GR#021 - Dragonite - Sprite Process

[Chrispy]

Still in early stages.


Gettin' there...


'nother update


Yup


Hot Dawg


Buh

[xbogx]

you need to shift those hues, it looks too washed out right now



it's not that good but i'm in a hurry. i think you get the idea

[Chrispy]

I always have issues with the colors XP


Made it less bright

[Larwick]

Made it less bright

What you have now is very dull looking. Since it's pokemon I would expect some bright colours and some saturation. At the moment Dragonite looks kinda glum, and the colouring helps convey that. Nothing wrong with it really, but make sure that's the way you wanna go with it if you are.

I think you're gunna need another shadow colour, a buffer shade to help add some more definition to those shadow areas. For instance, under the arm everything is merged together in one shadow colour blob. The grey on the belly is the same - very undefined. Also it's far too dark to be dithering the lines against the cream colour - it adds texture rather than fading.

You have some bad outline issues at the moment, where dark pixels are dotted around with no real form (the 'horn' for instance, and the top of the tail).

You've got a solid sketch atm, now you've gotta refine it.

[7321551]

Question - are the broken areas on the outer edges intended as AA, or an outline?

If AA: you need a background with the appropriate value:


If outline: you need to commit. Broken outlines are ugly.


That needs work because I didn't do it manually, I just used the outline command in Promotion. & fiddled with the colors a little.

edit: I just realized you did have it on an appropriate background in the original post. Then you made it transparent for no reason!

[Chrispy]

I've always hated outlines, but I also hate using black backgrounds that have no purpose. I should probably mess around more with things to see if I can get something looking good without a useless background and without the selective outlining.

EDIT: Yeah, this is why I hate outlines. It makes the image much more flat.

I have 2 different shades for the outline. The darkest shade of orange and the eye pupil color to prevent adding another color to the palette. I made the pupil color a bit more orange to make it blend better. I also messed with the shading on the one with an outline because the original shading was messed up once the outline was added.

EDIT2: Here was an idea that got rid of both the selout and the outline. Better?

[7321551]

Okay. I hate outlines too.

Another problem - he's shaded in discrete, evenly spaced steps (ie. Color banding) & the shades are shaped in a mostly concentric way, ie. pillow shading. I don't think light works like that - speculars & diffuse light & shadows are different from each other.

[Chrispy]

That looks even more flat to me. I'll keep messing with the colors and shading to see what I come up with. A big part of making this was so I could try new things and attempt to improve upon my weaknesses like the colors and the outline thing. I'll update later with anything I come up with.
EDIT: Messed with the shading and color

[setz]

I felt you weren't getting enough out of your colors, and also that the outlines were a bit off, so I created an edit. I got a bit carried away. The broken lines in the stomach especially bothered me.



I got rid of two colors, added one, and changed your darkest green a bit. Other than that, the palette is the same.

The biggest thing I'd like to point out is using your colors in more places than what you chose them for, like the green on the chest, or grey highlight on a wing. Also on the edges, yours were dark and jaggy, and they didn't have to be.

Hope this helped.

[Chrispy]

Oh wow, I appreciate the edit. I've been kinda ignoring the whole stomach area through most of this editing and been focusing on the orange. This'll be a big help in improving this.

EDIT: You really did get carried away. It was too hard to follow with your changes to apply them myself, so I just worked off them and adjusted it to my liking, I hope you don't mind. If you do I could always just go back and try again and working the changes in myself. With your changes to the skin I felt the orange's shadows were too light, so I messed with the palette a bit there and made several changes here and there, mainly to the face.