Practicing with a newer style

[coffee]

They don't stand out as individual sprites, they look bland and there's barely anything that can tell them apart as individuals. Improving the silhouettes by; Giving each sprite that something that makes them the "person" they are. Some might have really spikey hair, one a large cape, one some big weapon etc. Things that you can recognize even if it was only a silhouette.

I don't know if any of you watch One piece or have heard of it, but this is a great example:



I have no trouble telling these characters apart even though they are only black. Depends of course if you know them from the start, but they all give their own impression.

I wouldn't say silhouettes are extremely important, but more a way of seeing things and perhaps improve your sprites. A strong silhouette doesn't necessarily mean a great sprite, but it's a lot
better ground to start building on.

[PixelPiledriver]

Some really messy thoughts on the above advice:

Can someone explain what they mean by improve his silhouettes?

Coffee's explanation is accurate.
As stated, it's a design tool that can be used to help create unique and collectively distinct characters.
One nice way to do this is to use onion skinning and draw new characters on top of previous ones in a new frame.
This lets you see the differences in local space making it easy to compose structures that are not the same as the others.
Google around and find out what other artists have to say about it as well.

[Rosier]

IMO it's a bit of both same pose and the One Piece example.

I do want them to look like relatively normal humans.  One Piece takes things to the extreme.  To take another anime example, Naruto has almost all human characters and their silhouettes can't always be distinguished, but that doesn't mean the design is bad.  Regardless, looking at PPD's edits, I can definitely see where some steps can taken to improve this.

For posing, I can differentiate them by putting them in more dynamic poses with their gear.  The second one has a sword for example and I can make a sprite of his using it, rather than just stand there.


I think a decent course of action is to use other characters that aren't supposed to have similar body types, and improve the posing on the current ones.

[coffee]

Naruto do have less exaggerated characters normally but they do have things that tells them apart to make them interesting as persons, I couldn't find any decent amount of silhouettes for it except this one:
http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/9/8088/Shippuden.jpg
I think I could point out quite a few chars of Naruto only based on their silhouettes as well as in One piece.

The point we are trying to make is not that you should make all your characters extremely different. But like you said, adding a sword to someones back/side and other things will tell your characters apart a lot more than what they are now.

[Rosier]

Naruto do have less exaggerated characters normally but they do have things that tells them apart to make them interesting as persons, I couldn't find any decent amount of silhouettes for it except this one:
http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/9/8088/Shippuden.jpg
I think I could point out quite a few chars of Naruto only based on their silhouettes as well as in One piece.

The point we are trying to make is not that you should make all your characters extremely different. But like you said, adding a sword to someones back/side and other things will tell your characters apart a lot more than what they are now.

I'll go with a combination.  I have a character design that's pretty distinct in mind, and then I'll make some improvements to the others.

[Gil]

I'll try to do a better explanation of what I meant with silhouettes. I'm lacking in time lately, so here's the cliff notes for now:

- Most of what I meant has been mentioned
- What wasn't mentioned is gesture. Look up gesture drawing and compare to your poses. Compare to the posted Naruto characters.
- Droopy shoulders. Droopy shoulders are a result of bad posture. It's a good way to make your character seem either aloof, weak or "cool". Drooping all the shoulders in every character goes a long way in why they look so alike.

[Rosier]

  Experimenting with some Selout, though I'm not quite sure I've grasped it quite yet.  Also played with some posing.

  Again, posing, but an attempt at the decidedly more anime style.




Also, I went back to some of my older sprites where I played around with posing/stronger silhouettes a bit more.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

I think that you need to practice drawing more. Even if it looks that pixel medium can hide lack of drawing skills, actually its the opposite. You don't have to become Da Vinci but you have to know the basics. Draw every day, that will improve your overall skill. Great example is Cyangmou who draws every day in traditional medium for practice and study even if he is very good pixel artist, I support that. 

http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=14628

[Rosier]

Took me long enough, but I tried practicing a bit more in this style.

With and without strong outlines.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Skin color and that pink color are almost the same which makes some areas very hard to read. I like shirt design on her chest.