Well, I'm going to try to animate this sprite hopefully tonight- but I've basically redone it. Still looks similar to the first one since I'm using the same colors (though less of them) and its slightly smaller- considering wether or not to keep the black lines- I did want a heavy use of black particularly in the shading, but maybe its not necesarry in the lines

Another thing about this is in the file I have for it, the character is in many pieces now, and I'll be sliding them around per frame, as opposed to redrawing- so hopefully that will both speed things up and keep it more stable looking

here's the drawing I used as the base:


here's the sprite so far- not animated yet- I'll add the animated version here as soon as I get it done


I also tried fixing the older one and it was okay but still seemed too wobbly yea

Hmm this is very good feedback. Kennethfejer, I agree with you that a smaller size would be easier to animate and faster to make. I guess I really wanted something close to Guilty Gear size- something fairly detailed if possible. But I guess approaching it like how I was is producing rather bad results. However, before I ditch this sprite and start over, I might try to see if I could just have elements just copied and pasted from one frame into another, hopefully to reduce the wobbly parts that you guys have mentioned.

Eyecraft- is it possible to use AA (anti aliasing?) if being in 256 colors is a factor that must be considered?

Another possibility I'm toying with is the possiblity of no shading and having flat colors - as the hit effects and backgrounds will probably have stark shadows and be of bold shapes and colors- somewhat like a comic book - another being using only black or some single dark color across all the colors of the sprite for the shaded areas
I'll try those out if fixing the large sprite doesnt work

Agent Green: Yea I guess its strange. That's just how I draw her though- its on purpose. I understand that a lot of people hate it. Oh well- it was my decision.

By the way, has anyone heard from pkmays lately?

Hey again, thanks for the replies so far T^Tbb  This place is neat, the feedback's really good. Sorry if my replies might seem slow at times, I have a tendency to lurk a bit too much haha ;;

Seriously though, these things would be perfect for like a game or something...would you mind if I tried my hand at making them move? Are you going to be doing anything with them?
Either way, as I said, I think the far leg is too thin. Also, it lacks a calf.
The first picture, with the sled and cube-creatures, is really cool. I especially like the...well, "things." How you made angular creatures look so soft. I can almost imagine them being rubbery. But the one thing that bugs me is that the red critters' legs are running all at the same time rather than the left & right leg pairs being offset by even just a little bit.
The Jackal is cool. The only thing I'm seeing is that the cape's hexagonal pattern is kinda messy...and I think the hook'd look cooler if it were pointed slightly toward the viewer.
I haven't got any crits for the little people on the bottom except that
a) their necks are like, attached to the very very back of their head
and
b) the yellow chick with the big white thing seems kinda stiff.

That's it from me!

Oh, and I know you said this stuff was old, but I couldn't go without saying something.

Ah even if old, some of these things I didn't notice till now, glad you pointed it out (like the necks being placed in the wrong area on those small sprites, for example.

Oh yea those Space Pirate sprites I guess were just practice in seeing how they might look in pixel form. I might use them for a game idea. Feel free to try out animating them if you would like to. I'm curious to see how that would look :O But yea eventually I'm thinking about using Jackal and Scout for a game idea one day~

hmm yea the hexagonal pattern on Jackal definitely would benefit from some cleanup

I read the last few, gosh, probably months of your blog after I found the link in pkmays's thread.  I was totally tickled by all the fan art(Ayame ftw), I have to agree with pkmays, it's really inspiring to see so much crazy character and costume design in one place!  I don't really have many crits, outside of a desire to see more pixel art that perhaps differs stylistically - your palettes are solid, you seem fairly comfortable with outlines (or the lack thereof), and your designs are really fun and read well.  It'd be fun to see a few pieces that are slightly more realistic or detailed/busy - not to prove anything but to see another skilled artist's take on the art form we all love   Some more animation would be fun to see to.

