely touching hue and saturation, causing your colors to look flat (since they're quite literally one-dimensional).
If you want to make your sprite more vibrant, the only way to do so is to make it so that all your shades aren't so indistinguishable.

[Bastendorf]

That's fair! A lot of us here started out by learning on our own and then later learned the correct way to do things.

You're not the bully I first thought you were.

There is a very few number of situations where pillow shading is the correct technique to use and even fewer situations where it actually looks good.

Energy balls - Dragon Ball Z
Glowing eyes
Rotating Spikeballs on a Chain - Lots of games do this, Super Mario World is among them, if I'm not mistaken.
I'm sure there are more, and I could write an article on the proper use and methods for doing this, but that would take more than a single sitting.

I honestly kind of wish you would, just to see what kind of viable explanation there is for it.

Very well, I shall do so at the end of this reply.

That's not really a challenge I can take up, and there's a simple reason why: light doesn't work that way.

Why do you think it looks the way it does? When I had started, he was actually much brighter, and the details stood out, much like they do in his green chest. But I didn't like how bright he was, and though I knew what it would do to it, I tried darkening him anyway. Needless to say, it didn't go so well, so I decided I'd come back to it. Nearly a year later, I have yet to, as I can't find a way of keeping him dark and making him look good.
If you would like to give it a shot, I'll allow you to adjust his brightness and show me what to do with him, as long as you can keep him quite dark. He doesn't have to look like he's absorbing light, as he does right now, but I want to keep him on the darker side of the spectrum, and on the saturated side of things.


Here's the thing about my use of colors: I decided to section this part off so that those who don't wish to read it, can skip it.

As I started spriting and as the gaming industry was evolving around me, I decided to experiment with how my sprites look. I am not an idiot, nor is Zye. We can see the validity of your points.

I'm going to start out by saying it's stylistic. I can switch between minimal 8 bit, and 16 bit styles to suit what I'm trying to recreate with the looks of the sprites, and I can also ramp up the detail on the sprites I make, which usually means, the fully clothed version of my character for example, a large number of colors. I'll admit that I did throw in a few more colors just to piss all of you off, and get a good laugh out of your reaction, but save for two or three colors, the rest was all designed intentionally.

But Why?: Well, I've noticed a lot of you talking about x1 zoom, and how good it looks at x1 over zoomed in. And it's that reason exactly.
Before you freak out, I have a reason for the insanity. In normal cases, a massively detailed sprite would be a waste of time at x1 zoom, and look ugly. However, the only times in which I create a massively detailed, small sprite is in cases where I know for a fact that I'm not going to use x1 zoom.
Let me explain a little. I some times like to have games that are zoomed in at x2, or x4. So when I know that's what I'm going to be doing, I ignore x1 zoom, and ignore what it looks like at that zoom. Over time, I realized that the sprites from the 8-bit and 16-bit era leave something to be desired if the whole game is running at x2 zoom or more.

I'm not sure when it happened, but I eventually started taking existing sprite rips, Kirby's Aventure, for example, and seeing how realistic I could make it, and how it could look if it was touched up to be, in a way, HD. I quickly realized that it looks like crap, zoomed all the way out, but at 200% and above, it looks great.
I mentioned before that the industry was evolving, well, I figured out that GBA games and DS games have a zoomed in quality to them, and that's how I got started. Games CAN look good zoomed in. Nintendo proved that much. And when the sprite is closer, it's easier to make out the details that would normally be impossible to see. And I built on it from there. Learning to make sprites look good, zoomed in, rather than zoomed out.
I talked to Zye about it, and it seems like that's what he's shooting for, as well.

This isn't to say I don't know how to go minimal and make it look good at 100%, as I'm sure you figured out from my sprite, as flawed as it is. This is just a style I practice, and since Zye picked it up, I decided to show him how to work with it.

[zye1984]

most games that people here get the sprites ripped from are games that are zoomed in to a degree, so saying that most games are 1x zoom dumbfounds me. O-o any and all NES games are zoomed in, but they have so little detail it doesn't matter. but genesis, snes, and even playstation sprite games are ALL zoomed in on the television, where it's meant to be played on.

I mentioned that i was hypothetically making it for Super Smash Flash 2, which zooms in and out all the time. some of the sprites on there are so simplistic, i wanted to make mine more detailed. yeah i need more study in how light works other than its position apparently. and also, my light source is indeed between the viewer and the sprite, though a little above and to the side.

Vipershark, your way is the "right way" for 1x zoom. our way works better for zoomed in games, just like E-man said.

also, i tend to not really like the SNK way of shading, (the akuma was from SNK vs Capcom Chaos) the contrast in my opinion looks really ugly and jarring. I'm quite sure light doesn't work THAT way either, unless it's a hard light. I like softer transitions, i don't really mind the colors blending, that's more realistic anyway. I don't understand the need for sharp, hard light..

anyway, why are we still talking about this? You guys like tangelos, me and my friend like oranges, they're similar but different; one is a smaller version of the other and they both require different tastes.

