Your opinion on these sprites.

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  • What should be fixed? 9

    1. The shading needs to be more dynamic. (7) 78%
    2. The sprite itself is too tiny. (2) 22%
    3. The sprite needs to be re-drawn in a different pose. (1) 11%
    4. Looks good as it is! (2) 22%

    First of all, I just want to say, if you use deviantArt a lot, you may recognize these two! But anyway... I am working on a video game, and I need your guy's opinions on these sprites I have made in MMF2. To me, these sprites don't look good enough, but maybe that's because i'm missing something. Either it's good shading, a more detailed look on the sprites, or because they are just too dang tiny... well, anyway, here they are. I probably spent a good half-hour designing both of these.

    Please login to see this picture. Please login to see this picture.

    These are still W.I.P (as you could probably tell) as I need to work on the animations still. Sadly, I have tons more of sprites like these, but I thought most of them were okay.
    Anyway, please let me know what you think could be tweaked! ;)

    P.S. I'm sorry if this is in the wrong topic, I couldn't really find a place to post this...

  • I think overall they are missing a lack of definition. its hard to see where one color ends and the other begins. I can hardly tell that the one on the left has an defined eyeball unless I zoom in super close (the white forum background isn't helping). I also couldn't tell that these actually had any shading applied until I zoomed in again, and it appears you have just highlighted the edges.

    Otherwise I think the design is okay. Perhaps lean them forward a bit. As it stands right now they appear to be in a skidding pose, as if they had just landed from flight.

    Give me a bit and I'll try to show you what I mean.

  • Okay, I just did this quickly at work but the basic concept is there. By adding more shading to the body in terms of highlights/and shadows it makes the body pop out more and adds a separation between the body and the mane.

    Also, I cleaned up the horns a bit where they merged with the head. With all the noise that was in there, it looked like jpeg compression funk. No good in terms of good sprites.

    I hope you don't take me as being too harsh or critical, as you are definitely heading in the right direction. :D

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  • I forgot, you also may want to darken the rear legs just a bit to make them stand out more - I was being a bit hasty with it as I'm at work. XD

    I see you said you spent about half an hour on those, so its not bad at all. :D I spent about 14 hours on this guy... and its only one frame. @_@

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  • The thing you're missing is Edges! You need to show a clear detection of colour to background. You can't have a white character and a black background and end up with a sharp contrast. You should have an edge which lets it blend in with the background (maybe even a semi-transparent edge if you know what you're doing). This way you achieve the "half-pixel-coloured" effect which can be seen in blurred lines compared to plain blocky pixel lines.

    Blurred (blended in, better):
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    Blocky (Not blended, sharp contrast with any other layers):
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    Notice in particular the grey around the outside of lines. In the older MSPaint, drawing any size line would create a blocky line.

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    Darkwire Software Lead Programmer (C++ & C#)
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  • Okay, I just did this quickly at work but the basic concept is there. By adding more shading to the body in terms of highlights/and shadows it makes the body pop out more and adds a separation between the body and the mane.

    Also, I cleaned up the horns a bit where they merged with the head. With all the noise that was in there, it looked like jpeg compression funk. No good in terms of good sprites.

    I hope you don't take me as being too harsh or critical, as you are definitely heading in the right direction. :D

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    Don't worry, you weren't harsh or critical at all! Thanks for the help, by the way!
    Also, you spent 14 hours on that one sprite?! Dang...

  • They look a bit flat and one dimensional. If you shaded them more and had a bit of contrast they would look better. Also, I think maybe you are doing them too large so the pixel work doesn't look as clean. You could make them smaller (fewer pixels) and upscale them, though I guess if you don't want much of a pixelated/retro look that might not be what you want. Generally though, most sprites are pretty small. I know one of your options was "The sprites are too tiny" but I think that's actually the opposite. Smaller sprites, upscale them to be the larger size.

