An excercise in spriting

[GaryCXJk]

Lately I've been trying to go back into spriting again, mainly because I have many ideas in my head, most being ideas for novels, but there are quite a few I want to use for either webcomics or games.

So, I've began working on defining a sort of sprite style, although, to be fair, it's not so much creating a style as it is adapting a style that's based on how I generally make original content. That and my digital portfolio looks like shit, so I need to spruce it up a bit.

Actually, my digital portfolio is the main reason I started spriting, as I needed something to show what I exactly am. I started by spriting myself, both to make something that represents myself as well as a starting excercise, a warming up.



It doesn't look like much, but it's something. It was a good way for me to get back to an old hobby. From there I sort of figured out how I wanted to make most of my sprites, and from those excercises I could go back to my original content and fix it to fit the style.

So, what I'm going to do is just post the sprites I've made and finished, while occasionally posting a WIP. I might not update the front page all the time, mostly due to text limitations and such, but I'll try as much as possible, and if there are really a lot of sprites, I'll create a new webpage.

Ariel, Kiss The Girl dress (The Little Mermaid)

This is the first sprite I've made. There are still things I'm not completely satisfied about, like the bottom part of the dress, the feet and her face, but overall it was a good start.

Kimberly Ann Possible (Kim Possible)

The second sprite I've made. The biggest challenge here was keeping her original shape while maintaining the style I picked. I might eventually go back and fix Ariel a bit, so that the shading looks a bit more similar.

[E-Man]

Very nice! I'm always glad to see you post!

Anyway, while the sprites are good, maybe you could give the colors some more contrast? When I say contrast, I mean to not only make the colors slightly darker, but also apply some hue shifting with changing saturation values (i.e. lighter ones get less saturations, while darker ones get more saturation).

[Shade]

Very nice! I'm always glad to see you post!

Anyway, while the sprites are good, maybe you could give the colors some more contrast? When I say contrast, I mean to not only make the colors slightly darker, but also apply some hue shifting with changing saturation values (i.e. lighter ones get less saturations, while darker ones get more saturation).

Especially on Ariel's skirt, looks rather flat at the moment.

[StarSock64]

changing saturation values (i.e. lighter ones get less saturations, while darker ones get more saturation).

I just wanted to note that this order of saturation isn't an actual "rule" (I generally follow that shadows are less saturated, other people seem to do the opposite). My understanding is that...it's complicated, and either can work. At least in painting. Idk if I've ever noticed sprites that use more saturation in the shadows but I haven't exactly looked for them

Anyway yeah changing saturation values is a good idea

I find that these are generally lacking the clarity I think they could have. Contrast really is a big factor. If I put my head a comfortable distance away and look at the 1px, a lot of stuff is kind of blending together. Also, the harsh angles on Ariel's hair are a little weird. You could probably just shave off a pixel and have it be smoother.

[E-Man]

changing saturation values (i.e. lighter ones get less saturations, while darker ones get more saturation).

I just wanted to note that this order of saturation isn't an actual "rule" (I generally follow that shadows are less saturated, other people seem to do the opposite). My understanding is that...it's complicated, and either can work. At least in painting. Idk if I've ever noticed sprites that use more saturation in the shadows but I haven't exactly looked for them

Hm, alright then, Starsock. To be fair, I gave both my highlights and shadows less saturation ever since I was told to dabble with the saturation settings more; however, after reading this post from Vipershark he did on another sprite topic, I personally thought his way made sense since the shades I ended up getting usually looked dirty.

http://www.vg-resource.com/thread-24977-...#pid549776

I think I'll give Vipershark's suggestion a try to be honest, but there's nothing wrong with doing it your way, Starsock.

[GaryCXJk]

Thanks guys, appreciate the CC.

For the colors I mostly use the colors for the official artworks I use as a reference, except with Ariel I had to make my own colors as most screens either didn't have the right colors or the colors were ass. Biggest struggle was Ariel's not-actually-white clothing piece. Also, with Kim's shirt I needed to invent some shades to actually allow for shades.

About Ariel's hair, holy fuck, why didn't I notice that? I edited it from the Little Mermaid 2 version I made of her, on which it didn't look as blockish. I need to go back on that one to check that out though.

No wait, I put it on Imgur to show people so they could help me decide which head shape to use.

