Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Mirre on January 13, 2006, 03:11:04 pm

Title: KOS '06 sprite (updated jan 15 x2)
Post by: Mirre on January 13, 2006, 03:11:04 pm
Hi I'm new on this board. Some people may recognize me from Pixelation, Pixel Academy, Pixelerate, Pixel Joint, etc.

This is the first fighter sprite I've ever done, so don't be too hard on me, haha. She will look more fighter-ish when I finish the animation. She's going to swing the key, move her legs, wiggle her tail, make gestures and stuff.

But for now, the base. (It's my alter ego btw.)
16 colours, C&C is very welcome.

[new version]
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Mirre/images/kosmirre2.gif)

old version
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Mirre/images/kosmirre.gif)
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite
Post by: Helm on January 13, 2006, 04:02:39 pm
Hello and welcome.

Critique:

first of all, for fighter sprites that will have to be overanimated, lose the dithering. Especially from-black dithering. Dithering doesn't work well in animation, since it suggests texture when still, but just noise when moving.

Also this is probably on the whole a bit too dark. Punch up the lightness on the clothes, and possibly even the effect out with a bit less saturation.

As far as anatomy and structure goes, if you browse sprites from fighter games you'll notice they usually apply the 'heroic physique' model where the body is 8+1/2 or even 9 heads tall (and in some cases even much, much more, but here we're talking about a wee girl so no need to reference Sagat here). Right now you're using semi-cartoony 5 heads tall body, which really doesn't suit the style of most fighter games we use as the context for the king of fighters thing. But that might still be the physique you were going for and that's fine. The issue is, from her proportions it looks as if she'd be sakura tall. if you place your character next to the rest of the fighter sprites in the thread, or next to pro sprites of the capcom/snk variety, you'll find she's close to the height of most adult males in these games. This basically means, you worked on a bigger scale than most people did. It's not really the biggest of deals for KoS: 2k6, but generally it's a good skillbuilder to keep to the sizes that are suggested.

If you really want to fix this, you'll have to do something really difficult: scale a pixel sprite down, tweak, repaint parts and adjust until you're bored out of your mind and it'll still NEVER look as good as the scaled up version. Pixel art doesn't kindly take to scaling but sometimes it's all you can do besides starting from scratch.

Even if you don't scale down, you have another anatomy issue: the legs are shorter than they probably should be, about half a head on thigh and half a head on shins. Again, you might be sticking to your own sense of how the character should be (I'm saying this because generally there seems to be a strong grasp of anatomy and pose here so it wouldn't surprise me if the 'error' was a calculated one), but in the case it happened by accident, a good rule of thumb is to check if from the toes to the crotch, and from the crotch to the top of the head the sprite is divided in two equal parts. Most fighter sprites further exaggerate, giving more leg to characters (which makes sense since they'll be kicking and punching and all that so reach is important) but I personally prefer a bit more realism than that.

Good work on using skin tones on shoes, but I'd probably call foul on the way you've highlighted the key with yellows. I can't see a yellow highlight on blue steel for the life of me. It's also a nice idea and pretty well executed to go from yellow mainskin to purple stuff since it unifies the palette with the clothes, and anyway, the complementary colour of yellow is purple. I'd personally take the saturation down on the whole darker end of the colourramp, and push the lightness up a bit, but it's probably just me.

Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite
Post by: ptoing on January 13, 2006, 05:54:02 pm
Welcome to Pix.

I agree with helm on most of the things, like the dither and the brightness or the yellow highlights.
Proportion I think it's ok, as she is 6 heads tall. I seen enough small girls with proportions like this, but he is right that it's not very fighteresque.

(http://ptoing.net/kosmirre_ed.gif)(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Mirre/images/kosmirre.gif)

I generally brightened stuff up and unified the blue and grey/black palette into one which made one colour redundant so i could add another buffercolour mainly used on the skirt. Helm would prolly up the contrast even a bit more but i wanted to maintain the dark clothing style of your original as close as possible.
Also brightened the skin and made it more saturated, it looks a bit dead in your version imo.
Plus some highlights to the hair and made the highlights on the stockings brighter.
Also the skirt does not follow the curve arround to the back in yours.

All in all it's a very nice sprite, but you should practise colourtheories a bit perhaps, can naver hurt.


Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite
Post by: Helm on January 13, 2006, 06:50:32 pm
COUNTER EDIT SMASH


(http://www.locustleaves.com/ked2.gif)(http://ptoing.net/kosmirre_ed.gif)(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Mirre/images/kosmirre.gif)

there's minor alterations everywhere. The palette is very optimised after ptoing, but then why not use the extra shades for the extra shinification? I also repositioned the legs a bit, added a little leg (hey, I think the crits stands), evened the arm volume, took out selout that I didn't like, but mostly this was shinification, yeah.
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite
Post by: Mirre on January 14, 2006, 01:49:27 pm
Thanks for the awesome C&C Helm, Ptoing. You brought up alot of good points.

The main problem causing the scale problem is the face. I did a serious try at making it smaller at the start, but I couldn't get the eyes and glasses to look right then. Especially the glasses were bugging me. And then the rest just sort of ...followed (probably since the head was too big). I didn't watch any fighter sprites for reference after the base sketch of body and head (should have done that).
Anathomy was intended. It's supposed to portray me after all... and well I'm not your average super model, even though I train thai- and kickboxing and can kick head-high.

But since it doesn't fit the over-all style of the "game" I think I'll try make a whole new one to go with the KoF/KoS-style. Though, this is still a sweet sprite, and I'm happy with it and I'll do the changes suggested. I'll keep the same palette that I got help from with you guys for the new sprite, and keep the c&c in my head while working on it. And, I'll try and make a more fighter-ish pose for her then too.

Many thanks!
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite
Post by: Helm on January 14, 2006, 03:54:01 pm
yeah fighter sprite heads are a pain since you have to imply a lot of otherwise main aspects of the face like lips or eyes. Even kenneth struggled a lot in his own sprite for KOS to get the amount of detail to work and still keep the character looking right. Here the face was excellent, but as you said, on a bigger scale than most fighter sprites.

Looking forward to the KOS sprite, then.
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite (updated jan 15)
Post by: Mirre on January 15, 2006, 12:13:13 am
Finished the new sprite. Updated in the first post. C&C away! :)

I hope the anathomy, scale and pose is alright now.
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite (updated jan 15)
Post by: Faceless on January 15, 2006, 01:04:14 am
New sprite is looking much more like a fighter sprite, but there's a few things I think could be improved.

Firstly, her skirt is very dark, and looks a bit pillow shaded. I'd take a look at Helm's edit and try to incorporate some of his method of highlighting it. I think the central triangular fold (crotch area) really throws off the shape of her skirt, and could be much improved - makes them look like a very weird pair of shorts. Try looking at some sprites of Sakura from any of the SF games.
http://sprites.fireball20xl.com/capcom/fight/street.htm - you can find 2 of her sheets here.

Next I think you could get away with adding a 2nd - slightly darker - pixel to the left (our perspective) of 'her' right spectacle. The added pixel really helps to seperate that side of her glasses from being a highlight on her face.

I also think the cat ears could do with some differentiation from her hair.
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite (updated jan 15)
Post by: Helm on January 15, 2006, 08:39:07 am
(http://www.locustleaves.com/kedit3.png)

minor alterations here and there again. tweaked the face, although the expression still isn't the best, I just have trouble with faces at this res, really. Pulled the extended arm out a few pixels so it's anatomically correct, played with a few minor light issues, and added volume to the key. This is as far as I'm concerned, very good, and quite done. Others might be able to spot stuff that I can't see.
Title: Re: KOS '06 sprite (updated jan 15)
Post by: Mirre on January 15, 2006, 08:32:03 pm
Faceless: the skirt is dark simply because it's supposed to be. I like black. Sure it's more like dark blue here, but I didn't want to add too many colours. But after Helm's edit I've added more highlights so it won't look pillow shaded. Another problem is that it's not the same type of skirt as Sakura's, so using her's for reference wouldn't do much good. Cat ears are fixed. With slightly less highlighting than in Helm's edit.

Helm: awesome edit. It really helped alot. I didn't do all the changes suggested, but many of them. Especially the key turned out alot better and her face too, thanks to the extra pixel on her glasses. I added slightly less highlights on places than you did, but that's the way I'd rather have it ^^; I also changed some minor details here and there.

before                 now
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Mirre/images/kosmirre2old.gif)      (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Mirre/images/kosmirre2.gif)

I'm quite pleased so I'll get started on the portrait now!