The Enchlore Machine

[Enchlore]

This machine produces sprites.

I've been working on some sprites for a game, but recently I decided to just start all over because I wasn't 100% happy with the results seeing as I was just blindly making things and proportion problems between sprites started showing up. So here's Paper Mario:


He's based on the Thousand-Year Door look, even with the same palette being used. My main concern is the outline: I used to have a thick outline in every sprite to emulate the Paper Mario look, but now I'm not sure if I should keep it. What do you think?

Here are the previous sprites I decided to scrap:

[E-Man]

The thick outline did not work for a sprite of that size, so it's a smart move to change it.

Beisdes that, though, the other problem I can see right off the bat is a lack of hue shifting. Just changing the brightness of colors isn't the way to go about it and makes the shades look dirty (for lack of a better word). You also need to alter the hue and saturation values when you tinker with shading colors.

[Enchlore]

After looking closely at the sprite with your advice in mind, I ended up agreeing that some of the shading looks bad, so I revamped the parts I thought were off (namely the boots, skin and the red color in general). Does it look better?



I'm still not sure about the outline since so far I've received an equal amount of feedback favoring each outline, and the more I look at the thick one the more it looks like it fits more.

[Gors]

I'll say that I don't like the shading on the face. Of course, naturally the light would cast shadows in different parts of a character when he moves, but in sprites, it's usual to shade the back, not the front. This is for readability purposes, and it seems to fit better with all types of environments too.

[Enchlore]

Made Luigi's idle pose. The shading changes depending on the direction he's facing - it always comes from the left side of the screen.

[DragonDePlatino]

Enchlore...make things easy on yourself and draw one version of the shading for all of your sprites. If you're going to draw different shading for every direction, you're effectively doubling the amount of shading you have to do for a very small effect most players would not notice.

With that being said, I like the top Luigi a lot more. The Paper Mario games had thick character outlines because they were very high resolution, but for smaller sprites like these you should probably stick to 1-thick outlines. Oh, unless you want to do what Yoshi's Island did, with the occasional thick line to simulate "crayon strokes":

[Virt]

Notice, though, that the thick lines in Yoshi's Island were only on the backgrounds, and not the characters.

[Enchlore]

Yeah, I'm going to stick to the thin outlines. The thick outlines are becoming a problem for smaller sprites like goombas.

As for the shading, it doesn't bother me to consistently make two types of shading for each sprite. I like this kind of detail, and shading is the least troublesome part of spriting to me, so I'll keep doing it.

[DragonDePlatino]

Notice, though, that the thick lines in Yoshi's Island were only on the backgrounds, and not the characters.

Well...that screenshot was a bad example, but a few of the enemies have the thick outlines I'm talking about, like the Pirahna Plants and Large Mildes.

But of course, I wouldn't recommend throwing out the rules of pixel art and going with thick outlines. The only reason Yoshi's Island was able to pull off the bad palettes, poor shading and jaggies was that it had a very good art direction. Individually, it's graphics were unpolished, but taken as a whole the game looked gorgeous.

[Enchlore]

The thick outlines on these enemies are not exactly like the ones I was using. Either way, I'm definitely giving up on that concept (unless I decide to shift to a higher resolution).

Why does Peach always look weird when I try to sprite her?

It's an improvement over the previous sprite, though.

Bowser is one I'm a bit more satisfied with:

He's looking more like a Paper Mario Bowser than the one I made earlier (which was standing upright instead of a lower posture like this one).

[Virt]

The Peach looks weird because the reference you're using is probably an incorrect assembly.

Spoiler

Use this is reference instead.

Also, have you considered using colored outlines, selout, and anti alias?

[Enchlore]

...but the outlines are colored...
As for anti-aliasing, I tend to screw up, and with the engine I'm using as a base it would look like a mess ingame.

I'll try to redo the Peach sprite again.

[Virt]

Oh, so they are. I guess I didn't notice them.
Why would anti aliasing look like a mess? Is there weird resizing or something?

[Enchlore]

Peach, take 3.


Nevermind the problems about anti-aliasing, it's actually my fault for being horrible at it, not the game engine. >_<

[DragonDePlatino]

Oh! You're pretty much spot-on this time! My only nitpick would be that Peach's eyes could be forward a pixel each, and the shading on her dress could be pushed back. Even if you're going to be adding shading to these flat Paper Mario sprites, you should probably keep it to a minimum to retain the simple look.