GBA SP

[MadeyeMike]

Hiya everyone. I just found this site today and it looks pretty great, I think I might come here more often 

Hopefully You guy's can help me get better at spriting So here's my first piece for review, a GBA SP



I made this 100% myself using my GBA SP for reference, So you guys have any tips for me to make it better?




oh, and I do have one question about the rules. It says not to rip artwork. Does that mean I can't post a sprite I made from official game art?


Anyway Thanks very much for your Time 

[Sherman Gill]

Pretty good .
First off, though, the darker blue is far too saturated! You should tone it down a little I think.
Also, those buttons aren't just decals, they're three dimension objects, and you should try to convey that in your picture.
I haven't looked at a SP in a long long time, so I don't know if the circles around the buttons are indents or just painted on there or something, but if they're indents, you need to make it look like indents instead of just a black outline.



Also: The ripping bit in the rules, that's about stealing art. Pretty much, if you haven't made it, it's considered a rip. As for edited sprites, I don't think it's against the rules, but it's generally frowned upon, and I doubt you'll get many critiques for 'em.

[MadeyeMike]

made the blue 100 less saturated and added some shadow to the buttons and the indents around them, any better?

[brianskywalker]

I'd say the dark blue is still a bit too saturated. The indentations around the buttons look a lot better now, but you might want to add a highlight and the lower edge. I think some shines on the screen might be rather nice too, it's really up to you.  

Another thing you might want to think about is messing with the palette a bit. I think I would make the light blue a bit more saturated, and not so much of a lavender color, since the SP really didn't come that color anyways. Probably a slightly greener blue would be more appropriate. Also you might want to use a dark dark blue instead of pure black for the outlines, it might look really good.

[MadeyeMike]

Most of the outlines are already a dark blue (light:32) #000040.  Think I should up the lightness on it?

and the light blue(#8080FF) is fully saturated. I could take out some red/green witch would make it darker, should I do that?

Should I add more colors to the palette? I'm at 10 right now (not counting the back/text)



Edit: Any better?

[PypeBros]

looks much better, imho.
Another edit i'd personnally make is to gray the text on the back side.
Right now, they look like a tiny piano keyboard. I wouldn't expect greeked text to have that level of contrast at that distance ...

[MadeyeMike]

thats cause that part is a barcode.

[Shrike]

One thing i think you need right now is AAing around the button indents and some other parts too.

Like so:


I made the light source more defined, AAed quite a bit and did some general shading and touching up, giving it much more depth which it was lacking. I also added the green light and charging light cuz' i coulden't help myself.

But even though it was lacking depth quite a bit, the palette is fantastic and the design is incredibly accurate. Keep up the awesome work!

[Terley]

theres no real need for 2 colours in that palette coran all its serving to do is blur by banding all around the inside lines, at 100% its just doesn't seem like its doing this any significance. I agree some smart use of AAing could do wonders to this but first you need to gather a solid set of colours, this could even be done with just 3 blues if pushed to it.

edit-

But I do think some shading would work on this, it is a three dimensional object afterall so plastering it flat will only force it to look 2D. Though it has flat plains some direction of light should make this visually more interesting. I've tried to alter your palette slightly so there's a consistancy from light to dark with no jumps and apply it to what I would try to do.

>>

More than anything I think it's important to focus on its readability, simplify parts so at 100% it can be easily recognised. Make sure every colour has a purpose and try to make full use of your palette.

[MadeyeMike]

hmm, the hinge doesn't look right on yours. I've been trying to find my SP for ref but I can't find it and the pics on the net just aren't cutting it.

So I think I'm going to put this on hold till I find it, and work on something else for awhile. Thanks for all your help everyone 

[Terley]

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=Game+Boy+SP&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

[Shrike]

I have a GBA SP, i could take some good pics.

If you want.

[MadeyeMike]

That would be great if you could. If you could try to get pics of each side


edit:

[Sherman Gill]

Mine -> <- Yours
I'm mainly here today to talk about light direction, forms, and anti-aliasing.
We'll start with my sucktastic diagram, labeled (A):
What you need to take note is that opposite to the edge with the darkest shadows will be the edge with the lightest highlights. The dark shadow is caused by angled light going over that edge, and then it hits the other slant. Since what we see is just stuff reflecting off of things, imagine it like mirrors. The light goes ---> onto the slope, which would be like /, then it reflects towards our eyes (the vertical bars and ^ in the picture below)
So, light ends up reflecting like this:

Code: [Select]

....(EYE)
......^
......|
......|
---->  /So, slants that reflect light towards our eyes will always be brighter then other areas. Every object on the world behaves like a mirror, it just depends on how much visible light is reflected.

You also need to pay attention to lightsource and keep it in mind with every part of the image. Why would a light be hitting the screen from the top left, not affecting the edges of the top part of the console, and hitting the top right of an indent? It wouldn't. Even if there were multiple lightsources you still need to keep the first in line.

Now time for anti-aliasing:
You've got the shades in your picture to handle it (Well, you could use another darker highlight, like the one I added, for maximum smoooothness), so you really should try to add it .
This will be a pretty bad explanation since I'm getting tired of writing, but, you got jaggies on the edges of the indents the buttons fit into. Jaggies are those little bastard pixels that make things look jagged. The AA on my edit isn't so great, but it gets the job done, but look close (click to zoom images on this forum!), I've got lighter shades next to the dark shades, making it look smoother. How this works is that anti-aliasing is pretty much making pixels that look smaller then actual pixels, because they're between the colors of the colors they're smoothing things out between, they look like they're part of both objects, and uh... losing my point here. Pretty much, each pixel used for AA should be thought of as less then a pixel, and use them to make a slope that jumps around less then it would otherwise, like:

Code: [Select]

(++ = Full pixel; - = AA pixel)
 ++
Normal pixel slope
    ++
    ++
  ++++
  ++++

Anti-aliased slope
     -
    ++
   -++
  ++++
 -++++If you're confused, tell me and I'll try to explain it clearer.

  With mucho love,
 --Lorne

[Kazuya Mochu]

Yes Sherman Gill, exacly what I would do if I edited. if you want to creat the ilusion of carved in at the buttons area, you should use, in the most simple way, a darker and a brighter shado, to convey the sense of dark and bright, in order to simulate the object facing away or towards the light. by addin a dark outline around the area you shade, you break the effect. you should instead use the brighter and darker shades separatly, and have them describe the outline.