What I don't understand is why you need to worry about what they look like zoomed in if they're going to be used in a game. Most games use sprites at x1 zoom, so that's proooobably the ratio that you should be worrying about how they look... Of course it's going to look different zoomed in. But that shouldn't matter at all because you're trying to make it look better zoomed out, right? The point of what we're all saying here is so that you can tell what's going on in the sprite without needing to zoom in. For example, in those sprites Vipershark posted, you can see the details, thus rendering the need to zoom in completely pointless. If you're insistent on shading them based on how they look zoomed in, th-then uh, might consider re-thinking that?

[zye1984]

here's some reduction i did..i used Samus from super metroid to help with hues..i still am not sure about them, and still hate using blue for white..x-x

the one on the right is messing with the red shadow to add more depth, along with changing the shading on the right area of him. i kinda scribbled some details on the right leg, i'm tired of using ms paint atm DX

oh and the brightest color is used for reflections on any point of the body, like on mega man sprites.

[-Ash-]

Did I just walk into a god damn soap opera? "He isn't the original spriter...I AM!" *suspenseful music* All joking aside...why didn't you just post it yourself? Also I wouldn't honestly use video games to justify pillow shading, next thing you know people are gonna say "but the pokemon red and blue sprites look distorted and that official so it has to be correct!" Which honestly isn't true, energy I will say is better off pillow shaded, however spike balls on a chain I have always thought looked ugly, turns out years later I learned it was because of pillow shading, thought I can understand why pillowshading was used, a constant fast moving object most likely would have a constant change of light direction which would need more coding, easier to use pillowshading as an illusion for movement. But that doesn't mean it is right. Would go more in depth but I am seriously tired.

[zye1984]

Bas just did the dragon, i'm working on jason. o-o

and, Bas is ALWAYS dramatic. = P

i'll have to see what you guys mean about pillow shading on that ball and chain..

Did I just walk into a god damn soap opera? "He isn't the original spriter...I AM!" *suspenseful music* All joking aside...why didn't you just post it yourself? Also I wouldn't honestly use video games to justify pillow shading, next thing you know people are gonna say "but the pokemon red and blue sprites look distorted and that official so it has to be correct!" Which honestly isn't true, energy I will say is better off pillow shaded, however spike balls on a chain I have always thought looked ugly, turns out years later I learned it was because of pillow shading, thought I can understand why pillowshading was used, a constant fast moving object most likely would have a constant change of light direction which would need more coding, easier to use pillowshading as an illusion for movement. But that doesn't mean it is right. Would go more in depth but I am seriously tired.

[zye1984]

more filddling

[Gors]

I never intended on getting involved, but I've been coaxed off the sidelines. I am the friend, I am the one who did the sprite work you criticized.

In any normal case, I would have laughed off what you said and gone back to work. But this is a special case. For months, I have been helping Zye to become the best spriter he can be, and he was getting there until he linked me to this thread. I've been helping him to understand the advices given, and telling him when to use them and when to skirt them. Such as with 'pillow shading'. You all seem to treat it as a negative thing, here. I could be wrong, but pillow shading has its uses, and have very positive results.

Allow me to clear something up, before I go any further. I've had to learn everything I know on my own. I have never had help, and there were no college courses to take on the subject. So everything you see in my sprite work has come from 11 or more years of figuring it out for myself.
With that out of the way, I can continue. Limited by what I was able to figure out by studying sprites, I can see no way of improving the clarity of my own sprite without brightening him, or wrecking his color scheme. And I have heavy doubts that you can, either.

I'm not going to go into why I'm rather liberal on the number of colors and shades I use, just because this would end up being a rather large TL;DR, however, I would like to challenge you to edit my sprite the same way you did with Zye's Jason, without brightening him, as he is meant to be a near-black, sapphire color, and without dulling him down. He is meant to be very vibrant. I did the best I could with what I've learned. There's no way to hue shift him, as he is far too dark in color for that, and much like Zye, I'm not willing to budge more than a few degrees on his brightness level.

This is NOT my way of being snarky, and it's not an attempt to seem smart or superior. I honestly hope that you can, though I doubt it, so that I can analyze the method and help Zye better understand what you've been trying to tell him.

As it stands, I believe that you cannot fix my sprite work without ruining it. Prove me wrong. I would love to be wrong.

This is can be considered on topic, as I wish to improve myself, and through self improvement, I can better help Zye improve his sprite work.

Man, it's been quite a long time since a newcomer's pulled the 'This Is My Style' card, and while I really want to help you, I think I need to shake up the things a bit.

Read here

I might sound rude here but insulting is not my objective here: I want to show you another point of view.

First of all,

In any normal case, I would have laughed off what you said and gone back to work.

Drop this attitude. This is not a style of doing things, it's flat-out arrogance. You are arrogant and this is not a good trait to have. Each c+c we give is not to be laughed off of, as they are made because 1-We also spent years learning pixelart, and 2-We took time to write it. It is our work to give you concise and valuable criticism, because criticism IS NOT an insult towards you or your work. Just acknowledge it and choose whether applying it or not. Just don't laugh off.

