Cute Girl Action RPG Sprite

[Sunjammer]

EDIT: New stuff at bottom

Any crits regarding colors, design, or whatever else are welcome. Pretty new at sprites and want to improve as fast as possible! I think some of my clusters are ok.  The hairband in particular is something I'm stumped on! Anyone know why it looks a lot worse at 100% zoom?

[Pix3M]

I shrunk the body height so the style of the face better fits with the body. Eyes are larger to better convey the intended cute look, hair style changed so the frontal locks of hair curve inward, and some pieces of hair perks up to better capture the tsundere look. Arms are opened up to make the figure more easily read, and skirt is flared to exaggerate the width of her hips. Boots are tweaked to better fit with the given top-down perspective given. Hands are reduced to simple circles to match the round, simplified style of the face. Colors are changed to be much lighter to be cuter as well, since cuteness can only work out with so many dark colors.

Dunno.... that was my attempt at this.

[Alp]

I bumped at few darker shades around under the band, to make the hair "pop" more, and to better show that the band is on the character's head, rather than a part of it.
(I've never used imgur links before, so if this is broken I will edit this post.)

[Ellian]

*jumps in*
Hey; Love that design, this character looks great!

I wouldn't change the shapes much, as it's part of the character... So I think you might want to look a bit into contrast? If you look at your sprite in greyscale, you get this:

The hairband disappear completely, and the hair/coat/skirt/etc melts together.
Make the hair and scarf brighter so they pop out a bit? Also/or add a bit of outline to them to define their shape. The long skirt is better, in my opinion, because it's easier to read as a skirt.
Also you might want to make the coat more simple; those drape effect are cool, but they gives a shape that makes it hard to read. Especially on the right sleeve, it looks like she has several layers of fabric.

(sorry if I don't provide an edit, I'm at work! Maybe later today if I find time...)


(ahahah I feel so uncomfortable at giving people advises I wouldn't follow myself because I'm dumb .__.)

[PixelPiledriver]

The character has an overall good feel.
But the coat is definitely confusing.
Is it a puffy coat?
A sweater?
A cloak?
Try to describe it more specifically.

[Ellian]

Edit~
Obviously the left arm would require more work, but you get the general idea~

[Sunjammer]

Thanks so much for all the feedback! I realized I miscommunicated what the character is supposed to be, it's intended to be a kind of noble traveler girl and not so much a schoolgirl!

Everyone helped a lot with the hairband and the contrast was definitely a problem, thanks Ellian. I'll work on that and the colors more.

PileDriver, your advice about describing the garment better helped a lot, I realized that covering the top part with the bow thing made it unclear if it was a coat (open at the top) or a cloak, but it's meant to be a cloak... I did some changes to try to represent it better, maybe there's still a way to include a bow thing. I wish I knew how to describe forms with so few colors and big clusters like in your edits, it would make animation much easier.



Attempt at simplification ~_~

[Pix3M]

Hairband and the accessory worn at the collar threw me off and thought "schoolgirl?", but lavender colored-cloak and a tiara might tell us 'noble' a little more clearly, and tried drawing hands put together to get that cute and feminine look.

[Sunjammer]

With help from the advice you guys gave I practiced a little and came up with this, which I think is better than before, so thanks! Still have a long way to go obviously

[astraldata]

The hair and the jacket colors are waaay too similar in both hue and contrast. I suggest either brightening the hair or the cloak colors to give it more contrast because, as it stands, the hair looks like a hood to the cloak (especially on the front facing frame.)

[Ryumaru]

Use the new sprite with the old color combination, which had better separation/ readability. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

[Pix3M]

I have a feeling there is a chance that the colors might look better in context.... who knows?

[Ambivorous]

That looks really good. Quite a change. You should post a scene some time so we can see the overall style you're aiming for as well.
In the meantime, I tried fixing a few things I noticed (without changing the colour scheme).



So I started by removing a lot of the highlighting from the shoe, which I thought would never get that much sun underneath a dress.
Then I made the dress more round as it looked to me as though it was almost an apron with how high it was going by the sides.
Her hair is also very dark in yours, which I realise has to do with the whole differentiating between the hairband and hair, so instead I increased the saturation in both hair and hairband and lit the hair up properly. I think it works. Could mess with the hair a bit more and put a few darker pixels in to really give it depth, but 'tis readable.
Removed so much banding (some which I had made, some that existed).
I noticed her right hand looks further forward as well as her left leg, but the shading did not show such, so I added more light to her cloak on her right arm and more light to the left side of her dress (our right).
I had to add an extra colour or two in all this, so I just cleaned up a few similar colours from your palette (like unnecessarily dark colours that I just made black and the dark blue/purple which I made one colour).
Also tried to make the hair and cloak more separate.

There are a few other things like maybe making the shoes smaller/further back. Her hair looks like it's in a pony tail, but in the diagonal picture her hair is all down (in the back view her hair looks really short as well - it should go over the hood).

Hopefully you find this useful and good luck going forward.

[Sunjammer]

learned a bunch about doing heads. the forward bangs style is hard to get looking as good as many other hair styles but i want it so bad!!

cloak is questionable i think, i've tried so many variations and looked at tons of sprite cloaks but am tired of looking at it for now. going for a 3value + shadow thing to keep sprites uncomplicated to animate without going super modern flat.

my colors here are so bad, trying to get them communicating a very dark surreal/gothic game but not getting anywhere close!

some variations. don't know if i need the lighter value on the cloak


the values get muddy in grayscale but the hues separate them in color so idk??

there's mega ultra omega world shattering banding in the center of the body that i don't know how to get around

(unrelated) i find larger sprites much much easier for some reason



ambivorous, i implemented your advice into a previous version of the sprite and learned from it even though it may not be apparent in these, thanks!

rip me apart, i can take it >:3

[Ambivorous]

Appreciated advice is advice I'll happily give more of.

I like these; I like the style; the second girl from the right looks almost like Lightning and that's awesome.
Larger sprites have more pixels to work with, so in some ways it is easier.

And yeah this is so far from gothic it's not even funny. My edit is even further away. I'll let someone else deal with that.



You'll notice my sprite is pretty readable in greyscale. That was accidental (well I was trying to make it readable with colour, but the fact it's readable in greyscale is purely a result of good practice and not something I was intentionally aiming for).

I kept the perspective inline with her head. Perhaps you'd rather like to change the perspective of the head than the rest of the body.
I was only concerned with readability and consistent lighting with what I imagined her clothes to look like, so I lost a lot of your feel (which I really like, so try to learn stuff from this and apply it to your style).
I added outlines around the rest of your piece the way your hair/head has outlines. Again you could rather remove all outlines, or go for some sort of mix, but make sure it's consistent.

The biggest thing I think you're getting wrong is the amount of light you let reach the lower parts of your sprites and how often you'll have dark shadows in places that should be getting their fair share of light. They almost look as though they have a fluorescent tube flying horizontally in front of them. It's kind of a tricky concept, so I don't know how to get it across easily. I am doing value studies just to learn how it works better. Maybe you can try some of those?
Hopefully someone else can shed some light on the topic.