HELP! My pic looks so soft and watery -__-

[pixelrookie]

Hey guys, first post here, I'm really new to pixel art just started some weeks back What happened was that I was trying some colouring on a pixel character - I've read through some tutorials about outlines and shading but the end result doesn't look sharp at all - it's like I used water colours on it or something :



How do I make it look sharper/better, like the sprites in capcom vs snk 2? eg below:



Thanks in advance for the help!

[EyeCraft]

Hello and welcome to the forum. 

What you're searching for is CONTRAST:



Darken the shadows, essentially. Also tinting the shadows will increase the chromatic contrast (a bluer blue contrasts more with a greener blue than if they were both the same blue, for example).

Skin seems a little too yellow and saturated to me.

I recommend working on a mid-grey (or otherwise neutral, mid-range tone) canvas as it allows you to read colours and contrast much, much easier.

Something to note is that many of those fighting games have a pixel technique that is more suited to CRT screens than modern LCD screens. This translates into many pixel clusters looking really harsh or noisy. For this reason, it may not be the best choice to emulate the style too rigorously.

Also, this forum has a built in zoom feature (left click on image to zoom in, shift-click to zoom out), so it's unnecessary to post work at 2x magnification.

[pixelrookie]

Hello and welcome to the forum. 

What you're searching for is CONTRAST:



Darken the shadows, essentially. Also tinting the shadows will increase the chromatic contrast (a bluer blue contrasts more with a greener blue than if they were both the same blue, for example).

Skin seems a little too yellow and saturated to me.

I recommend working on a mid-grey (or otherwise neutral, mid-range tone) canvas as it allows you to read colours and contrast much, much easier.

Something to note is that many of those fighting games have a pixel technique that is more suited to CRT screens than modern LCD screens. This translates into many pixel clusters looking really harsh or noisy. For this reason, it may not be the best choice to emulate the style too rigorously.

Also, this forum has a built in zoom feature (left click on image to zoom in, shift-click to zoom out), so it's unnecessary to post work at 2x magnification.

AH BINGO you just saved me from a couple of months of headaches! THANKS LOADS!! Well yeah I still have a lot to learn about pixel colouring, I'll look through the tutorials again and practise before asking anymore rookie questions yup I did realise the sprites from those games look grainy though I'm trying to emulate their standard..

[Decroded]

Cool sprite dude did u design it or is it based on something?
why not have a go at animated it with her bobbing back and forward or something.

[pixelrookie]

Cool sprite dude did u design it or is it based on something?
why not have a go at animated it with her bobbing back and forward or something.

Hehe thanks..I'm an amateur so yeah I based it on Mai Shiranui's CVS2 sprites. I have animations but they were coloured really bad so I'll have to amend them all