[WIP] Action-platformer sprites from a complete beginner

[BowTieDaddy]

Hey guys!  I'm completely new to spriting (save a little experience doing doofy recolors and stuff almost a decade ago) and I'm looking to improve.  I've read some tutorials and tried some stuff on, so I'd really like to hear any feedback you guys have!

I've been doing a lot of experimenting, and have two products in a state that I can even remotely show:


(goofed on the transparency here, but I'm having image uploading problems so I can't fix it at the moment)



Tell me what you think.  Thanks, everyone!

[rikfuzz]

They're pretty huge!  Would fill most of the entire screen of Ghouls and Ghosts/Goblins (whch may be of useful reference):

http://arcade.svatopluk.com/capcom/ghouls_n_ghosts/

If I were you, I'd cut them in half (at least). It's going to be pretty tough working at this size..

[BowTieDaddy]

That's actually a question/problem I had that I couldn't really find answers to anywhere - I'm honestly not completely solid on the relationship between character-size and screen size.  As this game would be running on a computer, wouldn't the resolution be a lot bigger, which in turn would mean that bigger sprites would be acceptable?  I don't mean to be contrary, I honestly don't know and I'm just trying to figure things out.

[Phlakes]

You don't want to fill the whole screen when you're doing pixel art. That would be either crazy or really, really time consuming.

Set the size you want it to be, 320x240 is one of the most manageable, and you can even scale it later if you want.

[BowTieDaddy]

Awesome, thanks for the advice guys.  I'll try and do some smaller redesigns and then post what I've got.

[BowTieDaddy]

Hey guys, got some time to work on this today.  Did a redesign on that first character down to 32x32 (just below half the original dimensions), so tell me what you think:



And this is him blown up, so you can see it easier (the proportions might have been slightly goofed in the expansion process, not sure):



Thanks everybody!

[9_6]

That looks pretty good.
You don't need to post resized pictures. Try clicking on images here and see what happens.



-Pay attention to your colors.
Somehow, you used about 40 colors in your sprite. Try recycling colors.

-Pay attention to lightning. My edit isn't really good but your sprite looks a bit flat due to iffy highlights.

-Outlines can be shaded too. They don't need to be black.

[BowTieDaddy]

Ah, that all makes sense.  Thank you.  I'm going to have to examine your edit closely to see what I can learn.

Just a question about the color count: a lot of those colors were a result of me trying to use colors that weren't black in the outlines.  In your edit I see that you partially got around that by making it a lot darker in general (so that you could do double-duty on shading and on outlines), but would these techniques work on a brighter, more cartoony style as well?  Because that's probably what I'd be more interested in.

[jams0988]

Just a question about the color count: a lot of those colors were a result of me trying to use colors that weren't black in the outlines.  In your edit I see that you partially got around that by making it a lot darker in general (so that you could do double-duty on shading and on outlines), but would these techniques work on a brighter, more cartoony style as well?  Because that's probably what I'd be more interested in.

How does that look? All I did was bump up the contrast and brightness. What program are you using for pixel art? Pro Motion and Graphics Gale both make it very easy to tweak colors using the palettes. All you have to do is pick a color from the palette, and then change that color, and all the areas of your picture that share that color will also be updated. It makes trying out different color combinations very fast and easy. If you need a more in-depth explanation of how to use the palettes like that, just let me know.

[ErekT]

You rarely, if ever, need more than 16 colors for (pixelled) game sprites. And even that is pretty overkill for the size you have there. You can of course use as many colors as you like but the fewer the colors, the easier the sprite is to work with. Especially if you want to animate it. Looks better too, more crisp and clear.