AuthorTopic: [WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites  (Read 2868 times)

Offline Alícia F. R.

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[WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites

on: October 09, 2015, 07:34:01 am
Hello, people,

It's been a while! Thanks a lot again for the help you guys gave me back in February.

Right now I'm working on a set of monster sprites, Pokémon-inspired, and I've decided to use a common palette for all of them. I want a unified feel for the whole spriteset, but at the same time the palette should be varied enough to be able to sprite 151 monsters without the tones getting repetitive or boring. I've already designed all monsters and they encompass as wide a set of tones as you can get.

I think that a palette with no more than 60 colors is reasonable, so I've been working with that idea in mind. Right now I've got a 57 color palette prototype and I've tested it out on a couple of monsters. Here you are:

This is the palette:

What do you think? Should I change anything in the palette? Are there too many browns? Brown is important in my monsters, but perhaps I've overdone it. Should I add more greens? Am I lacking something essential? I will probably change and improve it as I advance and make more monsters, but the more monsters I make, the more messy it will be to rebalance the palette each time that I modify something, so I'm trying to make it as good as possible beforehand.

Thanks a lot in advance and good luck to you all!
« Last Edit: October 09, 2015, 07:50:41 am by Alícia F. R. »

Offline heyguy

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Re: [WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites

Reply #1 on: October 09, 2015, 09:25:49 am
I like both of these sprites a lot! Are they the same character though? The big sprite has the leaf hair covering the characters right eye. The small sprite doesn't have that detail. In fact, both heads look a bit different.

Your palette seems good to me but I'm new to pixel art  ;D. You ask if there are too many browns and that brown is important. Maybe you should try making creating a rock or earth "pokemon" to experiment further with your palette.

Offline Alícia F. R.

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Re: [WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites

Reply #2 on: October 09, 2015, 10:04:31 am
Hi! Thanks for answering. Yes, they're the same character, but at the same time they aren't - just like in Pokémon, the big one is an "older" or "more developed" version that the little one and the design changes a bit.

Of course! Instead of starting from monster number 1 and going on from there, like I was doing, I should try to make a few designs with totally different colors first, to test and perfect the palette. Thanks for the idea! I hadn't thought of that, but it's the most logical choice. That way I can make the tweaks I need before the designs pile up.

I've started working on a brown monster and it's already made me change the palette. I removed a color (so now it's 56 colors in total) and edited a couple other ones.





After this one I'll do a mainly blue monster, then red, yellow, etc. Thanks for making me think of that, it's the best way.

Anyhow, if any of the palette experts around here can have a look at my palette, I'd appreciate it :) I'm not used to working with such complete palettes, I usually just either 1) take a pre-made one, or 2) only work with a limited palette for a particular sprite, so I must admit I'm a little wary of making a mess of things later on.

Offline yrizoud

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Re: [WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites

Reply #3 on: October 09, 2015, 10:45:11 am
The first impression is that it seems very saturated everywhere. When everything "pops" at once, nothing really does.
I see where you're coming from with those linear ramps, but unless you adhere to a strict limit (like a single creatures uses only 4 different ramps), if you start using a bit of everything you'll find yourself spending a lot of time finding the correct color for darker/lighter.
Your palette would be much simpler to use if you could display it in a way where you can easily select the usable ranges, like this :

(image from this interesting post)

One word of advice about the pixelling : go easy on the black/dark tones. In daylight, only something that's already dark-colored should have shadows that go in near-black colors. On your first sprite for example, I feel that the dark inner outlines "eat" a lot of the light, and makes the general character look much darker than it should. Very often, you don't even need inner outlines, the neighboring colors act as a natural frontier. Omitting an inner outline also gives you one more pixel of material to draw - it's handy on those small characters.

Offline Gil

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Re: [WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites

Reply #4 on: October 09, 2015, 10:51:20 am
I disagree with yrizoud, I think you're tackling it right. The strength of pokemon is separating the ramps, so you get very iconic characters (you can see from a glance which pokemon is which). This is a common practice for cartoon designs. High saturation is a choice I can also get behind, as more colorful again reads well for designs like these. I like the actual designs too. The small monster is maybe a bit undefined (the silhouette doesn't read as strong), so maybe for the first level monsters, try making it a bit simpler.

Offline Alícia F. R.

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Re: [WIP] Choosing a palette for a set of monster sprites

Reply #5 on: October 09, 2015, 11:55:06 am
Thank you both for your answers! You've given me a lot to think about. I actually do often use colors from different ramps; the method @yrizoud suggested is pretty useful, both to optimize the palette and to make the color picking faster during the drawing process. I've tried to do something along the lines of it, keeping the ramps but fusing them with each other in a logical pattern, and the palette is now smaller (54 colors) but more varied and neater. Thanks!

Concerning the saturation, I am aware of it, but as @Gil mentioned, Pokémon-esque designs are very cartoonish in nature, so the colors are usually bright and clearly defined. My sprites are aiming to be a bit more detailed than Pokémon sprites, but with a similar concept.

Also, thanks for pointing out the problem of definition in the first monster, I hadn't noticed. The bit yrizoud mentions about the inner outlines is gold, I always forget about that. I'll keep working on it.