Pixel metal

[GormenGhast]

Hi guys. I'm having a go at making a small metroidvania rpg game, and to start off the artwork I've tried to mock up some item sets / weapons.
I'm having a problem trying to use the pallette to make things look shiny though - it's ok in single pixel lines, but when it comes to making an area shiny I fall flat.



The rings in particular here are obviously looking wrong. Could anyone offer any advice? Thanks!

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

hey there, very nice icons
i think your black outline is not helping a lot. i recommend you, taking it out, unless you are following a style or something, or if you relly want to keep it.
About the ring's bright, take a look at this pic:

Look at the constrast between the shadows and the lights. Notice how suddenly from a bright gray, you go to a darker one, and then suddely again, you have the white spark. In the back of the ring, you have also the darkest gray that keeps making contrast with the rest of the values.
The thing is, if you want to make something look bright, you have to play with the sudden contrasts between lights and shadows. Take a look at a fork, a bowl or some metal thing around you right now. Look at the brights. You will see how it may gradually come from darker grey to lighter gray, and then suddenly the white spark appears.
Hope you find it usefull

[GormenGhast]

Thanks loads for that. I tried to make it a bit shinier - I think it looks a little better, but I'm still getting a bit of a pasty finish:



I've put in the bg colour here to give an idea of the kind of dark ambience that's going to be in-game.That's the reason for the black outline - it's supposed to look snes-ish.

I've actually got the exact same problem with the knights i've drawn - they look like they've been armoured with play doh.



I guess I'll need to use the same principles here? I always find it hard to not antialias light to dark without making things messy. Any help / c&c would again be appreciated!

[Fickludd]

Hey, I think those rings and specially the knights are really neat!

When you think about it, the thing with shiny stuff is that what it looks like is heavily dependent on it's surroundings. Random ref: http://www.armsandarchery.co.uk/html/armour.html. If you are having shiny knights in caves, i guess they should be pretty dark (caves are dark), with some interesting torchlight speculars in different directions.
 
I wanted to make you an edit but it just didn't work out - maybe someone more accomplished could help you out.

[API-Beast]

Making things shiny is actually quite easy: add additonal, not as strong highlights (for example one very bright highlight from top right and two additional highlights from the left).
After all highlights are just reflections, dull materials only reflect the brightest lights, for shiny (reflective) things the threshold is way lower and thus you will see way more highlights.

[st0ven]

This is just a really quick fly by on your metallic/plated armor sprite. i didnt really want to take a ton of time to redefine andfill in areas of either proportions or anatomy that i might have wanted to fix (im very tempted to pull that left elbow away from the torso so that its not hidden behind his torso and shorten the other arm's forearm right off the bat). This was merely a quick exercise on how to go about possibly achieving a more metallic look

its something that requires a bit of practice, but just note that metal when its not reflecting some specular or highly reflective light at a certain angle isnt as 'light' in value as one might think. This way you are able to reserve a nice wide range of lighter values to define areas that catch 'a bit more light' with values that are 'slightly lighter' than your base range of medium values, or you can really make something pop with a very focused, near white pixel for more intense specular effects.

also focus on shapes first. if somethings round, worry about shading it to be round first, and then modify the shape to account for its metallic finish, not the other way around.

[GormenGhast]

That's awesome, thanks st0ven. The darker base colour really helps with the shininess - I'll post back here later on once I've had a pop at it myself. Also the proportioning of the body is not right like you said and I'll have a crack at that too.