Some Help for a Noobie

[mobves1]

Hello! I am new on these forums. Also, I am new to everything and anything pixel art, beyond casually observing it.

My cousin and I want to make a game. Neither of us are particularly talented when it comes to art, but I have more artistic perseverance and motivation than him, so I am the designated artist. I watched and read a bunch of tutorials, downloaded some free software (GraphicsGale and PyxelEdit for sprites and titles, respectively), and tried to whip a few things up.

Part of the game involves bear people who walk around and say hello. This is what I made.



What can I do to try to make the limbs look less awkward? I freehanded the shape of the head and torso first and was fairly happy with it, then I added the rest of the body later.

Thanks for the help. Any and all suggestions for improvement are welcome!

Edit: I've been working on it a lot more. I added some clothes with the full knowledge that the attire will probably change before long. Any advice for improvements? I'm not entirely sure how to shade, I just made diagonal lines going down the left side. I think the belt adds depth, and I tried to make it so the arms and legs do as well, but I'm still not entirely happy with their shape.



Edit 2: I've slept on it and put some more time in. The shading is sorta better but I'm still not happy with it. Thoghts/criticisms?

[PsylentKnight]

Good start. I'm not the most qualified person, and my edit isn't great, but here you go. 



Here are some things that I fixed/would like to point out.

Color:
-Your shades are too close together. Use more contrast.
-Try to avoid pure black or pure white.
-Try to reuse colors when you can. Even though the color count is irrelevant for modern machines, it will help make your piece more cohesive and will make things easier when you animate if you have less colors in your palette to worry about.
-Try hue shifting to make your colors less boring. If you don't know what that is, look it up.
Generally I shift the brightest shade of a color a bit towards yellow and the darker shades towards blue.
-Your shading makes no sense. Its just a gradient from left to right. Think about where the light is coming from and put the bright parts towards the light source and the dark parts away from the light source. Define the
volume of the shape, don't just color it because its supposed to be colored.

Shape:
-Too many straight lines in the profile. Make his "edges" show a little more volume, make it more interesting.
-His posture is pretty awkward. His arms are too far from his body.
-Assuming his body is supposed to be facing towards the left, make that more clear
-His crotchular region is too large vertically. I just moved his upper body down a little.

Misc:
-The outlines are too dark. I generally don't use outlines at all (most people do). I prefer to define things with value rather than lines.
-Consider using smaller sprites (16x16 or 32x32) before you get too invested with this project. I used 64x64 sprites in the current game I'm working
on and they are a PAIN to work with.

I hope you don't get overwhelmed by this, I'm just trying to be as thorough as possible and offer everything
I know. Don't give up, the only way to improve is to keep trying.

[mobves1]

Holy cow, thank you so much.



I tried my best to put everything you said into consideration. Shadows are definitely the hardest part for me, but hopefully I'll get better with some more practice. I used the edit you made as a shadow-reference which allowed me to make a far better sprite. I'd like to be able to make shapes that are not exactly like this, though,

A lot of the other stuff you said helped me bunches. I reused colors as much as I could and actually made a pallet, like I see other people here doing. I felt like a dope as soon as I saw the way you made the arms come from either side of the body. I can't tell you how much time I spent yesterday trying to make them look better. I tried to make a 32 bit sprite and failed abysmally. I've made the decision to go big or go home. I am determined to not go home.

I think I need to observe a LOT more pixel art, especially body shapes and shadowing. Hopefully that, along with a bunch more practice, will allow me to make not-sucky sprites.

I changed the bear dude's outfit to something more like the original design. His people are supposed to emulate north-eastern Native American culture, and I hope that is apparent by the beaded leggings. Everything sorta blends down there, but I'm not sure how else to portray a detail like that.

Also, I don't like how the right arm (his left) blends in with the rest of his body. I fooled around with the shadows for awhile and ended up making them really dark, which is why I have so many shades of fur. I gave him claws to try to differentiate arm from flank.

Tomorrow I'm going to try giving him some sort of headdress or feathery hat.

Thanks again for all of your help!

[PsylentKnight]

Holy cow, thank you so much.

No problem man. It was fun to work on.

I'd like to be able to make shapes that are not exactly like this, though,

Haha yea, I tend to make my characters fat.

Also, I don't like how the right arm (his left) blends in with the rest of his body.

Yep, that's why a lot of people use outlines, for cases such as this. So you may consider that. Your solution is typically how I work around it. I prefer the no-outline look and its generally less work imo, you just have to use a LOT of contrast to make things pop sometimes.
 
Your new version looks vastly better man, keep at it. The black beady eyes are an improvement I didn't think of.

[astraldata]

@PsylentKnight:
Great advice there -- you hit all the main points nicely. Might do well to just save those suggestions to a notepad/txt file and copy/paste them to the forum as needed lol. There are many absolute beginners on here lately.

The only thing I might add is that outlines aren't necessary to convey a sense of separation from background, but having enough color values you can use for an outline when you need it can really help a lot. Take for instance the edge of your bear's gut -- it pretty much disappears into the green BG value-wise. As a side-effect, your sprite looks a little flat due to not having that darkest-color to add more volume to the body on the curves that need some depth to define them better.

I did an edit of your edit to show you both what I mean -- pay close attention to the bottom of the hands, nearest arm, and the edge of the gut/breast lol.



