Here's my (not improved at all) sprite work. One thread now!

[Booth102]

I'm probably gonna get criticized for this, but KEEP NEGATIVE FEEDBACK TO A MINIMUM. I've done ONE sprite sheet and it's been rejected, and I'm very sensitive. So just say good things if you can. My first post was vague.

Anyway, here's Mr. I from Super Mario 64.

[Omega]

It's ok but you should probably stray from using the circle tool willy nilly for this, sure it's an eyeball but you picked a size where it's not truly round.

If you zoom in on the body portion you can see 4 'bumps' on each corner that need to be smoothed out to get a true roundess to him.

The Same applies to the eye too, it suffers from the same 4 bumps.

[Silversea]

Anything with constructive criticism is not "negative feedback". Negative feedback would be saying "haha that's bad, you should quit". Even though we may sound stern and blunt, that's just the nature of criticism. We are trying to help, and to help with sprite work it is important to work out the problems and areas of improvement.

The best way to improve is to have others apply this constructive criticism, or you will be spriting for a while without knowing what is good, or not.
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So with that aside, here are the steps for you to consider (these apply to all of us, so this isn't a specific to you):

1. Is the outline as smooth as possible? Mr. I is a circle, so you want the outline to be as circular as possible. If you look at each corner, there is a sort of 'stub' which could be smoothed out. Of course, there are limitations to where you can place the pixels, but this is just part of the challenge of spriting. The blue portion of the eye should be symmetrical (as a circle viewed from this angle), so you should check that out too.

2. Colour choice. Since you are newer I won't go into colour stuff now, but there is one rule worth knowing. Colours need to be contrasting so that they can be seen. The grey shade is ok, but I would suggest making it a bit darker so it is easier to see. This is not an easy thing to learn, but if you can't see the difference between two colours on your sprite, generally that's a clue that you need to make the darker one darker, or the lighter one lighter.

3. Shading. By default, light sources are from the top left or right. That's the best angle to accentuate the artwork. In your sprite, the shading is limited to the right side, which makes it look like the light is shining straight from the left. Try shading it with the light source higher (if it is at the top left, which I recommend, the shadow will cover the bottom of the eye, and halfway up the right side).

There's some points to start with. Don't loose faith yet. All of us started out somewhere, it isn't like we were magically born with a good spriting ability.

[DioShiba]

Statements like the one you had made in the title of your thread and in the comment in your post is the one thing that irritates the fucking hell out of me with new members when they say their work is shit and they don't want to improve.

So the first part of what I have to say goes to any newcomer who is browsing along this thread.

Literally no one is here to showcase work, in fact if you're doing that just because you're some attention seeking person who wants popularity just for the fact that you made something that you think is cool (when chances are, it really isn't) then you are in the wrong place. Now personally, I highly doubt you are that kind of person because I barely know you so I would personally take a step back from your computer and reflect for just a moment why you want to make any kind of art. Not just pixel art.


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Ok you reflected for a moment?

Took a chance to breathe?

Good, now for the real point of my post specifically to OP.

If you want to post your work here you have to keep in mind that just because you made something doesn't mean it won't get criticism to help you improve. The fact is that everyone has given you positive feedback but when I look at how you're responding to said feedback in the other thread that you made you come off as someone who doesn't want to learn.

Now here's my advice to you. Learn the foundations of art and stop getting ahead of yourself, learn to draw by hand with a pencil and paper from observation and figure out how to play with colors. Because to be frank I do not think for a minute that you have the ability to handle pixel art (yet), let alone an animation just yet. There is no shame in doing just that and lurking on here in the mean time to see what kind of community we're like.

All art, be it digitally made on a computer or in a sketchbook go hand in hand. One can not exist without the other. I'm not just saying this because I'm an animator who occasionally goes around on here giving advice to my people in my spare time but as someone who has a degree in visual arts for my associates. And this is all in the while I am getting a BFA in what I want to do because animation regardless of how you do it is the most exhilarating field for me, and it's one I am passionate about so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about in terms of having a grasp of a few concepts into this.