[WIP] Hesper

[ninjascience]

Yeah, I agree about the legs. 

@Sherman.  I did look at that nude and tried to add some definition to the arms and legs while trying to keep the cartoony style.  Your legs look good, but not on that fig, and not for the style I'm trying to achieve, even if the body was sized to match the legs, they are too... shaderific.

@Adarias.  Not sure what you mean by the forehead.

@tocky.  Your skull is much better than mine!  Mine was too flat, and not big enough, I'll incorporate it. thanks!

Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback so far.  Even the elements I won't adopt have been very useful for this beginning pixel artist.  I'll be working on this more this weekend.

[Sherman Gill]

Alright, but overall I really don't think your current legs are working

[ninjascience]

@all: thanks so much for the C+C and edits that were posted.  Slowly but surely I'm learning.  What I realized most of all is that I really need to learn how to draw.

@Sherman Gill: I agree on the legs; here's what I came up with using some of the edits folks kindly did.  I also softened her right calf a bit with a semitransparent pixel



After trying to do some other poses for animations, I realized how much extra work I was getting myself into
as a beginning pixeler trying to work this character into a game.  I decided to make her smaller.

Where previously I used Soul Nomad sprites for reference, here I used Megaman ZX sprites.  These pixels are all original, I simply had
a bunch of different Megaman sprites copied into my doc for reference on shading and form.

Here's what I came up with.



She doesn't seem to have the same depth as the first version, or the referenced sprites from Megaman, maybe it's the color.  I had used the same palette
for the shirt and shorts, but I decided to use a different one for the shirt.  Looking at it now, I see that it's not different enough.  The hands were a challenge, the
Megaman sprites all wear gloves and have extra large wrists.  I ended up giving her fingerless gloves because the hands just didn't look right.

EDIT: i just came to see if there were any replies and it looks worse to me than ever.  Feel free to C+C, I'll learn something surely, but I'm going to make some major changes to this one.

[Atnas]

That was a quick edit mainly just to show you a better palette option. 

[Ichigo Jam]

Some things I noticed:
1) dark line on top of head makes it look like her skull's too flat on top. Since the lighting appears to be coming from the top-left, the top of her hair should be lit anyway (since you're not going for a fully-outlined style)
2) Lightsource isn't terribly consistent - why is her stomach highlighted? Also, her shorts are a bit pillowshaded.
3) right arm (our right) looks a bit too large.
4) the dithering/toes on the foot on the right are unnecessary - your bigger version had very simple feet, which seems to fit the style better.
5) you seem to be using a lot more colours than are really noticable. If you're thinking of animating it, I strongly recommend you cut the palette down considerably!

Also, I preferred the colour scheme of the older version - you've already got 4 main colours (skin, hair, grey, red) and I think more than that should be plenty in a sprite this size - especially if you're going to animate it.

Here's my attempt at an edit (I'm sure more experienced artists will probably still see plenty wrong, but hopefully it will at least give you some ideas)
->
I also took the mouth out entirely - at this size I think it looks fine without it. And I fiddled with a lot of other little bits

[Sherman Gill]

5) you seem to be using a lot more colours than are really noticable. If you're thinking of animating it, I strongly recommend you cut the palette down considerably!

I only see one set of colors that this is really true for (And that's the skin outline and hair shadow)

[Ichigo Jam]

5) you seem to be using a lot more colours than are really noticable. If you're thinking of animating it, I strongly recommend you cut the palette down considerably!

I only see one set of colors that this is really true for (And that's the skin outline and hair shadow)

Hmm, maybe I overstated things...
As Sherman Gill suggests, I was referring to the skin and hair, which between them seem to use 13 different colours - including one brown (RGB:108,50,4) which is used for only one pixel.

[ninjascience]

okay, just wasn't happy with the smaller size version, even with the improvements posted by users
I looked carefully at all the edits and incorporated some into a new edit, but all in all I prefered the expressiveness of the bigger version, even if it wasn't as practical for use in a game.

I took another stab at the original size, paying attention to the crits on the legs.  I went back to my reference source (Soul Nomad game) and studied some more.

I changed the skin color and redid the hair and face, the arms and legs are new, but not especially different.

My wife also commented that the girl is wearing a tube top, which she thought a bit
strange.  I agreed so I turned them into overalls.  I kept the rest of the clothes pretty much the same. 

While redoing the hair, I got to a point where I had just short hair and bangs and thought it looked appealing so I kept that version around.




any preference for one over the other?  I like the short hair but she seems more bottom heavy than the one with the long hair.

I keep getting comments about extra colors.  Some of them are directed towards purposely placed colors, but some of them refer to odd pixels of discarded color left around.

I switched to GraphicsGale and found the color count tool, but if I think there are extra colors, how do I find them?

[tehwexxl0rz]

MUCH better!

I think the addition of a neck made a world of difference, heh. Also, I love the new hair! The short version that is; the longer version kind of makes it harder to read....