    Edit: Actually I take that back, size isn't the issue (unless you want more of a retro look). Here's a Pokemon sprite sheet and these look fine Please login to see this link. You just need to work on your shading and line work. If you study that, it might give you a better idea on how to do your sprites. I personally do prefer a more pixelated retro look though.

    Edited 3 times, last by Shawn (December 8, 2012 at 8:45 PM).

  • Shawn: I disagree tho, it's all about context, which is why I won't give any feedback. A sprite on its own just doesn't say enough. Sure, they can easily not work at all, it depends on what the rest of the game looks like. A flat stylized look can however actually work very well if done right.

  • This is probably not the best place to look for pixel critique. Since this isn't a pixelart forum, most users here are more skilled in terms of programming. You'll probably get better advice in places such as Please login to see this link.. I promise I'm not being paid to recommend this website (:

    Also, choose a game with a graphical style you like and want to imitate. That's the best way to learn, I think. At least, in my experience. Once you can imitate it well, you will automatically start exploring for your own style.

    Please login to see this link. - Metroidvania RPG (Win/OSX/linux & PS4/Vita/Wii U)

  • These articles are old, but they never get old, if you know what I mean :)
    It probably sounds a bit narcissistic posting my own articles, but apparently people have found them quite helpful:

    Making a Pretty Game:
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    Anyone Can Animate:
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  • These articles are old, but they never get old, if you know what I mean :)
    It probably sounds a bit narcissistic posting my own articles, but apparently people have found them quite helpful:

    Making a Pretty Game:
    Please login to see this link.

    Anyone Can Animate:
    Please login to see this link.

    Graphics Gale? I have Inkscape for vectors and Paint.net for textures, how does Graphics Gale differ? I mean because, I could just create a sprite sheet in Paint.net and import it into MMF2 or I could use Inkscape if I need something larger and more detailed.

    I'm the Original Dragonguy! It's true, I really am the Original Dragonguy bigger and better than ever!
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  • Dragonguy: I've never used Paint.net, so I can't really compare the two.

    Basically, when Gale is bad, it's very bad; but when it's good, it's excellent. It's not ideal for creating new pixel art from scratch, which is why I use PSPX for that. I hate Gale's colour selector, and the interface follows no paradigms known to man.

    It's more like one of those tools into which you import things you've created in other apps because you plan to use just one or two functions from it.

    Animating is one of those - The preview can be sped up and slowed down and zoomed as you wish, letting you preview the sprite at approximately the same screen size as it will appear in game, and with adjustments for the animation speed you intend to use. What's more, it updates in real time, so you can drag body parts around while watching the animation playing - helps you see when the adjustment you're making 'fits' with the animation as a whole. Other apps often have a delay between update on screen and update in the animation preview, so this benefit is often lost in those apps. That alone makes me love Gale.

    Scrolling the image - Amazing how few graphics programs have this feature. You can basically wrap the imagine around inside its boundaries. This means you can make any tile seamless. First, you draw the tile however you want. Then wrap it half way along, so the left/right/bottom/top edges are now centralised in the screen and you can now draw across the edges of the tile. So you can make those edges appear seamless.

    Those are literally the only two reasons I keep it on my hard drive. I've got other tools to do the rest, but for animating and tiles, I've never found anything to rival it.

    I just wish the interface was a little more conventional.

  • Animation - While lots of things can do this, none of them can let you edit it and see it real-time simultaneously with zoom, the MMF2 animation editor only lets you do one of these at a time- edit with zoom or proof-read without zoom. The picture editor in Stencyl is too dreadful to describe but I use Paint.net to overcome having to use it.

    Scrolling - Okay, that's quite a good feature, even though I have specifically adapted my techniques to overcome the lack of this feature (which I never knew existed) through the usage of a grid and mouse coordinate display, I can get a texture to roughly match it's edges, the 64*64 Sand texture I made for my unfinished Minecraft texture-pack took like 10 goes to get the waves on it to line up correctly, the feature you describe would mean perfection every time.

    I'm the Original Dragonguy! It's true, I really am the Original Dragonguy bigger and better than ever!
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