It depends what they're for in context of the gameplay. They are very very similar and not particularly expressive. If this is just an added subtlety that's totally fine, but if it's related to core gameplay or the player should get any information from it, it could use work.
They were intended to be subtle facial expressions changes depending on the character's actions. For example, I'll probably make my character look more menacing when the cats attacks.
You have a lot of almost identical colours, the pupils and the fur definitely don't need different ramps, and pretty sure you'd never notice if I cut the colour count in half. Maybe if you weren't doing 18 colours each frame you'd be less afraid to redraw new expressions than be so templated?
That drawing is awesome. Did you draw that? I don't feel my past color pallet or new color pallet (see image below) will negatively impact my ability to create facial expressions. Later on, I'll probably figure out all sorts of ways to make the cat have different expressions.
Yea, you have way too many colors for such a small piece, dude. And most of the shades don't have enough contrast to tell them apart looking at it at with 100% zoom.
I completely agree, which is why I decided to take your advice and make huge changes to the color pallet. I would've tried to post an update about it sooner, but I was extremely busy yesterday and didn't come home from work today until about three hours ago. I think many of you will feel it's a big improvement over my past color pallet.
The only thing I miss about my previous color pallet is that the white shine in the eyes doesn't blend in as much. Oh well.
Seconded. This sprite could easily look almost identical at 12 colors -- including transparency -- even if you wanted to keep the 'fuzzy' look on the ears/mouth areas, since there is some contrast there. However the black fur and pupil ramps really are just overkill.
More than likely you're zoomed waaay in (i.e. more than 700-800%) which is why the colors seem to have contrast to you, but if the subtle transitions cant be gleaned from a quick glance at around, say, 200-400% zoom, you really don't need them since they will just muddy-up the image rather than contribute something valuable to it.
With that said, you might as well use photoshop brush tools if you want the fuzzy look and don't care about the number of colors you add. Pixel art is about clarity -- precise placement of dots of colored-light to achieve the maximum clarity in the description of an image you can -- and when you aren't focusing on that clarity by being careless with the most important asset you've got -- your colors -- then you aren't doing pixel art.
Regardless of the discussion about what is true pixel art or not, you've probably been staring at these too long while zoomed-in and are likely losing objectivity. It comes with the territory of working at very low resolutions. However, constantly glancing at your preview window, ensuring it has a much smaller zoom% than the area you're working (by at least half), is vital to prevent this sort of illusion when doing pixel art. It will really help in the long run if you're not already doing this.
Believe it or not, I frequently zoomed to 100% and 200% throughout the entirety of making my sprites. I liked the soft contrast I previously had, but I agree going with a much higher color contrast and smaller color pallet was needed to improve my sprites. I care a lot about the colors but making this sprite was a huge learning experience. Didn't help that before I created this thread, I was getting hardly any advice from people I know and that this was the first sprite I've made 100% from scratch. I did make an
unfinished Sonic sprite in the past that was mostly from scratch though. I should finish that sprite someday.
