Hey Indigo!
Lovely piece and colour choises.

I find it a bit hard to critique a piece when its still WIPish, because i don't know how much of the "faults" there are being worked on and not, like lack of contrast on some parts, and some better AA on others, but what i can say tho, is;

-His right leg looks completely broken to me...even with the exagerated/stylized proportions.

Keep up the good work 

Really like the direction that ptoing has taken. Games like this, that seem to be all the rage in indie gaming at the moment, would have worked wonders on the actual NES hardware as they only need to use tiny sprites. There is also a strangely appealing quality to games that have tiny characters.

Jason.

I think that in the NES era, people wanted big sprites with expression...umm more "detail" and better graphics if you will.
The appealing quality, i believe is something of an "acquired taste" for us, same with dunno, 2x sized pixel art...i love it, but most people find it hideous...same with retro gaming graphics in general.

*I* dont think it would have been "graphically" aclaimed in it's time, tho, personally im loving the aproach.

only purples needed a de-saturation, actually (at least imho). I also added an intermediary shade for every tint.
i tried to fix the chop by moving the head one pixel down, which didn't looked fully satisfying ... i guess i'll go for a separate helmet sprite.

also experimented some hue shift in the helmet on the right one. i cannot stand plain yellow rasters anymore

-First, Its not really a matter of only desaturation of colours, its a matter of a more careful, "intelligent" choise of colours. Unless you are limiting yourself to the EGA pallette, there´s no reason for you to keep those colour choises  (its a bit tricky tho, since they are a integral part of the character, but you have to balance design vs source; in that sense, as long as you can balance it, theres no need for instance, for keen to have a pure white/gray face, as you will see ).

I took the liberty of making a really rushed edit, it also has a lower colour count, and can be easily optimized for even less, try to choose your colours and tint, in such a way that they can be used in other parts of the sprite, hence, you´ll have a more eficient pallette (some people do this after the finished sprite, but then, you loose a bit of the  char, and IMO you need to reworks some aspects).

The ramp of your colours also seems pretty straightforward, and you should move away from that (and round it up with what i said before about mixing your colours), for instance, the yellow in the helmet just gets darker or desaturated, but it doesnt  really swings towards another colour; thats a mistake, (IMO) as you should tint the yellow with orange for instance, and it would make the darker colour used as shadow more richer, and then, you can use that same colour as a shade for the face...get the point?

Second, we have the way in wich you are shading the sprite, there doesnt seem to be a real relation between shape, light and the effect that it has on the rest of the body, and some of your shading just seem random.

Take for example, Keen´s  left shoulder...the light source seems to be in front of him (his left side taking in account how the rest of the body is shaded) and his left arm is  covering the light from getting there, and forming some sort of "corner" with the head, wich make it, i dont want to say "dark" place in the body, but certainly, should be darker than the rest, like the torso wich seems fully lighted up.

Try as an exercise to just shade with the same 2 or 3 colours, dont add any more, try to really wip the shape of the character up, how one thing that is on top of another in relation of the light casts a shadow, wrinkles, etc!

-Third problem i have, is the stance like i already told you, a second sprite is not really neccessary, you just need to use some efficient pose, and then you can kill to birds with one stone, as you can give the character a real personality.



Also, hope you get some ideas out of the edit

Also, all the colours could help you get rid (tho personally i love black outlines) of the black outline, and replace it with a colored one, wich can help you see how the shape should react to light.

Quote from: Krut on August 21, 2008, 09:51:19 am

Even tho, i really like the color scheme you chose (it pays a real tribute to the original keen), since you already reworked a bit of the character into "chibi" form, you might want to delight us with a more modern pallette? (this is more of a suggestion th)

Could you give me hints too on how you'd provide that "more modern" palette ?

Arne's ? or go beyond the 16-colours restriction ?

i mean, i'd like to keep Keen's purple shirt and blue jeans, and i fear tinting his skin. Beside a couple of extra colours for more AA (i'm currently doing as the initial gfxers did and use greys for the AAs) or opting for less saturated tones, i don't see how it could be improved, honnestly.

Basically im not talking about 16 colour restriction, im talking about the actual pallette restriction; commander Keen was built with the Ega pallette in mind i think, and those where Ok back then, but they are some fugly colours now (nostalgy aside of course).
To tell you the truth, i dont know how those colours arent burning your retina (nostalgy aside), pick some new colours, while keeping the same 16-colour limit (heh, could be even less).