Need some help here.

[Sorav]

Can anyone give me some advice about this? No matter how much I try, the sprite still looks akward. Also, when viewed from afar, there is no sense of clarity, as you can see. It kind of looks blurry... What am I doing wrong? Maybe there's a need for antialiasing or something?



I suppose I should just enlarge it for now:

[Joxon]

Well, one problem is that your colours need more contrast, especially the skin shades. Also, the legs don't really have a sense of depth, making the legs look completely joined together. Perhaps an outline separating the legs will suffice.

[Kelvin]

Also, you should enlarge your sprites by increments of 100% to keep the pixels consistent and make your sprite more readable at higher sizes. Showing a zoomed version doesn't help when the pixels are distorted.

[Gors]

[Sorav]

Wow, beautiful man, what can I say. Lookin good. Looks a lot more realistic. I'll keep those in mind in the future. Thanks

[Sorav]

I'm back. This time, I tried my hand at a knight for a friend. I tried applying the advice about the colored grays for the white shirt. I used a more sort of blue-ish gray. Let me know what you guys think.

[Kelvin]

This guy looks much more natural than before. Nice improvement on the shapes. The issue this time, though, is banding; the shading is following the outlines shape, giving it a beveled look in some places and a gradient in others. It's understandable for the cylindrical helmet, but even that can be fixed my baking the shades more than a pixel thick. A good idea is to start by picking a light source; for instance, my sprites are all lit from above and slightly in front. This guy looks like he's lit from directly in front, which only makes sense if he's holding a light source, like in the Kirby games when you hold flashing orbs for certain attacks.

[Sorav]

This guy looks much more natural than before. Nice improvement on the shapes. The issue this time, though, is banding; the shading is following the outlines shape, giving it a beveled look in some places and a gradient in others. It's understandable for the cylindrical helmet, but even that can be fixed my baking the shades more than a pixel thick. A good idea is to start by picking a light source; for instance, my sprites are all lit from above and slightly in front. This guy looks like he's lit from directly in front, which only makes sense if he's holding a light source, like in the Kirby games when you hold flashing orbs for certain attacks.

I see. Maybe I should remove the white highlight directly on the front of the helmet? That should make it look less like the light is directly in front of him, right?

[Kelvin]

The whole thing makes it look like the light is in front.

[Sorav]

The whole thing makes it look like the light is in front.

Man, I just don't know. I did mean for the light source to be from the right though. Am I missing something? Maybe you could give me an example using other sprites that do it right?