Retro-Style Sprites

[Jon]

Hey everyone, I've been pixelling since last year, but only for fun, so I'm relatively new to this. I am trying to make some game sprites with Arne's palette.

Here's the main character, seen on a black background (but he works on dark blue BGs also).


Here's the transmission screen, with a larger-sized image of the main character. I've just started doing AA so it's not as smooth as it could be, and I'm also looking for general feedback. Inspired a little by Doukutsu Monogatari, obviously.


Some tiles for the first level.

[Moribund]

Hey Jon! Looks great. The only I thing I can think of is it's weird seeing the same guy with both a wide rectangular head and a perfectly oval head.

[Jon]

Here are some WIP tiles

The part in the middle is a sample part of a level made with the tiles.

[Jon]

Updated and (I think) finished the tiles:

[Lizzrd]

You might want to have the tiles be a bit more gray and a bit less blue.
In other news, welcome to pixelation you maker of dropships.

[tehwexxl0rz]

I agree that it looks weird for the detailed portrait to have a round head when the sprite's head is rectangular. It doesn't need to be as angular as the sprite, but it should still convey "rectangle-ish head." Also, rather than simply reducing the saturation of the rocks, I think they'd benefit from some hueshifting. Your blue ramp doesn't have much range, so some colors are going to waste.

[EyeCraft]

Pretty hasty edit. Hue shift, cut out the extremely bright speculars (they're too distracting for tiles), cleaned up some of the noisy pixels, smoothed edges out.

I agree, hue shift will bring out the potential of these rocks

Remember to shade in terms of planes. Think of the form of the rocks, translate this in to planes and light accordingly. Speculars only appear at the points of maximum angle of reflection relative to the viewer. This means when you have a lightsource above and between the view and the subject, as edges curve away from the viewer, the speculars will diminish.

Also, welcome

[Jad]

BUT I LIKE THE SUPER WET SINGLE PIXEL SHARP SPECULARS

THEY DON'T FOLLOW GOOD FORM BUT THEY ARE SUPER ATMOSPHERIC

and I had to shout that at the top of my e-lungs

[Jon]

Hello Eyecraft, thanks for the critique. I tried to make the tiles a little more grey:

Is it an improvement?

Jad, I am assuming your comment was sarcasm, but its hard to tell on a forum.

[EyeCraft]

Jad, I am assuming your comment was sarcasm, but its hard to tell on a forum.

No no, Jad stands by what he shouted. I'm sure of it.

He has a point about the speculars adding a wetness and atmosphere to it. I still think they're too distracting as they were, though. Maybe you could go for something a little in between my edit and the ULTRA SPECULARS. Worth the experiment.

Hmm, lowering the saturation like that washed it out, which is the opposite of what I imagine Super Atmospheric Cave (it's name to me now  ) to thrive on.

You'll notice in my edit, I generally increased the saturation of all the tones... probably to an extreme degree. But extremes are good at finding the limits. What I mainly did was tone down the brights and fiddled a lot with the values of all the other tones to compensate for that.

I think a step in the direction of high saturation, deep indigo shadows, cyan midtones and (within reason) sharp speculars are the way to go in bringing out these rocks atmosphere.