Small isometric sprites

[Bjaarn]

Hi all,
I've been looking at this forum for a few days now while trying to make a postapocalyptic total war-alike game for my android phone. I have now completed the initial parts of the engine and have moved on to making some graphics. At first I thought about using 3d rendered sprites since I use an isometric view for the battles which gives every unit at least 8 angles depending on size. But because of the low res of mobile screens its really hard to push some personality into the small sprites so I went for pixel graphics instead. So now my question is if anyone knows any good tutorials for isometric graphics (characters/animation) especially. Most topics on this forum seems to be for platformers/sidescrollers ..

I've also completed my first sprite sheet and would appreciate if anyone would give some feedback on it. Its really small and most people I have shown it to says "oh its a robot" so maybe its not clear enough or just too damn small (its a solder btw). I dont feel I can make it bigger though since I want to have a lot of them the screen at once and I only have 320x480 res. One thing I will add to it later is a transparent shadow underneath to give it some "depth".



Here is another one without animation


Here is another mock up image of what the game might look like in action.

[EvilEye]

Not sure if there are any isometric tutorials but this is the tutorials section ( scroll down ):

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=3467.0

Your sprites and mockup look ok, but generally the smaller you go the less detail you should use on your sprites. The reason being, with so much detail it makes it hard to distinguish the sprites from the background like in the mockup.

[Bjaarn]

Thanks for the link(s)  , maybe the ground should have less contrast to make the sprites stand out more?
To get inspiration I have looked a lot on the sprites from Master of Magic, they are really small and have great diversity

[EvilEye]

Thanks for the link(s)  , maybe the ground should have less contrast to make the sprites stand out more?

If anything the sprites should have a less fine detail then the background.

The problem is when you put little dots of different colors next to each other and zoom out it looks grainy, which looks bad and flattens the image. Especially when you outline the whole thing in black.

To get inspiration I have looked a lot on the sprites from Master of Magic, they are really small and have great diversity

I thought of MOM when I saw these, but MOM sprites were also grainy.

The sprites are good, but your shoving too much detail into them for their size.