SkullgirlS fan sprites

[pkmays]

I was quite taken with the character designs from Alex Ahad's journal and his SkullgirlS website, so I made some sprites and played around with alternate color schemes.



These are the three done so far, in the order they were made.



Top one uses a ton of colors (around 4 shades per color), lots of AA, and took over 2 hours from start to finish. Not very efficient even for a practise piece. Bottom two are more streamlined and standardized with 3 shades per color and went much faster. They all break the 16 color norm for fighters, but meh, it IS a new millenium.



Saved the major steps for the second one. First step is line art (from this scan), next step is lay down colors, then add some shadows and finally smooth stuff out.



Some experimenting with the sprite. The lines looked too thick and I felt they where giving the impression of a scan that was just shrunk down and turned into a GIF instead of genuine pixel art. So I eliminated all the black and replaced it with the darkest shade, but the results felt too soft and I couldn't bear to lose so much definition.

I took a look at some Darkstalkers sprites and found Capcom seem to have encountered the same problem and relied on selout/inverse anti-aliasing/devil worshiping to deal with the problem. Mwahahaaa!!!!! Basically they found a way to keep most of the comic book style outlines but used some black magic to thin out the lines and keep them from getting to bulky.



Here's what I'm talking about. Still has a good deal of definition but the lines aren't so bulky and IMO looks much better. I tweaked several other areas as well, like the eyes, fingers and toes.



Hot off the heels of the second sprite, this was basically approached in two big steps. I first drew the outlines over the sketch and used the AA created by shrinking the sketch as a guide. Then I went in and selectively destroyed the outlines and there you go, same result. Worked out pretty well especially since I'm generally terrible at manual AA (which hurts my selout too)    :'(

Anyway, I want some thoughts on the style, if the choice in lines works, etc. I'd also like to see if someone could come up with a better solution than using broken black lines. There's a way to get that nice cartoony feel that stays true to the style without relying heavily on selout, but it seems to be beyond me...

Update 2007-01-03

Painwheel WIP

[TheAbyss]

Soo, you made those COMPLETLY by yourself? (exept the "skull girl" concept)

[Cow]

I like the second one a lot, especially the black/red/green palette. The face on the third one bothers me (although the bunny is adorable, besides on the black/red/white palette ).

You selectively destroyed the outlines very well, if I can say so myself.

Don't think I can answer any of your questions. I can only offer my respect and the following emoticons: 

[Conzeit]

Soo, you made those COMPLETLY by yourself? (exept the "skull girl" concept)

yes he did...C_C you obviously dont know who he is do you? his avatar is just a big joke.

[eck]

sorry for the OT, but...

@ the person above (pk feel free to answer this too), who exactly is pk? I'm a bit confused.  a while ago i figured out his avvy was a joke, but Ive never really seen any of his work other then that sexy avatar and these sprites
...
*examples pl0x?*

anyway, these sprites are nice, i like them a lot.  not much to crit on because its late, and i feel like going to bed. 

perhaps tomorrow when I'm slightly more awake and... erm....  awake...?  ill make you an edit

[Godslayer]

Soo, you made those COMPLETLY by yourself? (exept the "skull girl" concept)

Chucklesnort.

[Opacus]

Soo, you made those COMPLETLY by yourself? (exept the "skull girl" concept)

yes he did...C_C you obviously dont know who he is do you? his avatar is just a big joke.

It's no joke, it's godly 

[TheAbyss]

No. I don't know who he is. And the reason I asked was his avatar ('cause ya his stuff is "godly")....... >.< Should I know who he is? 

[JonathanOfDrain]

Wow, these are really good. I Miss Fortune came out well. Are you going to do Umbrella?

[robalan]

TheAbyss: He was a member on the /old/ pixelation, and if you've been lurking around here, you have probably noticed him giving critiques, being helpful, etc.  On a side note, I'm curious why you question him based on his avatar, since I seem to recall that you didn't make yours...

Anyway, the sprites are nice.  A couple things bug me, though:
-The left big arm on the first sprite looks flat on the bicep; maybe you could use the first buffer shade to give it a highlight.
-The face on the third one looks squashed; maybe it's intentional, but it looks a bit weird.
-Also, the second one's head looks like it extends too far on its top-right corner.

