Palette advice from tetsuya_shino (edited)

[tetsuya_shino]

Hello there, I am tetsuya_shino. I've never written a tutorial (or anything close to one) but I thought I'd try to share what I know. Maybe someone might find it useful. The following is by no means the 'right' or 'only' way, just the way I personally do things.

*The colors, man... the colors...*

Your computer can create and display a dizzying amount of colors.This is great news when you're playing the latest First Person Shooter, but when you're first starting out creating pixel art, more isn't always better.That is why it's a good idea to limit the amount of colors you use.

A palette is a select group of a given number of colors. A palette can be made up of as little as 2 colors or as much 16,777,216 colors. I personally use a palette that has 256 colors. How many (or how few) colors you use depends on a number of factors, but basicly it's a matter of personal taste.

However there will be times where you will be limited to a very small number of colors due to the limitations of a program you are working with. You could also create pixel art with a very limited number of colors, even though the program you are using will all allow much more. Again, it's a matter of personal taste.

A person could make one palette and use those colors for all their pixel work, or they could create an all new palette for each different pixel art they make. Also just because you have a given number of colors in your palette, that has no bearing on how many colors you personally use. Case in point, I use a 256 color palette.
That doesn't mean I use all 256 colors at once, rather I have 256 different colors I could pick from at one time.

Now lets say I wanted to make a pixel object that was made up of 18 colors. I could create a custom palette of with the 18 colors I want to use. However, if I already see those 18 colors on my 256 color palette, why waste time making a second smaller palette? Like a kid in a candy store I can pick colors quickly and easily.

Still, we all aren't clones of each other. What works for me, might not work for you. And vice versa. Keep messing with your palette until you are happy with it. Or if you are forced to use a set palette (as I am), learn to work around it. Good luck.

tetsuya_shino

[Silver]

thanks man thats really Intresting .

[Tomi]

some critique, eventho this is not a c&c thing i suppose.
im not a good writer so i'll keep it short.

there's an issue i'd like to point out about looped, inverted frames. at the moment the movement of the breating animation looks more like a jellyfish swimming in water because of the same frames used in inverted timing. there's no real fallout on the clothes nor hair, you should pay attention to where they are draped, where they get their initial movement and the varying weight of the objects.
i guess you can go around with the magic wind explanation. im not familiar with the world that the character is in thus making it look unnatural in my eyes.
the breasts look like they want to follow the direction of the body moving, but at faster pace. like the breasts are trying to compete which will be faster at the end with the body. there are several different styles you can use to make them look bouncy, firm, natural, simplest propably being a 1 frame delay on the boobs compared to the chest. then you gotta think about the gravity forcing the breasts to move more downward and harder from them to move upward. in a small sprite like this i think a 1 pixel difference between chest and breasts is enough. now they look like they could hit her in the head all the time. i wouldnt' want to breath while being scared i might get hit in the chin with my boobies if i was her.

about the palette, im not going in specifics but by using a palette such as the one on games factory is very limited and simple. this usually makes the sprites have very generic choice of colors aswell. blue, red, green. if i remember correctly there were some links or tutorials on color in pixelopolis. and of course the net is full of them, some of them bad, some of the worse, few great.

just brought up few things that came to mind. not neccessarily right:)

edit (positivity included): the tutorial is good, having the basic info you need to start animating and has good points. i just didn't agree on some of the methods you used. and it's a nice looking sprite, but everything can be tweaked to make them look better!

-tomi

[Gil]

I agree with tomi. Well-written, has a few good points, but lacks too much to be a decent tutorial.

For starters, the pallette. Too much saturation in there, too few colour variations. As I mentioned elsewhere, I still think that the best way to start creating pallettes for new pixel artists is to rip off a pallette from a game or other artist. Try recreating them yourself afterwards, and try playing around with hue shifts and see what it does with your sprite.
Next up, you mention that you should start out with a small number of colours, then you go and suggest 256 of them. Now, my pieces hardly ever go above 16, so this seems like a HUGE ammount to me. Kinda defeats the purpose of limiting yourself. Limiting yourself to 256 colours is like limiting your "new computer budget" to $5000.

The animation. You might want to cut back on the frame count. I've seen breathing animations that take up 8 frames in games such as king of fighters, and they're real masterpieces. Yours has 15 frames, that's WAY too much. That size, I'd go for about 4.
The hair. There's no such thing as "magic wind". Hair moves due to gravity, just like the breasts do. Hair does what it does due to inertia, meaning the movement of the tips of the hair and the breasts will basically "lag behind", like tomi mentioned. And like tomi mentioned, 1 pixel breast movement at that size is quite much already, what you have is scary.
You might want the shoes to stay the same colour during the animation, as I really don't get why the stockings and shoes are changing colours. Also, your character seems to lack knee movement while moving, they are quite vital parts of the body...