Such as with 'pillow shading'. You all seem to treat it as a negative thing, here. I could be wrong, but pillow shading has its uses, and have very positive results.

Energy balls and Lamps.

Breastplate is not any of these two.

I've had to learn everything I know on my own. I have never had help, and there were no college courses to take on the subject. So everything you see in my sprite work has come from 11 or more years of figuring it out for myself.

We're all like this. The only difference is that we've been generally much more opened to c+c, therefore we took less than 11 years to understand the main techniques of pixelart. We didn't take college courses, and pixelart was a fairly new art media at the time; we supported each other here with c+c to get enough knowledge to whip up the Spriting Dictionary. What we have all here were all fruits of hard work (much like yours, mind you), we're pretty much equal in this aspect.

We are helping zye with our knowledge, right? But you'll never be able to properly teach with such attitudes. Studying a thing for 11 years does not give you the rights of laughing off criticism.

Finally, it's worthy to note that old games like SNES/NES/Genesis also had learning artists who weren't proficient with pixelart, so they are really far from being a solid reference. The sprites were also meant to be shown in a CRT TV which blurs the zooming, making them appear 'HD'. This is why zoomed in sprites work on TV games. On LCD screens, however, it just doesn't work unless you zoom it in a non-decimal number (and chances are they'll look really low-res instead of getting the detail you so aim with all those shades of near-black sapphire).

As it stands, I believe that you cannot fix my sprite work without ruining it. Prove me wrong. I would love to be wrong.

As for the dragon sprite you made, the colors are so dark and close together that you probably could leave with 3 or 4 shades, without changing their hue.

---

As for Jason up there, you still didn't understand how hueshift works that much. You aren't supposed to shade him flat out blue like that; it's adding a faint hue there, so it doesn't look extremely artificial.



he's my attempt at Jason's helmet, I've kept around the same number of shades (I removed one single shade and even then it doesn't look it lost any detail). Notice that the gray has a really faint reddish tint (to match with his suit). Usually, hueshift happens depending on the situation or place the object is (as Vipershark pointed out with his wallet pics). In Jason's case, I chose to use a reddish ramp so to fit with the overall piece without sticking out too much. Give it a closer look:



All in all, it's not arbitrarily giving the colors a tint, it's about making the color more lively by considering the piece as a whole.

Finally, I'm sorry if this sounded rude to any of the parties. I am here to help with pixelart, and I hope to see more from you in the future.

[Sketchasaurus]

The reason why people are getting so annoyed is because they're putting forth the effort to try to help you.

What's important to always keep in mind is this:
They wouldn't be giving critique if they didn't care

Consider this: even though I've been drawing for 20+ years, I still seek out critique and openly enjoy having a different set of eyes point out flaws that I could have missed. It has to be taken into consideration that pixel art still follows the same principles that any 2D artform does, but the implementation is what sets it apart from those mediums. There are reasons why everyone is talking about hue-shifting and optimizing color palettes: because it's effective and simply looks better.

brushing off someone's critique is effectively brushing off the time that they've taken to provide an alternate viewpoint on how to improve or even things to try or think about; It's extremely rude and I would call into question: why even post if you don't want input on how to improve?

[zye1984]

Bastendorf and me are two different people...o-o

and i'm trying to be more open minded too, it took me a while but i'm trying..i just like older styles of spriting. i want it to look different..if everyone followed the same rules, everything would look the same kind of art style, i would think..

I'm looking at your edits Gor, i'll reply a little later, thank you! = ] and yeah, i have zero inkling about hue shifting and how to do it right atm, i'm just doing trial and error. i was also using ms paint at work, so that didn't help.

---

ok! when you said you removed a shade, i cant seem to find the shade that you removed! the colors that you showed in little splotches for example didn't match my colors but it did yours.

...

now i found it! it was on the oldest one on the group. on the ones in the center, i already got rid of a shade. = )

Thanks for the little lesson in the shading. i was trying to use red but he started to look pink. = ( i don't have a color wheel on ms paint, which is what i was usin' at the time i did this edit. maybe i can do something better here at home. i like the colors you used.

I think the shadow on the right one looks neat sorta, but i just kinda threw it on there. the left leg looks crappy as i was in a hurry; it was almost time to leave work.

As for Jason up there, you still didn't understand how antialias works that much. You aren't supposed to shade him flat out blue like that; it's adding a faint hue there, so it doesn't look extremely artificial.

he's my attempt at Jason's helmet, I've kept around the same number of shades (I removed one single shade and even then it doesn't look it lost any detail). Notice that the gray has a really faint reddish tint (to match with his suit). Usually, hueshift happens depending on the situation or place the object is (as Vipershark pointed out with his wallet pics). In Jason's case, I chose to use a reddish ramp so to fit with the overall piece without sticking out too much. Give it a closer look:

All in all, it's not arbitrarily giving the colors a tint, it's about making the color more lively by considering the piece as a whole.

Finally, I'm sorry if this sounded rude to any of the parties. I am here to help with pixelart, and I hope to see more from you in the future.