Altered Beast - a cluster study

[ui]

 mine, eh amigo?

[NaCl]

Bully! Kind of gave up on the lower legs.

[hapiel]

Viewers discretion: Version 3 and 4 might contain bad clusters!



Critique is always welcome

[Jigsaw]

Didn't spend a whole lot of time on this, but pretty happy with how it came out.



This was a lot of fun! Would love to see the community tackle remaking more sprites like this.

[Conzeit]

Geti: absolutley right. The first version is still closest to what I wanted to do. I often want to do things that are either highly challenging for me or not much suited to the format. So when I go halfway it looks kind of ok, but when I really try it looks real fucked up. I also shaded it very badly with nonsensical outlines it's very obvious when you compare it to everything else. I always see something different as I draw it O_o
EDIT: this one is between the second one and the last I posted, but I think it's the best version I made. I think I didnt post it cause the pose is a lil less interesting and he looks like right out of a hollywood action movie.

Yours looks incredibly fitting to the era, I feel like it was ripped right out of some canceled Double Dragon game that we never knew about or something.

I keep wanting someone to win...but that's not gonna happen so I'lll just list my favs :p

Dex's  Jigsaw's  Pistachio's  Adam's

Dex's has great use of the pallete and just the best contrast and definition. Looks like it might be the lead on a modern pixel game. (if there even is such a thing anymore)
Jigsaw's has less steep contrast but I like the definition of the muscles in the key places, it details just what it has to....some of us tend to detail everything to a cluttered mess :p
Pistachio's just looks menacing...love that face. What 80's wrestler is like that? I know zip about wrestling.
Adam's I just like because it goes almost to complete darkness in the background, I like the sense of depth in that. it also has some sparse details like Jigsaw's but personally I just like the extra contrast more. that's totally personal tho and it might not work in an actual game.

PxPiledriver and Redshrike are funny :p

Helm: I think now we should edit the sprite to be the best possible result with the limitations, change pose change pallete but try to communicate the same thing with the same limitations. I mean it's not like we're doing better here just because we know pixels better, but because we're a group of people obsessed with pixels focusing on making the best piece, while the original artist might've not been comfortable with the medium and might have rushed it.  So why not go all the way and make it the best we can imagine?

I wanna see somebody make him look like he came out of a Frazetta painting :p Hell let's change it into a mockup thread and have Frazetta in 16bit :p

Ok I know that's not what you want but I dont have any nostalgy for this cause I didnt have a Genesis, I just want to see some mad good pixels, everyone can make it their ideal for this sorta game, mine would be imitating Frazetta...I hope someone else too :p

[Photocopier]

I don't think I quite have the skillset to add anything to such a great thread, but here's my take on this guy:

I tried not to change much from the original silhouette at all, Just wanted to make him feel a little more solid.

[Cyangmou]

Since thaere are that many posts I chose a different direction to tackle the problem. We have lots of strong sprites and each of them have their strengths in different areas.
For my study I looked more closer at:

Helm's (because he made clear what's to do)
Carnivacs (it's the first different edit with a very different approach)
Yaomons (highlights)
Ptoings (character)
Jeremy (this one is the first one who has those yellow red boots which is nice in terms of color differentiation and looks better to me than the  more detailled boots of other edits)
Pistachio (has a very strong pose)
Conceit (started with a different contrast approach)
Adam (Yellow backlight and depth)
Ilkke, (beefed up version with bulky shoulders and neck)
Big Brother (great sculpturing and forms)
Dex (changed the overall contrast by adding black)

Also some parts of different sprites are more readable as others. In my first edit I started with Pistachios pose edit and added ptoings head to achieve more character. I also chose the body parts which looked most interesting and readable for me (Jeremy's boots, Big Brother's lower arms and hands and his right leg, Dex's left leg, Illkes upper arms, and some small other pieces)

In the second step of the edit I started with altering some clusters and added some of my own ideas to the sprite and polished some parts which looked strange from copy-pasting.

In the third step I added highlights and dark shadows.

I wasn't sure if it's a good idea to add a highlight at the face too.

Here you can see the outcome:



After all it's a summary of all the ideas I liked pretty much.

[Joe]

Awesome thread.  Here's my attempt:



I tried to emphasize readability in mine.  Also kept the original palette.  Probably the most challenging thing was the lack of contrast in the palette and the two mid and dark tones being so close in value.  But it was very fun, and I think we should move on to the wolf/bear/tiger/dragon forms now.

[dylan]

I had a crack at it, used the original palette.

[Sollers]

Still a novice at this, made using original palette.



Done in paint so tried to make background match the forum