I couldn't help but make an animation:

I hope it can be helpful for your project.

I didn't animate the hat on purpose.

That looks pretty awesome It'll make a great reference to look at when I make an idle animation, I really like how the hair moves.

Myeah, this larger witch is much more work, but indeed all those extra yummy pixels to work with.



Important things:
She looked like she was leaning back, so I changed that. (Does she have a name, btw?)
I saw the opportunity to make her hand bigger to give her more character!
Extra space inside the crystal ball means you can put little cues as to which spell is currently selected (here is what I imagine teleport would look like) without adding much extra work or confusion.

I only just thought of this now, but that also means you can probably add a staff quite easily.

Unimportant stuff:
This is how I had imagined her clothing looked when she was smaller.


Keep up the good work!


EDIT:
Almost forgot to mention - those faces are frikken awesome! So much emotion, I love it.

Yeah, it'll definitely be a bit more work, but I think the upsides make it worth the effort. It's a good chance for me to improve too.

Anyway, you fixed a bunch of issues I was having! I couldn't find a good way to get the part on her shoulders to look right, that's why I tried the bandanna as an alternative, though the green felt a bit out of place and I had been trying to find another solution. I went back over the sprites based on your changes and ended up with this:


The first is the original for comparison, the second and third are the new ones, but the second has a small change to the legs/feet that I was trying out. I also tried out a new version of the orb with your idea of having the symbol inside of it, it seems like it could work pretty well along with color changes for the orb.

Glad to hear that you liked the emotions by the way! Speaking of which, as soon as I finished them and looked them over the name Cynthia popped into my head so I've just been going with that for now.

some ideas you might like to do

I like the energy falling off the orb, it kinda makes me think of the gravity spell.

Your snow witch is awesome! Really nice way to get it across while sticking to your style.

So I tried to make orbs for gravity, time and teleport... then I stopped. It's possible, but didn't really make anything more readable, so probably not worth the effort.
I also had the idea of using a wand/staff in one of her hands to show which auto attack she would be using, so give that a try if you feel like it.

Thanks, glad you like it. I actually tried to do the same thing you did and make some orbs for the other spells, I had something for the teleport spell but it was too distracting. A wand sounds like it could be a good idea though! I originally planned to use a staff with the orb at the end but I hadn't thought about using both, I'll have to try it out.

I did happen to get some more work done programming-wise, I got the teleport spell working:


When you cast it normally it launches a ball which will either teleport you to it's location or lock onto an enemy/object and switch places with you, and when you cast it on yourself by charging it up you flash step forward a bit. My next step is to try and add some anticipation for the teleporting, plus some way to lead the player from their old location to the new one, like a line of energy or something. I also added a cool trail effect for the orb, I'm still tweaking it a bit but it seems good so far.

BUT!
Given all that, you should probably only pixel things you really need at this point, so maybe start on enemies/the background/a familiar/random pretties for now. Just so that you don't lose that inspiration. And yeah carry on coding in between so that your game can be an interesting level of playable each time you add something. Possibly make some animations like jumping, walking and running.


In the mean time I made a cat for no reason (more like a panther). Yay!

I was actually about to start working on some basic animations for walking and jumping, I figured if I get something rough done early then I'll be seeing it all the time while testing and it'll help me notice mistakes and improve it. Though right now I'm just having a little trouble starting off the walk cycle, her limbs are all a bit small so it's a bit strange to work with.

I like the cat by the way! I had been thinking a bit about using a a black cat or raven for something but I wasn't sure what. Having familiars sounds like it could be cool though, it'd be fun to summon animals to help you out. Plus, having a raven resting on your orb when you're not moving would be pretty cool.

Thanks for the tips Glad you like it!

The lighting was definitely a bit off, I started off with a different light source and changed it halfway through when I decided to flip the sprite horizontally instead of making unique sprites for both directions. I think there may be some spots that are still off when it's flipped, but the change to the hair helps.

As for the rim it does look interesting with a solid color but something feels a little off about it still. I updated the sprite with some changes based on what you mentioned and included a version with the old rim and one with the one you suggested with a highlight at the very top, it doesn't feel like it matches the rest of the sprite though so I'll probably try some other stuff and see what works.


I had thought about a buckle on the hat too, but I wasn't sure if it would look too busy to have the belt buckle and hat buckle. I did try adding a small highlight to hat's band though, which I think looks nice.

Also, I've been thinking about something and was wondering if I could get some opinions on it, I was thinking that her two equipped spells could determine her colors. So her basic attack, which can be a fire-ball, ice-ball, or wind-ball would determine her secondary color (headband, hair, etc) while her special attack would determine the primary color of her clothes. This way the player can tell at a glance what they have equipped, similar to Mega Man.

I was wondering if it seems like it might be too complicated in action though? I'm in the process of programming it so I haven't been able to test it out yet. I have a quick example showing what some of the color combinations might look like though:


The main issue that comes to mind, besides it potentially being confusing to the player, is coming up with clothing colors that match the 3 element colors. Though as long as the secondary colors still represent the element I could potentially tweak them slightly to match each of the primary color options.

Hey all! I started working on a small platformer project and was wondering if I could get some tips on how to improve the sprite of my main character:


I'm still a bit unsure about the arm/hands, they feel off somehow. The orb is also a bit simple right now, I just drew it as a placeholder to use in the game but I'm trying to make one that looks a bit like a crystal ball but I'm having a little trouble keeping it from looking too noisy at such a small size.

The main thing I was hoping for advice about is more ways I can use suggested lines like on the top of the hat's rim. If anyone has any comments or suggestions I'd appreciate it!

Also, I'm currently using the 64 color palette Arne was working on a while back, I may make my own later though.

I'm a little late to this but thanks for all the help you've given so far Helm!

Regarding changes and stuff for the forums I was recently thinking about posting the palette I'm using for a game project to ask for some advice and it got me thinking about a thread for that type of thing. I thought it might be interesting if we had a dedicated color thread or something, the first post could contain a running list of commonly used palettes like console palettes and low color palettes by people like Arne and Dawnbringer.

Besides just working as a list the topic could be used to discuss general stuff relating to palettes and color, people could also post art or palettes and ask for advice when it's for something small that doesn't seem thread-worthy.

Do you guys think this is something that might get some use?