Yay! Newcomer! [WIP]

[Wuuhuu]

Yeah. I am a newcomer here. Pretty new to pixel art but not too new. (If you can say that at all)
Anyway, I have hard improving at pixel art and thought that this place could probably help me out big time so anyways. Here goes.

So I did this sprite today and tried my best. Its still WIP though.

the frame around is just for fun, I will make it transparent when it is finished.

[Joseph]

making it transparent now will give us a better idea of what it looks like on a mid tone background.  white backgrounds are horrible for viewing.
te sprite is simple, there's no doubt about that, but maybe too simple.  if you're going to go into enough detail to put lighting all over this leg, you might want to do the same to everything else.
you have very little contrast to even tell that the front of his face is lit up.
the muzzle flash looks more like it spurting out yellow goop.  try adding reds and oranges to it.


also, go through some steps when drawing.
my first step is always a work station:


create a color palette (even if it's temporary, you can always change it)
and give yourself some room to work with.  your sprite in enclosed in a very confined area, which, in most cases, people believe that they need to stay within that area.
staying inside a small area will keep your ideas limited and, to me, puts pressure on what I'm trying to draw.

now, looking at that work station above, notice how similar a lot of those colors are.
you have very little contrast, so it's going to be very hard to tell the difference from one shade to the next, or if his arms overlap eachother, it's just going to look like they're melded together into an x of arms.

change your colors to grayscale with a function, don't go and change everything to a gray.  changing your colors to a grayscale will really tell you if your contrast is working like it should.


a lot of these grays are close to the same, so what you do, is shade by the brightness of your color, then when the brightness is good, go ahead and fill it in with some color.
this isn't always needed though.  when you get better and you can really understand the brightness on colors themselves, instead of grayscale, you'll have no problem shading the way you should.

here's my edit.  check out how many colors I used compared to yours.  when you can use the same color somewhere else, do.  sometimes you'll be stuck with using a palette for an entire game, so practicing with limited colors will do wonders.


welcome to pixelation and good luck.

[Sherman Gill]

If you're using a good program (GraphicsGale, Pro-motion), you really don't need a palette in your image.
Personally, I work on a background darker and less saturated then Josephs, but it really is important you don't use white.
->
I treated it as a stationary image, my edit doesn't work as well if you plan to use it in a game .
The blob shape of the head does you no favors, it just makes him seem less human.
Mine has rather polychromatic shading, which you might not want, but it uses 3 less colors then yours and looks like it has more .
This is the important part: As Joseph said, you need more contrast and to pay attention to the lightsource. Color is relative (which is why you work on a grey ) so to make a light seem bright, you not only need to use light colors, you need to make the shadows surrounding it strong.

Not sure how well I explained everything there, but, best of luck  .

[Wuuhuu]

Wow, thanks alot guys. To be honest, I dont have any good program, I only have MS Paint 
Is there a grey scale function in MS Paint? Or else I might have to get one of these good programs, but I could use some help with  them though.
Thanks alot for the help. I'll post my edit later.

[Sherman Gill]

I recommend GraphicsGale. The free version's only limitation is that it can't save GIFs, and it's interface is easy enough to adapt to from mspaint.

[Wuuhuu]

Graphics gale.. hmm.. I think I've used it once, I tried it out but was not really putting in any effort in my art there.
What file does it save it into? BMP? or some other crazy file that I have to save it into paint and then use Giffy 

[Joseph]

I only used graphics gale once, but I'm pretty sure you can set a transparent color and use it as your background color.
You won't want to save it as a bmp, even if you can.  save it as a png or a gif.  they both support transparency.

[Wuuhuu]

There. Edited it and hopes it's better.

Xelados, I only had the border there for some time waste for me, not for nice-ity. I dont really understand what you mean about the style thing. Sorry. 

I also got Grapthics Gale now. Really great stuff.

Oh, by the way, I'm going away tomorrow. So I wont be here for like a few days, almost a week, I'll be back in Monday-tuesday sometime.

[Joseph]

much better.  his backpack still looks like an issue.  it's sagging or something on the edge and it's awful high for just sticking out.  it's attached to his neck.
for the style, you're dithering on the backpack and not everywhere else.  you need to keep a consistant style throughout the entire piece.

[Atnas]

I only used graphics gale once, but I'm pretty sure you can set a transparent color and use it as your background color.
You won't want to save it as a bmp, even if you can.  save it as a png or a gif.  they both support transparency.

About the transparent thing - a lot of people try to make the background transparent on the layer, which doesn't work. You have to use the current frame settings.