Okay well it's not my absolute first, but maybe the first time I really focused my attention.  You can C+C although I'm not posting it here for that reason, more just to see what you guys think of it.  I'm also posting it here because of that neat feature where you can click on it and it will enlarge in size, since my browser won't do it itself.

Basically I'm making a game you can check out here : http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=48414.msg1163113#msg1163113

Came from an idea I had when I doodled a sketch of this little brain with eyeballs and legs and not much else.

So I'm finally getting to the point of building the game art at least to a point, as there's still a lot of things to do in code.  But I figured I would start with a 2-color sprite and then add in colors later.  Trying to decide whether to color now and then animate (quicker than the following), or do all my animations in 2-color and then color them in afterward, which would take more time but might be more flexible.  Anyways I would like to know what you think.  Thank you.



Edit 8/03/2015:

I didn't want to violate the rules by posting another similar post and have it mistaken for a double-post.  I decided to start coloring it in now and while it's not immediately clear what it is I'm really unsure of how to proceed.  He's got eyeballs and eye stalks attached to a brain which are attached to legs, and he wears yellow shoes.  I don't have the faintest idea of how to actually make it look good.  There are 6 colors in the sprite but that's mostly due to the outline (line art).  Someone suggested the size is too small to get a decent sprite out of it.  Any way, any suggestions on how to improve it?  Thanks for your time.



Edit 2:
I changed the colors a bit and elongated the eyes.  It doesn't necessarily look like a brain but I figured brains are really just gray any way why not make it that way.  Color change was prompted by a comment that made me think twice about what I was spriting.



X2:


Edit 3 8/04/2015:

Tried a new design here:



X2:


Edit 4 8/08/2015:

Updated colors and eyeballs



X2:


Edit 5 8/08/2015:

I tried to redo him based on your suggestions Joe, I'm not sure I got it 100% but at least it's going in the right direction.



Edit 6 8/08/2015:

Created a new palette but doesn't work so well with this.  If anyone could do a paint-over of this, with it's palette, I would appreciate it.



Edit 7 8/10/2015:

Did another iteration, still not as good, but decided to put a bright outline around the dark outline so it would read on a black/dark background.



--

I wanted to give you an idea of what the bright verses non-bright outlines look like on a dark background


Edit 8:
An even newer palette and I redid him again, and this is pretty good except the legs seem a little long and takes away abit from the cuteness factor.

st0ven - I think I remember you from #gamedev on irc.

And yes Helm's work does pretty much nail it.

It is just a model sheet though, where I can take Helm's suggestions (and yours) with me when I make a full model sheet, as well as the animations and basically actual game assets.

It's very challenging working within these constraints.  I have a feeling the original guys at sierra online, however, didn't really obsess over it as much.  They just drew stuff and used it.

I mean look at these -





Although the backgrounds are simply amazing for what they had to work with.

After much studying of the original and the paintover, I have come up with something that will have to do.  Basically I tried to implement the suggestions from Helm's post, but was trying so hard not to deliberately copy it.  What comes out is something that I'm not exactly happy with, but I'm not exactly unhappy.



1) I removed the "barrel chest" as I felt Helm was correct in that it was a bit much, especially with a limited resolution, maybe I could subtly imply the barrel chest if I had a higher resolution, but since these are so wide, anything that's big will tend to be a lot bigger and that's definitely what we don't want.

2) I'm not really sure what to do about the contrast (you can see that in my earlier reply).  What I did do was to dial down the flesh tone a bit, provide a separate darker flesh tone, but what I did do was add the contrast around the neck area so you can see it better.

3) The dynamic posing in this image isn't strictly necessary since it's mostly just a kind of starter model sheet.  I might decide to create a proper model sheet with the character doing various things, which means walking, running bending over to pick something up, that sort of thing, however I did try to vary it a little rather than let it be as amateurish as it looked originally.  Unfortunately because I tried not to copy directly, the pose doesn't look all that great... It's an attempt, but one of many I will take with it.

4) I tried dithering, I think I went a little too crazy on it, but again I'm going to be working this stuff out, I will make a full model sheet and see if you guys can help me out.  I agree though that the dithering does help it a bit.  It will look especially good in motion when I get to the actual animation.

5) I actually extended the height of the head by one pixel and adding shading under the chin, also the "nose" on the front view.  I figured instead of confusing the two (nose and mouth) I would have one be the nose.  When the open mouth is needed I will do that when animating speaking.

I did various other tweaks to it as you can see, however even though it's not very good it's really only my second or third real attempt at pixel-art especially difficult with these wide pixels.

Critique, compliment, complain, tear up, give high praise, or whatever comes to mind -- This stuff is pretty fun.

Keith.

Hello, I'm new here, and new to pixel art in general.  I don't want to bore you with a lot of stuff, so I'll try to make this as short as possible.  I'm into old-school adventure games, and I really enjoy some of the art produced for AGI-based games from Sierra Online.  Games like the Space Quest and King's Quest series.  So I decided I would make an adventure game engine in flash and kind of go through the same challenges the original developers did.  Well now I've got a friend doing the programming so I can focus on art, and story and what not.  So I'm creating my character.  The res of the game will be 160x200 (with double wide pixels) and only 16 colors.  Admittedly I grab one of the 16 color palettes from the thread on here (that someone else pointed me to) and then tweaked it for my own.  So a fixed 16 color palette, and double wide pixels.  Doesn't seem like a lot to work with.  It's been pretty fun so far, and this is what I've come up with :



I looked at the old space quest and king's quest sprites and they're pretty poor (look what they had to work with, they only could use the ega 16 color palette, or as in the case of the original king's quest, the "cga plus" 16 color palette -- at least I get to tweak my colors).  So I tried to come up with something that gives some detail while still holding within the restrictions.  He's supposed to be sort of fit, with a somewhat "barrel" chest... i guess you'd say.  I tried to keep him about 7-8 heads high. and add some detail by giving him that badge.  So I would love for any C+C -- even negative I can see if there's anything more I can do with this guy.

Hopefully I've stayed within the rules here with this post.  If for some reason I have not, would you mind letting me know what I did wrong before removing my post.  Thank you.

Keith aka Uhfgood.