Torchic

[Malignanttoe]

It needs some touching up, but I need a little critique from the pros

[pistachio]

First off, I recommend you ditch the black outlines. If you're wanting to lean towards the official Pokemon style try making outlines touching lighter colors, well, lighter.

Here are a couple examples from various Pokemon games snatched off of the bulbapedia. You may want to keep them in mind for reference.



Another thing I notice is that its legs are much shorter, almost stumps, while your sprite's right leg seems very tall. The sprite's left foot also seems much longer than its right, for some reason.

Here's an edit. Redrew the legs and feet, swapped the palette with that of the Pokemon diamond/pearl sprite (2nd one)--used some techniques seen in the sprite as well. I'm assuming he's facing slightly right--this would probably be required for maintaining balance in a pose like this, so I made its left wing reflect that. Also made the torso slightly smaller in proportion to the head.



Say, were you happening to have this image in mind when you drew this sprite?

[Malignanttoe]

That is what I used as a reference yes. Sorry, I probably should have posted that too.
Thanks for the tips!

Oh, and I wasn't using any particular palette. I didn't think that was too important.


edit - I'm very very new at sel out. Am I doing it right?

[pistachio]

That is what I used as a reference yes. Sorry, I probably should have posted that too.
Thanks for the tips!

Oh, and I wasn't using any particular palette. I didn't think that was too important.


edit - I'm very very new at sel out. Am I doing it right?

Almost. You're getting there. It reflects the official style a bit more. Maybe I should be a little clearer, though. First I want to know how close to the official style you want to get--really close, with many elements seen in official sprites (see my last post in this thread), or just resembling it somewhat, with just a few?

If you do want to get that close, perhaps make the outlines warmer to reflect warm colors (this is a fire Pokemon, correct?) like in the official sprites' palettes. Use some intermediate colors to blend the outlines, just slightly, by a few pixels so the transition from light outline to dark outline isn't so sudden. And try not to make black outlines so apparent, unless the area is completely shaded. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. Sorry if the whole post isn't clear enough. You may want to take a further look into my edit and the sprites.

Also, people seem to confuse sel-out a bit nowadays. Sel-out (stands for selective outlining)... Isn't so much making outlines touching lighter colors lighter, (I assume to give the appearance of the lines being thin even at a very small scale). It's more like anti-aliasing towards a dark color on the outside of the sprite where there's a light background. To avoid starting another opinion-based argument I'm going to quit talking about it now. We have too many already.

...P.S., I still think you should redraw the legs.

[Malignanttoe]

Almost. You're getting there. It reflects the official style a bit more. Maybe I should be a little clearer, though. First I want to know how close to the official style you want to get--really close, with many elements seen in official sprites (see my last post in this thread), or just resembling it somewhat, with just a few?

If you do want to get that close, perhaps make the outlines warmer to reflect warm colors (this is a fire Pokemon, correct?) like in the official sprites' palettes. Use some intermediate colors to blend the outlines, just slightly, by a few pixels so the transition from light outline to dark outline isn't so sudden. And try not to make black outlines so apparent, unless the area is completely shaded. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. Sorry if the whole post isn't clear enough. You may want to take a further look into my edit and the sprites.

Also, people seem to confuse sel-out a bit nowadays. Sel-out (stands for selective outlining)... Isn't so much making outlines touching lighter colors lighter, (I assume to give the appearance of the lines being thin even at a very small scale). It's more like anti-aliasing towards a dark color on the outside of the sprite where there's a light background. To avoid starting another opinion-based argument I'm going to quit talking about it now. We have too many already.

...P.S., I still think you should redraw the legs.

I don't know if I want to redraw the legs, but I understand why you think they should be smaller. As for the style and pallette, I'm not really shooting for mimicking the official pokemon style. I just want to make it look nice

[pistachio]

I don't know if I want to redraw the legs, but I understand why you think they should be smaller. As for the style and pallette, I'm not really shooting for mimicking the official pokemon style. I just want to make it look nice

That's pretty general. It's going to be hard to help you, then. If you want to improve overall, though, I guess the best thing you could do is more pixel art, and we'll critique to help you improve.

[Malignanttoe]

I don't know if I want to redraw the legs, but I understand why you think they should be smaller. As for the style and pallette, I'm not really shooting for mimicking the official pokemon style. I just want to make it look nice

That's pretty general. It's going to be hard to help you, then. If you want to improve overall, though, I guess the best thing you could do is more pixel art, and we'll critique to help you improve.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Thanks for the pointers!