- The light source isn't really clear. All the major spheres (including the eye) indicate different light sources. The teeth are darker on all sides, like some form of pillowshading.

I was actually trying to have the light source coming from the front, left and right of the ship. Is that a bad thing? I can make it just come from the front. The teeth were rushed in 2 minutes so I should redo them (I'm also not happy with the teeth's colour).

- The design itself could be improved a bit, I think. In the original sketch, there was a bigger sphere behind the body of the ship, like a spider's abdomen. It made the ship more interesting.

It's actually going to be a snake-like boss, and the big sphere thing behind it was supposed to be part of it's neck where there will be multiple spheres to make up the rest of the neck. I was going to add that in later.

- Is the eye supposed to be able to look ahead of the ship? Because now the whole ship looks very flat indeed, and the eyeball is on a flat surface between a ring of spheres, being unable to look anywhere but directly above the ship. Was that intentional? If you want the eye to be able to see where the ship is going, then you need to slope the center mass of the ship, like a hill. And if you just intend the eyeball to rest on a flat surface like a meatball on a pizza, then you have to make sure that it's in a top down perspective, like the rest of the ship.

The eye was also pretty quickly done and it's supposed to look ahead as if it's coming out of the top and not laying flat. What did you mean by slop the center mass of the ship? I might redo the eye so it looks like it's popping out a little more.

Thanks for the reply

Regulus Awesome:

Yeah I didn't really know what I was doing and I couldn't figure out why it didn't look right. Thanks for telling me what was wrong with it I'm still progressing but thanks for the example It will help!

astraldata:

Oh wow! That's totally what I was going for actually I just couldn't achieve it but you made my sketch come to life! Thanks for the inspiration

I was going to give up on this sprite but I might try and fix it, thanks for the help guys!

Ah I see, thanks for the links and the explanation

Going to work on a new design using hue shifting. Thanks for the support

Hello all,

I've been wanting to do pixel art for some time but have been too lazy/haven't had the time. I'm currently working on a shmup with my friend. I've only sort of just started and this is what I've made so far (100% and then 200% zoom):


This is my progress from left to right.

My inspiration is this: http://opengameart.org/content/retro-spaceships

I don't know how he (Jerom) does it, but he only uses like 4 colours and each of his ships look really detailed :O

I'm quite a beginner and I have much to learn. I want my lines smoother, my colours to look nicer and my shading to look better. What C&C or advice can you offer me?

Thanks

Haven't thought about the resolution just yet. I've been doing a bit of shading practice and I'm starting to get the hang of it. I will come back to anti-aliasing later on.

I was just looking at Vierbit's portfolio: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=15295.0

And I quite like how he/she has done their smoothing on each of the lines (especially on the grayscale sokoban style game). I was just wondering how they managed to achieve this?

Thank you for the tips.