I'm vaguely curious how the shadows were made; did you just take the sprite and stretch+skew it, then make all the colors the same?  Or did you draw them out separately?  Anyway, cool sprites.

[2dgamers]

Very nice! I love the cartoony look and the variations in the outfits. The step-thrus make it look so simple.

[Faceless]

I love them, though some of the outlines are very sketchy.
I'd go into more depth, but I'm pretty sure I'll do some edits later.
Do some more.

[o_8]

Hi, I'm Alex Ahad.

I gotta say, I totally love how these sprites came out- the critique of Cerebella's hat's arm applies to the illustration of her as well, since the bicep there is not highligted as well ;

But yes, I do some pixel stuff as well, I should post some and introduce myself more formally. Either way, glad to meet you all, this place looks like a fun place to learn and meet new people m(_)m

[pkmays]

Urg...I'm really not very happy with the 3rd one the more I look at it. There is something off with the face, and the lines look too jagged in places. I'll be doing some more experiments with them. Thanks for the crits so far, I'll be taking them into consideration once I find the time to cook up some more sprites.

I'm vaguely curious how the shadows were made; did you just take the sprite and stretch+skew it, then make all the colors the same?  Or did you draw them out separately?  Anyway, cool sprites.

Yeah, I created a brush from the sprite in Pro Motion and did some thinkering to it and used a mask to draw it under the sprite. Quite easy actually.

[robalan]

Yeah, I created a brush from the sprite in Pro Motion and did some thinkering to it and used a mask to draw it under the sprite. Quite easy actually.

Ah, okay.  Cool.

[Helm]

Your eyes are very good. You saw your problem with the thicker outlines looking like a bad scan instead of pixel art and adressed it yourself. Too bad you had to use devil-worship to do it. Personally I enjoy the colored and weightened outlines step in that animation where you try to deal with it more than I do the selout, but I *do* give you that the selout version is better than the non-selout version at adressing the thick lines problem, and probably closer to the source art itself.

However, this is a different medium and you shouldn't try to copy how comic-arty stuff looks on it more than a bit. Bottom line is what promotes the medium most, and for that I'd go with the colored outlines, personally.

There's not much pixel-art level critique I can give you, I'd soften the interior-aa a bit more at places, there's still a bit of blurring, but otherwise, top job. Congrats.

[pkmays]

Finally got around to starting up a new one. Input is welcome. This is supposed a block frame of some sort. Character is pretty twisted and demented, thus the strange pose.

[Xion]

Well wow, man. Every few minutes I came back to this thread and there was an update to pinwheel or whatever her name is. Well, I like it, but I think that some shadows shouldn't be straight black like the foot shadow and the abdomen. It just looks wierd, to me. I also think a paler skintone would be more suiting, but I don't have the originals' open on the site right now so I'm prolly wrong.
Honestly, I don't know what I'm saying. I really can't see anything wrong with this. I'm sleepy.
Goodnight.

[pkmays]

Eheheh yeah, apparently Saturday night isn't the best time to get critique. I do imagine the black shadows will be hit or miss depending on people's tastes. I'll cook up an edit without the black and see how it turns out.



Palette tweakage. Skin tone paled up some.



Reverted to hand from original scan.



Shortened other arm, as it was freakishly long. (Which is saying along, considering the subject matter.) Removed spinwheel as it has some major geometry issues which will be addressed later.

Anyway, I tried to get a pixely feel to this one without breaking the lines any. Think this might be a better implementation that the selout.



Also, cleaned up Annie, realized the error of my ways.

[Faceless]

Didn't go too far with it, but I started cleaning up your AA on her leg and foot.

I think most of the rest of the image needs cleaning up in the same manner.
Now some general crits:
Shadow? All the others are so nice...
The eye in the mask is really messy.
I think the toes on her left foot could do with being made a touch smaller.

Parts of Annie work better, but I would go so far to say the selout worked better in other places. (Does this make me a Devil Worshipper?)
It would get confusing if I tried to describe each area I thought looked better with, so I'll leave it to you to play around with or not.