tikal the echidna sonic advance style

[captainkakarot64]

Hello I am new here and I want to improve on my tikal the echidna spritesheet I would appreciate feedback.
the sprites on the top left are old

[Iocus]

Oh man, it's been ages since I've seen a Sonic Advance sprite!

Anyway, your sprites are much improved from the ones in the corner, but your colors still lack contrast. As far as I remember, Sonic Advance sprites are pretty bright and crisp, but your hues don't really reflect that. Here, I'll show you.


Top are Amy's fur hues, bottom are Tikal's. You seem to have some notion of hue shifting (incidental or otherwise; if you are unfamiliar with the term, please use our Spriting Dictionary), but it's evident that Amy's shades are much more distinct that Tikal's.

A sprite has good contrast when you can clearly tell the hues apart, which is not the case here.

Worse yet is your yellow:

Comparing the first and third shades from Amy's and Tikal 's palettes, its evident that Amy's colors have better contrast. Not to mention, yours are not even hue shifted, just slightly darker.

Another thing is that you're cramming too much detail in small areas. It's almost impossible to tell what's going on in her torso because there's too many different colors in a small area. An important aspect of pixel art is clarity, and at this scale, you are only allowed so much detail. Some suggestions would be to not add try to draw the carvings on her tiara, and to limit her skirt to one, maybe two colors (Her pendant, too, is indiscernible.)

TL;DR : Make the shades of each color more different, remove detail per area

Any doubts or questions, feel free to ask. Welcome!

[captainkakarot64]

Thank you very much for the advice

I have made more contrast with the yellow, orange and blue color. I have also removed the details of the skirt, tiara and the necklace


and what does TL;DR mean?

[E-Man]

It means "too long; didn't read."

[Iocus]

and what does TL;DR mean?

What E-man said. Basically, it's internet talk for "long story short" (at least when you're saying it about your own text, if somebody tells you "TL;DR", they mean that your text is too lengthy and they're not going to bother with it)

Your sprite is looking better already!

However, there are some things that I think you should address still. I've prepared a picture to illustrate:


The circles mark the areas which I think need revisions. The colors indicate the type of change required (I also added an edit of how I would approach this).

Red: I looked at some Tikal references, and it seems like that upper right corner of her head is much too round in your sprite, you ought to make it flatter and slanted, I'd say. Additionally, after pondering about it for a moment, I determined that that front dread sticks out too much for the angle she's facing, so you should push it back a pixel.

Green: Still have contrast problems on the yellow, but not because of it's not dark enough, but because it's not hue shifted enough. I'm not sure if you read the entry on the spriting dictionary as I suggested, but basically, a color like red is naturally darker than yellow, so when you pick your yellow's shades, they ought to tend to move towards red. Similarly, pure blue and purple are intrinsically darker than cyan, so your shades for cyan should have a tendency towards those colors. It might be a little advanced, but I hope that at least explains why I made those changes to your shades in my edit.

Cyan: I noticed a couple of inconsistencies with the lightsource.

Assuming your light comes, more or less, from where the yellow spot is. I've marked the areas where the shadows would move to that I feel you haven't accounted for (In retrospect, marking them with cyan wasn't the best idea...) Namely, the dreadlocks on the left should overlap, so the further one shouldn't be able to get light at the bottom right area. The head is overlapping the neck, so it should be darker, too. The front part of the foot catches light, while the shadows retract the to sides.

White: That pendant is still hard to see. Looking at the reference, I noticed that it covers a great area of her shirt, so I used some of that space to give it an outline.

I also gave the skirt's upper edge an outline to separate it better. There's a few other things, but that's the gist of it. I hope that helps.

[captainkakarot64]

Iocus: What E-man said. Basically, it's internet talk for "long story short" (at least when you're saying it about your own text, if somebody tells you "TL;DR", they mean that your text is too lengthy and they're not going to bother with it)

oh okay



I tried my own take on the head. After looking at Tikal references again, I decided to put the right dread one pixel to the right and made the left dread one pixel lower.

I have changed shadows according to the lightsource.

With the pendant I mixed my version with your version.

I don’t understand why the upper edge of the skirt needs a better outline, can you explain?

[Iocus]

I don’t understand why the upper edge of the skirt needs a better outline, can you explain?

Yeah, sure. the skirt is an object independent from the body, and it's overlapping the body. To show that her belly and her skirt are not on the same flat plane, I marked the boundary better. I tried using black, but it was a little overkill, so I used the second best thing (the grey shade). At this scale, it might not even make much of a difference hah hah, so I do wonder how effective it is.

I would advise against that stuff you're doing on the tiara, it makes it look kind of blurry.
Here are some possible alternatives you could consider.

I also think you could put a pixel or two of the yellow's darkest shade on the right side of the necklace, to help it stand out a little more.

[captainkakarot64]

The tiara and the necklace are improved and I have made Tikal a pixel taller, because I didn't know Tikal was taller than Amy.

[Iocus]

I think you're good to go!
Nothing especially sticks out to me at this point. If you plan to apply the changes to your other sprites, remember to keep the changes uniform (such as the height modification you just did.)

[Garamonde]

I know that her arm on our right is probably supposed to be pointing directly to the side, but her hand looks... really weird to me. That index finger looks as if it's broken because it's pointing straight out like that. Maybe you can kinda make it at a slight angle? Or maybe even more shading near the base so that it doesn't look bent out of shape.

I know this doesn't make sense but I'm not good at explaining, so... if you need another example I can try to give one a bit later today.

[captainkakarot64]

Here are the updated idle and walking sprites
Is this good enough or does this need more improvements?