Ah good to see another Ayame fan :9 But yea I think you have a really good point there- I should try out more detailed styles just to broaden my spectrum in this. Actually, I guess I have a tendency to stick to a side view as well.. kinda curious to try out a top down or isometric view one day just to see how it feels.. or maybe environment stuff. By the way, what programs do you guys use? Long time ago I was using Graphics Gale, but I think I liked the hotkeys in Photoshop more, so sticking with that for now- any suggestions on that, though?

The hook and head vent-thing break with the non-outlined style of the piece. I suspect these may have been made on a white or transparant background, which I'd recommend against. If this character were in a game environment, he'd be walking through all sorts of colors of various brightness, and I'd bet very few of them would be pure white. When working, I like to constantly change the background color to make sure the sprite is readable in a variety of settings. Something close to a mid gray (128, 128, 128 in RGB) also works as a median color.

Ah, this makes sense- that never really occured to me- tho now for the Skullgirls sprites I've been using 0,0,255 for the background... I should test the sprites in a variety of background colors. Definitely looks more consistent with the hook not having an outline :]

Overall in your work i see a resemblance to the style of this artist: www.redbeardead.com

Oh, this site looks really cool- I think this guy's stuff is way totally better than mine though, but thank you for the comparison. Definitely gonna bookmark this place. I like the guy's character designs~

Wow, very nice work. Reminds me a lot of Doukutsu Montogari~ Cave Story, i mean really a lot of that game, Nice to meet you ='D and welcome to forums =3
Cant wait to see some more stuff from you =D

Ah thanks, yea I love Cave Story a lot and I think I ended up really influenced by that sprite style. I guess I like the blocky and simple color appeal of the characters in that game. It caught my eye the instant I saw stuff of it. I dunno why exactly, but yea I kinda tried to pick up some stuff of that, particularly for the space pirate ones.

Hello. You are very skilled. From your stage, I'd suggest investigating manual anti-alias, using a full color spectrum (from pure black to pure white) in a piece, palette trickery and management, dithering and such. These are the skills of the pixel artist, I'm sure you'll see what I'm talking about if you investigate the history of the medium a bit. Your stuff is great even without any aa and with small palettes, but do push yourself a bit outside your comfort zone and this medium will inspire you in some unexpected ways.

Welcome to the boards.

Its okay to use pure black and pure white? For some reason I thought that led to some complications.. not sure what it was exactly, though.... I'm not sure what palette trickery or dithering is exactly, but I can use antialias as long as the edge of the image itself is still aliased, right? :O

Criminy, that's some cool stuff. I'm guessing you're a Kingdom Hearts fan  All in all it's some good lookin' stuff. I only have one piece of advice: Your sprites all use muted colors, which looks cool, but can sometimes make it difficult to distinguish characters in a fast-moving action game as they will tend to blend into the background. It's easier to get away with with enemies than with the main character.

I haven't played much of Kingdom Hearts yet acutally :O Only a little bit of the first one- but thats a good point about the colors- I'll try more vibrant ones next time~

Welcome to the board.

Good thing you registered, because I've been wanting to point this out since I first checked your blog.


Your Scout is off balance. Mostly due to the left leg being somewhat skinny. The small feet add to it, so I've moved it to the left a bit while giving it a bit more mass. Should be consistent with the perspective of the right foot.

I would reccommend trying different variations of Anti Aliasing and generally polishing your sprites. That said, you've got a great style going. Your knowledge in illustration will make taking up pixels a lot easier. 

There are different levels of anti aliasing? :O I'm not too familar with it I guess

I realize that. As I said in my post, it's an example of what can be done with pixel-art methodology. It's not making the original any better, just a different take, in this case hopefully educational.

Though I was going for a relatively flat look, I really enjoy this rendering a lot as well. I espeically like looking at how the dome of the helmet was done. I'll definitely look over this to get some ideas of other ways to  do pixel artwork. Opacus does have a point though, in terms of animating it, it would be trickier for sure. Definitely looks great tho, thanks a ton! I like the gun details and the little bit of shine on the knee too. Thats nice~

Hahah these are cute- I like the shape of Alex and Yun's legs in particular. Kind of reminds me of what a cell phone or pocket SF3 game might look like or something XD