I had another try on the shading and noise-control. Can you tell me if it is better or worse?

It's good that you're motivated enough to tackle all these projects. However, before you work on a fighting game in particular, your "big" pixel art skills are going to need some work. There are a couple of major problems hindering these piece, and thankfully, they're both pretty simple to fix.

The first problem is the pose. You were right to feel odd about the arms and the legs. His body parts aren't working in unison to do anything meaningful. What's the purpose of the sprite? Is it going to be a walking animation, or an idle animation? His pose makes him look like his knees are pressed together with his lower legs splayed outward, butt sticking out. I'm also not quite sure why one of his arms is raised. I would suggest redoing the piece with a solid pose in mind; maybe use a mirror to come up with something. If you do that, then suddenly things will begin to make more sense and he won't look "odd" anymore.

The second problem is your chaotic pixel placement. It looks like you tried to imitate jpeg artifacts by hand. On small pieces like this (even though it may be bigger than your regular work), it's still important not to overcomplicate things. Here is an edit I made to illustrate:



It's good to illustrate texture, but you need to be subtle because you don't have very much room to do so in pixel art. If you go overboard it just looks like a murky swamp of random pixels. For now I think you'd be better off just picking a light source and shading from the opposite direction.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your games!

I am glad I decided to focus on the isometric game first then! It is clear my humanoid sprites are terrible.

Pose: Actually it has no purpose. It is just a practice sprite.

Arms and Legs: I always have problems with arms and legs the moment the sprites get bigger. I use a mirror as well and that does not help. Are there any tutorials about getting arms and legs right? And please note I am an absolute beginner of big sprites so tone down the art terms. I really am more of a programmer than an artist.

Chaotic Pixel: JPEG? That's a little harsh I do know why though. It looks too noisy right? I can fix that.

Light Source and Shading: But what happens if I don't want to add shading but highlights instead?

Do you have any articles/tutorials to better help my symptoms?
And finally, was there anything about this sprite that was ok/good?

I like B the best.  It'll stand out of the background better and looks like a pretty good size for an overworld map (which I assume your trying to make a sprite for) I would look into other JRPGS to get more styles while developing your own other than basing the current style on Final Fantasy 4.

Why didn't I look at Final Fantasy 4?
I was looking at non-Final Fantasy games for my styles lol

Hey guys,

I've finally fixed my isometric game engine and I fancy doing a proof-of-concept project to really show it off!

One problem. I am so used to top-down and styles I call the zelda-dimensions that isometric is just too out of the world for me!

So I thought to turn to you guys again. You have never steered me wrong. Could someone teach me how to sprite isometric? I'm not worried about the buildings. It's the people and walking animations I need to learn.

Can you show these in context? I have no idea what they're for, just curious
I like your original way more than any edit so far. Maybe that will change when I understand what it's all about :S

Certainly!



Look at the borders

EDIT: Ok I think I need to take a break. This is getting more stressful than it should. How do you guys cope with the corners when dithering/fading/etc? I can do the straight sides easily but the corners are giving me a lot of grief.