[WIP] My first pixel art ever.

[Toyoto]

Hi

I never did anything before at pixel art so what I'm posting here is my first work ever.
A friend and me are making a game in flash. He programs, I do the graphics. The game will look as an old Gameboy one. The problem is that I feel myself very limited with a 4 colour palette and such small sprite sizes, so sometimes I feel that what I have done could be better.
So I basically need some C+C and advices. So far I made the main character walking animation sprites and some tiles. I feel myself even more limited with tiles. These are 8x8 pixels but they can be any 8 multiple.

Thanks in advance.

[||||]

Wow only 4 colors would be an interesting challenge. Any more tiles or animations?

[Happy Troll]

I can barely see the shading on the suit, you might want to try darkening the colour.

[Toyoto]

well, the sprite has all the 4 colours I can use. It's pretty hard (for me at least) to make it more detailed with that size limitation. (16x16) But well you realized it's a suit. That's something

[Toyoto]

Tried some variations. I think the first version posted looks better.

[Jim16]

4 colours with transparency? Are you actually using a gamboy pallet or have you made this pallet.  Like this one for example:


If not, maybe you could up the contrast and just play around with the hues a bit.

[Toyoto]

Yeah one just like that and transparency. My friend in fact, sent me a screenshot of a demake of Bioshock in a gameboy style which was posted here as reference for the palette.



Besides the colour issue, am I going in the right direction?

[Jim16]

Yeah Sure. However, with such a small size and very little knowledge of your game, we're left to interpret what you've created. Everybody interprets things in a different way, I might see your character as a astronaut, somebody else might see it as a baby, but only you know its a mythical moon monster with a banjo. Get what I'm saying?  What is the sprite, what's the basic story line or/and what will the character be doing. Create a mock up so we can better understand it.

I'm not sure how the tiles will look, you might find it looks a bit busy. Try to create a mock up, it'll help you and us to see how the tiles are working together and help us see what you want to achieve. Other than that there's not much anybody can say. Other than contrast in colours that is.

Oh, on the sprite, the backpack and the arm sometimes look like there one, which is a bit odd.

[Toyoto]

Well, yeah, forgot to explain it a bit. 

The game consists in recovering the pieces of your destroyed spaceship through the planets of the solar system. It'll be a standard plattform game. It's name will be Gagarin so yeah it's an astronaut and the backpack is a jetpack.



Don't mind the background, just did it quickly for this kind of mockups

[||||]

I want to play this.. if he has a jet pack I'm sure it'll be lots of fun.. I like the original palette myself

[Jim16]

That backgrounds looking really good, you sure this is your first Pixel art  Also, moon over the moon?

So, as I thought, the basic tile you have there has a lot of noise. Thats not necessarily a problem, but I'm sure there are better ways of doing it. Go look for gameboy examples and have a look at their tiles. Don't rip though, it's frowned upon. If all fails just keep with what you have. It might also be an idea to look at "real" life astronaut suits, you might pick something up that will make your character look just that little bit better. Just don't try to cram in small details, it won't work at this size.

The character stands out perfectly, so I see no problems with it.

You seem to have a problem with AA, here's a simple tutorial by Derek Yu that puts it so simply. Simple enough for me to understand 
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=228

Getting back to the contrast issue. Maybe not an issue to you, but its really bugging me. So I made an example to perhaps sway your mind.
So this is the original:

Up the contrast:

lower the brigtness:


Your pallet just doesn't seem true to gameboy. I know the contrast is huge on the gameboy, mainly because of the crappy screens which made the colours seem dull and depleted. They probably could of done with a back light back then  What I'm trying to get at is that your pallet could be somebody's interpretation of what they saw. Which is totally wrong and not accurate! There is no correct pallet out there as far as I know? Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but its good to try and get as close. Hope that helps.

[Toyoto]

It's not the Moon, it's Mercury http://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/planets/mercury.jpg and that moon should be the sun, though should be bigger due the distance Mercury is. The background isn't pixel art. At least I didn't make it as pixel art should be done as I've read here. It's a handmade drawing then posterized and retouched by hand. I didn't do it pixel by pixel.
No idea about the exact palette of the Game Boy. In magazine screenshots the colours often varies depending the way the screenshot was taken. In many the colours look similar to that. Though in real life everything was much more green.

The game doesn't pretend to be realistic at all. Besides that I don't know how to put more detail in such a small size.
I read that tutorial before starting but could you be more specific about AA? I mean, due the limitations I'm working with, I don't know how to do it better.
The colour palette it's not a problem. I'm just working with I've been asked to. Pretty easy to switch colours. My real problem is not quality but quantity