Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Ergo__proxy on April 14, 2017, 09:38:11 am
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before starting some animation with this sprite i would appreciate some critique
(http://i.imgur.com/F8cLaOs.png)
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small edit:(http://i.imgur.com/ZN4nN3P.png)
I think your main thing is that you use a lot of small clusters of 2 pixels, especially in the face this doesn't look nice and looks like banding. What you should also do more is shading, he doesn't look very on his helmet now. This gives it a look like its all made of cloth, if it's made of metal it should have strong shades and highlights.
I also played around a bit with colour, you can copy those if you want, but if its not your style nevermind.
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Japanese armour was not bare metal*, but lacquered, which reduced its shininess. Because it tended to be made of small flat plates and scales woven together, which produce many irregularities and shadows, the individually-shiny pieces don't tend to actually look all that shiny when put together because the individual highlights are just too small. On top of that, a lot of the materials used on the outside aren't shiny to begin with. Here's a very shiny example (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Antique_Japanese_%28samurai%29_suji_bachi_kabuto_and_hon_kozane_dou_1.jpg), zoom out and it's basically matte. Here's another (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Samurai_hand_colored_c1890.jpg), with great speculars on the bare plate on his arms, but all the speculars on the laced parts aren't very noticeable and don't help convey the form.
In other words, while some form highlights would be good in the sprite to give it a better sense of form/3Dness, I don't think speculars are appropriate. Instead, I think it would work better to use lighter colours for the lit parts, and to have a less-frontal light source on the chest piece, so it doesn't look so pillow-shaded. The colours in CFK's edit are good, shininess aside.
The character's arms don't seem to be very well protected. Unless they're an archer, they'd probably have gauntlets something like the second photo I sent, rather than gloves/mittens - the fingers would likely be bare, for finer control of whatever weapon they used, the back of the hand protected by a plate attached to the arm protector. Wikimedia Commons to the rescue (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kote).
* European armour was also not actually shiny, it tended to be matte, even the smooth plate armour that we most associate with "knights in shining armour". Most shiny armour in museums was either purely decorative, or polished to that level to look pretty by uninformed collectors/curators who thought all armour looked like the decorative pieces and the matte look was just from ageing. Something to keep in mind if you want a degree of realism in your future designs.
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fast edit can work now?
(http://i.imgur.com/34Lb5Cc.png)
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second edit:
(http://i.imgur.com/3wnuuuE.png)
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last edit
(http://i.imgur.com/hudzem6.png)
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re-drawed(http://i.imgur.com/C3XTgaI.png)
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tried do some shadow to armour but im not really like it! looking for some tips guys(http://i.imgur.com/eid1KKD.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/Tqwt5la.png)
I think the new torso is a step back - it now looks like 2 forms on top of each other. The new skin looks nicer to me, but I think the hair looked better with the lighter purple.
Otherwise a few thing I changed (beside the torso):
-Lightened some outlines on the leg plates - I really like what you did with the shoulder armour.
-His left arm was suddenly lit from the other side compared to the rest
-I don't think you should do the light shading inside of the sword - it's rather cramped. The light outline I did is somewhat inconsistent with the rest of the sprite but I do think it looks better.
By the way I don't think you're using the darkest purple in the hair. Is that on purpose? I don't think you'd really need it anywhere.