Little Harder Than I Thought

[madartiststan]

Hoi, so I started to make a character sort of sprite today, fighter sprite if you will for practice and it's something that really made me start pixeling in the first place! But the shading makes me want to go nuts. I've been trying for about an hour now to lay down some decent base shading and get some nice shadows and details into the pants but it's driving me crazy as it all keeps coming out like crap. Some serious crits would be helpful right now, so lay it on me!

[Draco9898]

I'd rather try to explain in words how to do this, but an actual example works better. The same things can be done even if your sprite is woefully small.


A glorious example of clothes shading by one of our own forum members, I hope he doesn't mind


Terry from fatal fury, an example of shading jeans

Your jeans (I presume of course, it could be pair of blue kung fu pants for all I know) have no direct source of light and therefore look pillow shaded and blurry.
The lines on the jeans are way off, giving FAR too much emphasis on the idea of what shape you wanted the pants to look like and need to be cleaner and straighter. When comparing the legs to each other the one on our right is too skinny and misshapen.

[Froli]

This is just an advice, I really think you should study some anatomy before attempting a fighter sprite..  with that knowledge you can make good dynamic stances.

your idea of fighting stance --> application of anatomy/sketch/refining it -> pixel fun

Unless you are an expert  like some of the guys here, you can jump to spriting.

As mentioned from Draco, you also suffer from pillow shading as I have seen from your thread "iso fun", you need to understand how light source works and how it affects an object.

[LoTekK]

While the anatomy isn't off, per se, the pose lacks dynamic, as Froli has pointed out. As also mentioned, the pillow-shading is really killing those jeans, and they're lacking a lot of contrast, making them feel puffy.

Did a quick edit, but bear in mind I'm still relatively inexperienced with pixel art (the dithering may or may not work, I dunno).



I changed up the colors a bit, with some hue shift and saturation changes, plus more contrast.

edit: added an extra shade

[Skull]

A vast improvement on those jeans.
A nice palette too.

I'm not sure what's going on with the upper body, though.

[Opacus]

A vast improvement on those jeans.
A nice palette too.

I'm not sure what's going on with the upper body, though.

That's an edit from another member, Skull, not the updated peice

[LoTekK]

That's an edit from another member, Skull, not the updated peice

Ha, yeah, that was an edit.
Just occurred to me, though: I'm not out of line doing that, am I? Not too sure on how far is too far, where edits are concerned (though I've seen the awesome edits that Helm has done). I just kinda was having fun with the jeans, lol.

While the anatomy isn't off, per se,

Uh, I looked again, and it actually is off. The legs are too short, for one (when you bring your knee up, it should just about reach shoulder height. With longer legs, your arms will need to be lengthened a couple pixels (fingertips should fall somewhere around mid-thigh).

[madartiststan]

Lotekkl: No! I really appreciate that you editted for me to give me an example and something to work off of, it was quite a good edit at that as well. I'll be having an edit soon, just got up.



  I think I'm getting somewhere good now! But, ignore the shoes, it's just me messing around temporarily for some style of shoe or so.

[LoTekK]

Couple of things:

1. First thing's first. You've gone and turned the pants into a bit of a mess of noise. It looks almost as if you're trying your best to get rid of jaggies by placing intermediary shades, which is looking very confusing. It may be better to just forget the AA for now, and focus on getting the main forms down with the light and shadow. You'll notice in my edit that while I dithered a bit here and there, for the most part I retained patches of solid color.

2. While you're starting to get away from the pillow shading, there still doesn't appear to be a very defined light source (not that my edit was fantastic in that regard). It's better than the first effort, but could use improvement. Again, rough out the main forms first.

3. It looks like you've started to define some folds and drapery in the pants, which is good, but they're pretty haphazard right now, especially around the knee and lower leg. The bunching around his left ankle seems a bit arbitrary. Throw on some pants, and take pictures.

4. You've lengthened the legs, but they're still too short. A good rule of thumb is that armpit/clavicle to mid-crotch should be roughly the same distance as mid-crotch to knee should be same distance as knee to foot.

5. Lack of contrast. You've added a darker shade (which is barely in use), but you've also reduced the lightest shades by the same amount. The usage of these has improved somewhat, but the overall contrast is still lacking. You've also got 5 shades, though the two brightest shades are exactly the same value, just with different saturation levels. Bump that "highlight" color up a notch or two in value.

6. Hue shift. Or lack thereof. Your shades at the moment are exactly the same hue throughout, and are the equivalent of the mistake in traditional media of adding black or white to a color in order to lighten or darken it. Try some hue shifts. In my edit, the hue on the jeans runs from about 200 to 260 (on a 360 hue ramp), with warm darks and cool lights. (Note that it's possible to widen that gap even further if you wish).

I actually cheated in that. The two lightest are the same hue. I musta forgotten to hue shift when picking my lightest. :X

Uh, I can't think of any more offhand. Hope that wasn't too harsh or anything... >_<

[Zee]

OK, that was the best explanation of hue shift I've ever gotten. Thank you so much.