A Beginner's Journey

[GMX2000]

I'm a super beginner. I've looked up tutorials before but I feel like none of them are at the insanely low level that I'm at, all of them seem to assume I understand things like proper shading. I'm better than I was years ago, I guess, but I haven't really practiced much because I've felt like I've had no idea how to improve.

Anyway, I've finally bitten the bullet and decided to just try. So, I give you my first, full, scratch sprite. (that I'm not totally ashamed of, haha)

   

I know it's pretty subpar, I was just hoping for basic comments/criticism, anything that'll help me improve this sprite or that'll help my next sprite be better. This (just spriting and taking criticism from people) is really the last thing I can think of to allow me to improve because as I was saying, tutorials seem to assume I can figure out certain things that for whatever reason, I can't figure out.

Thanks for your help.

[Omega]

First off welcome to the wonderful world of Spriting *throws confetti everywhere*

First off lets start with something simple and talk about the shading.
Right now your character has two different sources of light, one on the left and one in front of him.

When doing top down perspective sprites the light source should usually come from the top, so the hair piece (?) should have darker colors on its side.

Places the light cant reach, like the neck should also have a dark color around the area too.

hope this helps.

[GMX2000]

First off welcome to the wonderful world of Spriting *throws confetti everywhere*

First off lets start with something simple and talk about the shading.
Right now your character has two different sources of light, one on the left and one in front of him.

When doing top down perspective sprites the light source should usually come from the top, so the hair piece (?) should have darker colors on its side.

Places the light cant reach, like the neck should also have a dark color around the area too.

hope this helps.

Thanks for the post.

Lol, it's supposed to be a red hat, but I guess I forgot to give him hair on the sides of his head.

Anyway, I'll try to change the shading to be on both sides. Hopefully it doesn't come out pillowy, which is what my brain defaults to thanks to those years as a super young kid thinking pillow shading was the best thing ever =p

BTW, what are the bumping rules for this place? Am I allowed to post again after I've already posted if I have a new/updated sprite?

[Vipershark]

Hello!
First and foremost, you'll want to check out our Spriting Dictionary.

Aside from that, you have a few issues that need addressing.

First, instead of using a white (or in your case, transparent) background, it's best to work on a background color that's desaturated and stands out well from the colors in your sprite. It's good to pick a hue that appears nowhere else in your sprite, if possible. For one, it makes it a lot easier on you when working with your sprites, and it also helps others to clearly see what is or is not part of your sprites.

In addition, your sprite is using pure black (0,0,0) which you should avoid if possible (along with pure white, (255,255,255)). (Particularly because Paint and some other programs don't play well with transparency and turn it pure black, which totally screws up your sheet when people open it up.)

As far as the sprites themselves go the biggest issue you have is that your colors are flat.
You need more contrast between your shades to make them stand out better. How do you achieve that?

These are some of the colors that you're using.
Notice how their Hues (238, 84, and 156, respectively) are pretty constant for all of the shades.
Color is three-dimensional, and your colors are only really changing in one dimension, Luminosity/Brightness. You're adjusting how bright the colors are and you have some small changes in saturation, but leaving the hue completely unchanged. Because of this, your colors appear flat as they're quite literally one (or two, sort of) dimensional.

To fix this, you'll have to use Hue Shifting as well as change the saturation between your shades so that they become fully three-dimensional.
When hue shifting, you generally want to keep in mind that brighter shades hue shift to warmer colors (so your brighter greens will tend to be more yellow) while your darker shades hue shift to cooler colors (so your darker greens will tend to be more blue). For saturation, you generally want your base colors to be more saturated while your highlights and darker shades will be less saturated.
This doesn't cover every possible situation of course, but that will generally get you on the right track for picking a better palette.

I made a quick edit to change your background color and gave the pure black a slight bluish tint so it's no longer problematic.

See if you can fix your colors from here.
Good luck!

There are also a lot of anatomy issues, but unfortunately I'm not really the best person to tell you how to improve that.

BTW, what are the bumping rules for this place? Am I allowed to post again after I've already posted if I have a new/updated sprite?

If nobody else has posted and it's been at least a day, bumps are generally okay in your own thread. Otherwise just edit your most recent post.