I didn't spend much time on it, but I tried to show you how to give this thing more of a sense of volume and clarity than what you had without adding any additional colors (I only tweaked the brightness of the darkest color under the closest arm on the gut.)

Even though SNK style (which seems closest to what you might be going for with your style, PsylentKnight) tends to use flat colors and value to define forms, it also uses these sorts of 'outlines' like these in many contexts, but they're more blended into the shading/volume wherever possible than the 'outline' as defined by the silhouette. The bottom of the gut where it meets the pants is a good example of this. Also, Donkey Kong Country is another good example of what I'm thinking you might be going for style-wise. That too uses this form of outlining as well wherever needed.

[mobves1]

Donkey Kong Country sprites are pretty much exactly what I'm going for.

I've added the headdress and made a few minor updates.



I added the outline to fix the arm a little bit. You can tell that my shading skills are still basically nonexistant with the headdress... I am not sure how to make the texture look like it is something other than fabric.

Thanks to both of you for all of your help. You are wonderfully talented and generous people. I think that I'm going to use the skills that I (hopefully) picked up here to make another character or two. Then I should move on to a background, and then a tileset.

Any advice for making backgrounds?

Edit: I've made a second character.



I'm going for a little bit of androgyny, but I think it's closer to the male side. I am extremely unhappy with the sword and arms, but I've been working on it for a long time and I need a break. I like how the bow looks. Again, you can see how terrible I am with shadows... I danced around that problem by trying to make the pants patchwork or something.

[astraldata]

My advice is to get used to using the pixels first -- characters are a good start, but objects work too. The main thing is to develop a process of working with pixels that works best for you, then get used to making shapes in silhouette form, then volume with light and shadow, and finally practice color and textures -- but don't rush through these things as they all take some dedication and time to learn.

If you're going for DKC style graphics, you'd better know from the start that all of the aforementioned principles are required to achieve anywhere near the level of colors/textures used in that game. Drawing complex things you don't know how to properly light/color and moving on to something different without learning how to light/color those other things isn't going to help you learn or progress any. Simply discarding something because it doesn't look right rather than trying to understand how to make it look more correct is a waste of time, so start with something more simple to learn the basics instead, and then go on to varying up your subject matter once you get those basics down (again, the aforementioned stuff about volume/texture/lighting/etc.)

Another thing is that DKC doesn't use outlines -- it uses a form of an outline, as mentioned above, shown in my edit of the bear's stomach and leg areas. You'd essentially 'paint' a silhouette with light and shadow to achieve this look instead of drawing the outlines manually like you did with your human character.

A side note -- your lighting would usually be either from the top/front in a platform game sprite because if you flip the sprite horizontally, it will look weird with the lighting suddenly changing directions if lit like your bear is. Thus a centralized light source on game sprites is the most common way to approach this issue.

Hopefully this is enough to get you started. You've got a long way to go, but if you keep trying, you'll make progress each time you pixel something. Backgrounds/tilesets are a whole other thing, but you've got to have basic pixel skills first, so work on learning the stuff I've mentioned here before you try to tackle them. That's the best advice I can give you right now.

[mobves1]

Work on learning the stuff I've mentioned here before you try to tackle them. That's the best advice I can give you right now.

That is very good advice. I have a tendency to get really excited about things and dive in headfirst, which is exactly what I've done here. I'm going to lie low for awhile and make some 16x16 items. I'll work on shading, coloring, and shape on a super small scale, then move on once I've improved.

I can't thank both of you enough for all of your help. Hopefully I'll rise from the poorly-drawn ashes a few days from now and have something not-ugly to show you!

[astraldata]

Glad you're taking my advice. Jumping in to something is never a good idea until you have a clear approach established first, and that takes time and thoughtful consideration, not trial and error. I'm not against spontaneity but I do feel it's best to at least have a rudimentary process in place that you can modify going forward, if need be, to give you some starting point.

If you're doing characters, strictly 16x16 is a bit small (sometimes small characters are as difficult as drawings five times their size, depending on the amount of detail you wish to convey, so choose a comfortable size/style when you're ready to tackle them.) Tiles and objects on the other hand are good to practice rendering at this size, all the way up to around 32x32, depending on your target resolution (which you should also consider before thinking about making a game of any kind -- if you're not very skilled, a somewhat low-res world is easier to manage, but the visible screen area should match the low resolution since too large of a visible area and your environment will tend to become very visually repetitive.) I would say stick to a base character size and practice rendering environments / textures / tiles around that character size.

You always need to develop visuals together in a game to ensure they all look consistent, so practicing relative to a particular-sized character isn't a bad idea, but you might want to use a tool that has a Grid in order to work on your tiles (Graphics Gale is free and works well for this sort of stuff, so you might want to take a peek at it if you're not already using it.)

Aside from that, this is really all the advice I can offer you. The rest is up to you. Hopefully you make some good strides -- there's a plethora of tutorials here on pixelation, but I think the best way is to learn alongside others who post -- especially those who post art at your level of skill -- because it's likely someone will step in and offer some great advice to them, which in turn will help you figure your own stuff out (which is why I spend so much time on posts on here, because I know that learning through the mistakes of others is great help to prevent you from making those mistakes) Learning this way is slow and gradual, but the progress was consistent as long as you apply what you learn as you learn it..