I work with rgb sliders a lot, and while it's more tedious than the color picker on photoshp, it does have its advantages. Like, all of my pixel art is done with rgb sliders. And I find that it allows me to create a more precise color than using the color picker would. Mostly, because it takes a bit of time to create a color via rgb, so a lot more thought goes into it. The method I use for choosing colors with the rgb slider is to first create a gray that approximates the value that my color is going to have. From there I start adding and subtracting from each color in varying increments until I am happy with the color I've made. Having an indexed palette is also helpful, that way you can easily change a color and see its effect in real time.

I also don't typically ensure that my darkest colors are the most saturated. Often times I find it advantageous to tone down the saturation of the shadows on a sprite in order to make the lighted regions pop more. Although, looking at a lot of my recent pixel art, I notice that the trend seems to be that of the opposite. Either way, both methods have their place and my statement still stands.

The best way to learn about picking colors is to study artists that you like, and even some you don't, and try and figure out why what they're doing works. Of course, you can look at it obversely and question why what they're doing doesn't work. But no amount of studying will make up for practice. It is always the best case to get in there and start doing the things you want to learn about. I think a great way to truly start understanding color is to work with a bunch of similarily colored grays that just have slight hints of color. Play around with warm tones, cool tones, color harmonies, contrasting colors, and anything else you can think of. The subtle differences from the nearly monochromatic colors will really stand out, and you'll be well on your way to being able to apply color theory in more pragmatic work.



And here is my own quick study with what I just suggested. Obviously when all the colors are around the same saturation and brightness they're not going to convey much depth, but that's one way to learn important roles for each color. When hues are all around the same brightness and saturation they begin to create a natural depth, just by the way our eyes are able to take in certain colors better than others. I added a few darker pure grays to boost up the depth on the dinosaur heads. Something interesting is that only about half of the colors used on either dino head have an actual hue. The others are completely desaturated. What's interesting is that the neutral grays will pick up the hue from the colors surrounding it as well. So that the grays on the red dino appear warm, and those on the blue one appear cool. It's kind of hard to see it because I surrounded them in opposing colors, but the effect is there.

All good points, Takam. The final animation, and what you stated, are enough to alleviate my concerns atm. I'd say keep plugging away! I guess what I was seeing was exactly what was happening.

His legs animate a bit wonky, don't you think? Well, more like the transition from the first frame to the last. I imagine there's some way to improve that.

Other than that, I don't really see this as an attack, so much as a parry of sorts. His body language suggests that he's getting out of the way of danger rather than coming at it. One reason is probably due to the initial wind-up looking like a quick poke, and the actual attack looking like he's swiping whatever counter the enemy may have had out of the way. The other reason has to do with him backing and up, and generally being more upright than he should be. My guess is that this guy isn't really an adept fighter, but even so, I think my criticisms still stand. And, if he's meant to be a skilled fighter, even rudimentarily so, then you've got work to do.

That's pretty cool, Indigo. Are his hands going to be gloved? Right now there seems to be a lack of definition in the hands. Furthermore, all of the muscle tendons (specifically between the chest, and the neck area) look a little thick. Like individual ridges instead of fibers. I'm not very familiar with what zbrush can do, but I'm pretty sure that it allows for finer definition. It might be worth it to go over that area once more for an extra level of polish. Anatomy is decent as far as I can tell. I'm sure there are some things that could be touched upon, but I'm not really at a point to make educated decisions between incorrectness and style. Does zbrush allow for texturing? If so, do you plan on adding texture?



some vector art from me, done in about 4 hours.
It's for a title screen, which is why there are some areas that are more bare than others. I would have liked to pimp it out a bit more, but after a certain point you hit diminishing returns for time spent.

I think, to an extent, what fortunato and Beoran are saying is that you should trim down the forums if you hope to get a healthy number of visitors. It's going to be hard to get people to stick around when the first thing they see is like 20 different sub-forums with little to no activity. People are sheep, if there are no posts and the place looks empty, people will also not post and abandon the site before they've even given it the chance.

By trimming down the forums to the bare necessities, you will give focus to those who visit, which in part will encourage activity, which as a result will give the impression that the forums are active and further propagate your success as each newcomer further develops your forums.

Afterward, depending on the community you've attracted, you can start bringing back some/all of those sub-forums.