[GaryCXJk]

Candace Flynn (Phineas and Ferb)


This one was... really hard to pull off, and I still don't think I've succeeded in the slightest. First of all, the eyes were a bitch, as they usually have a black outline, and while a black outline is fine, it doesn't really mesh with the rest of the sprites, which is why I solved it with this. Also, the legs were really freaking difficult, especially the feet, as they don't really work at this scale. Finally the arms. Yeah.

EDIT: I've edited the sprite a bit, moved the legs a bit to the back, and added an extra shade of grey. Or white. Whatevs. Below the original.



Also...

Candace Flynn, Comet Kermillian outfit (Phineas and Ferb)


I really wanted to do this one, and this actually influenced the edits I made to her previous sprite. Mind you, I still don't think it's perfect, but it's passable for now.

[Vipershark]

You have way too little contrast between your shades, man.
On the face and hair in particular (also because they're mostly the same between both versions of the sprite) I honestly can't see your highlights or shades on the 1px scale versions at all and instead your colors just look like blobs of orange and skin with some outlines.

I didn't check all of your colors, but if I remember correctly the hue on the hair only goes up/down three degrees and the hue on the skin didn't get changed between shades at all. All of your colors need hue shifting and more contrast, and not just the skin and hair.
As they are they just all blend together.

[GaryCXJk]

Well, after trying to work on the S.I.M.P. stomp dance thing, I also noticed that the hair color is not only lacking contrast, but saturation as well. It's like a Real Is Brown filter is pushed on top of it.

It's very likely that both Candace and Kim Possible will benifit from the color improvements once I've applied new colors.

Also, I'm really stuck with Ariel's dress at the moment. I really dislike the blue on there, so I guess I should desaturate it a bit to make it look better I guess? I'll just go on the Internet to look for a shading table, I suck at colors.

[GaryCXJk]

Okay, so, an attempt at fixing the colors.

Kimberly Ann Possible (Kim Possible)

Old

As you can see, I've changed the skintone a little, and added a tiny bit more contrast to the black. Not perfect, but it's at least slightly better.

Ariel, Kiss The Girl dress (The Little Mermaid)

Old

Made the colors of the dress match the actual dress more, improved the colors of the hair.

Ariel (The Little Mermaid 2)


Finally got around to finishing this dress. It's far from perfect, but the basis is there. Now I have to admit, I haven't seen the movie itself yet, so yeah. It was the hardest to make so far, basically because I had to get the colors right. Right now it uses the same color purple for the entire dress.

[E-Man]

The one thing that has been bothering me about this sprite is the white pixel you see below her lip. It looks like she has a tooth sticking out of her mouth or something. Maybe you could do something about that?

[Kelvin]

@E-Man, I just figured that was specular on her lip.

@Gary, I'm curious, is that Captain N project yours? And do you have a link to it? It looks interesting.

[Vipershark]

On the middle Ariel in particular, I can see that you improved some of the colors (particularly the skirt and dark blue corset..? thing) but you still need more.
The white sleeves of the shirt need to be hue shifted (they're all at hue 130) as well as the hair (which is all at hue 0) and the brightest highlight in the hair has so little contrast that I can't see it unless the sprite is blown up.

I didn't really look through the other two but on Kim Possible I can't see her hair highlight too much and the shirt's colors are so dark that they all blend together into a single blob of black and need to be hue shifted as well.
In short, give her more contrast.

Also something about Ariel's face seems pretty odd to me...
the left edge is just a straight vertical line and it makes it look like her face just sort of ends.

[GaryCXJk]

About that thing under her lip, that was supposed to be her having her mouth open, as a way to accentuate her thicker upper lip.

Also, gah, that face has been bothering me since forever! I might just go with the rounder face again, see if that works better.

Finally, Project Captain N has been in hiatus for a very long time, mainly because there were too many things that had to be done and too little people willing to help out.

[Gors]

the problem in this style is not the number of shades, which I find adequate. But there's too many stray pixels and this hurts readability.



Looking at the left side of this sprite, you see that the has those dark pixels at every corner. That's called sel-out, and it's ok to use that, but leaving stray pixels is not.

check this sprite you made yourself:



here, her legs don't look as grating because selout still looks like an outline from afar. That's how correct seliout should be: seamless, but still there. That improves your drawing area and doesn't leave out stray pixels. In other words, you don't 'place pixels' in pixelart. You place pixel clusters, for a single pixel cannot naturally represent a thing.