Iso Male Sprite

[Hiuru]

 Hello I started working on this sprite today and was wondering if anyone had some tips/edits to help it look better! Thanks

Update: Thanks Cyan

[Cyangmou]

The biggest problem is that the sprite don't really appears iso, because the axis seem to be angled to soft. Especially if you imagine the axis of the eyes, the shoulders and the chestline they don't really seem to fit together with the the axes of the hands (the hands are correct in your sprite and a good guideline for looking) 

Another proplem is that the upper length of the character seems to be to long for the lower length of the characters. Means you should decrease the length of head and torso and increase the length of the legs.
In my edit I just lengthened the legs, which means that the arms of my edit are currently to short (silly me  ).



Palette seems to be just red. I tried to push it more to contrasting colors (yellow-purple) and played a bit around with the saturation - see it as one suggestion. THe color depends anyways on the surrounding graphics.

Your sprite seems to suffer from strong AA to the black outline, You can see this esp. at his front upper arm and the inside of the front leg. Receding this might help the readability.

I am not to fond of the overall black outline, maybe breaking it up here and there with another lighter color might be an idea - it's just a suggestion in my edit.

Another suggestion would be how you solve the shading. Esp. at the head I'd solve it different.

Your sprite currently seems to be very round - to illustrate my point I made my anatomical forms really blocky.

[Hiuru]

Thanks for that! Im currently going with a solid color outline to make the sprite stand out from the background tiles and whatnot so i did not bother changing that but i took some of your edits down and messed around, thoughts?

[tim]

If your character design was made on purpose, ignore my whole post, but I don't like the proportions.
It suffers from the muscle baby syndrome as we can see in so many threads.
Basically your character looks like a baby puppet / toy.
The head is really the main issue.



A common generalization about human proportions is 7-8 heads tall (including the head).
Even with my reduction we're still at 6 heads, which is too big.



If it still seems too small, don't forget the character is naked, and the hair / clothes will add some volume.



But again, if you thought this particular character design on purpose, don't mind this post.

[Vagrant]

In many ways, the closer you get to realistic proportions on sprites of this size, the more you diminish the emotional connection, or the 'life' that the sprites can display.

It's always a matter of taste.


As for the outlines, it reminds me of ML:SS style. It really depends on the background you're using, and it's relation to the outline.

Again, this too is a matter of taste.

[Cyangmou]

line of the eyes
line of pectoralis/chest
line of knees

Still don't seems to match to iso lines in your edited version.

[Hiuru]

Updated it a bit more, fixed the chest a bit and some other touch ups, thanks a lot Cyan! I decided to keep the eyes the way they were, dont know why but i dont like the "right" placement for them on your edit :\



And about the proportion, yeah they were done intentionally. I agree with Vagrant that making it more realistic will make it boring and will take away the life and fun that a sprite should display for a game.

ANYWAYS! I'm calling this done, thanks for the help. I will be animating it now