Team Fortress 2 sprites

[ZeroByte]

Back to pixel art after a long absence. Decided to try to do the team fortress 2 team for my project. Having fun so far and I plan to animate them eventually.

I'm having trouble getting it to look good in 1x zoom. I sort of want to weasel out of it by saying I like the 2x aesthetics but feels like a cop-out to me. Even though I do like it that way. Originally had it at 20 colours, managed to reduce it to 16 and I think it looks better for it.

16 colours:

x2 zoom


20 colours, for crits on my colour reduction. Colour is a bit of a weak point for me so I'd like to see crits on how I can do better. I also probably need to reduce the palette by 1-2 colours to give me leeway for the Sniper and Medic sprites.

[Talos]

They are better at 2x. Maybe try making their joints more pronounced, with a bit less curve. and taking up the contrast might just help.

[robotacon]

Great work ZeroByte.
I hope you'll actually make a 2D version of TF2.
The Demo isn't black enough though.

I crave more!

[Joseph]

what, no sniper?
good though.

[Xion]

The black thing the engineer's holding totally blends in with his self. I couldn't tell what it was at first, or even that it was there.
Also, dudes 2, 3, and 5 look like they're leaning back a bit too much.

[chriskot]

The scout's arm looks a little weird and I think that the engineer's wrench could use some more detail. Also I agree that the demoman seems too be leaning a little far back.

Otherwise, these are awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing the other 4 (medic and sniper especially).

[Vertigo-zero]

I agree with previous comments
-2,3 and 5 lean back too much
-Demo man is wat more black
-the wrench isnt visible
Also, the fat guy (whats his name) has a weird head IMO... Maybe its because his head is small and his nose big 
Edit: No wait its the perspective, he is looking to our left, while all others are looking a bit more towards us, if you know what I mean.

They are still really cool! If you make the animations, I could program the enitre game for you if you'd like! Just mail or PM me anytime

[AdamAtomic]

Welcome back to pixel art?  The TF2 character designs are some of the best to hit games recently.  Here comes the harsh crits!

These could use a LOT of work.  The pose for the engie and the scout feel pretty authentic, but the other 3 are just odd.  I'm not sure why you chose to render most of them without a weapon?  They are never shown this way in-game.  The engineer, soldier, and demoman all have very similar silhouettes here, though they differ radically in TF2.  You've used a fairly detailed shading style with a lot of outlines, which is a pretty odd choice given how smooth and clean the source material is.  The faces are all very hard to read to me.  The soldier's helmet is oddly shaped.  Our forum has a click-zoom option so there is no need to post a 2x version in the future.  Ditto the wrench and leaning back concerns from other posters.

[robotacon]

The leaning back actually makes sense if only they were carrying weapons.
The heavy is leaning back quite a lot in-game if my memory serves me right.

I'll play some TF2 tonight and then I'll come back with some more crit-chat.

[HughSpectrum]

Here's my edit.

I just had to.

[ZeroByte]

Welcome back to pixel art?  The TF2 character designs are some of the best to hit games recently.  Here comes the harsh crits!

These could use a LOT of work.  The pose for the engie and the scout feel pretty authentic, but the other 3 are just odd.  I'm not sure why you chose to render most of them without a weapon?  They are never shown this way in-game.  The engineer, soldier, and demoman all have very similar silhouettes here, though they differ radically in TF2.  You've used a fairly detailed shading style with a lot of outlines, which is a pretty odd choice given how smooth and clean the source material is.  The faces are all very hard to read to me.  The soldier's helmet is oddly shaped.  Our forum has a click-zoom option so there is no need to post a 2x version in the future.  Ditto the wrench and leaning back concerns from other posters.

I haven't actually played TF2, so this is kinda my way of pining for it. Uhm, the weapons I was planning on adding afterwards the rationale being that I want to focus on the palette for the characters first, and then having the freedom of using a separate colour palette for the weapons. I think its a bit of a game oriented approach, which I like, Also explains the poses for the HMG and the Demo, I tried posing them as if they were already holding their primary weapons but I do understand the crits about the posing. I'll rework the pose/silhouette.

As for the art style, I'm not too familiar with it, not having played it yet and when I started the sprites the only reference I had at hand was the meet the scout video. I'll be trying for a cleaner style when I find the time to work on the sprites, been working on these at the office and just got piled on with work this week. Thanks for all the crits.

Incidentally, yes I know about the zoomer script, I implemented the original way back when the forums were still blue. The new script has better programming but I do wish it had the option of starting at a zoom level like the old one did. Oh, also would be nice to tie the script to the onDomLoaded instead of body.onLoad but, thats a bit off topic.

[Helm]

Incidentally, yes I know about the zoomer script, I implemented the original way back when the forums were still blue. The new script has better programming but I do wish it had the option of starting at a zoom level like the old one did. Oh, also would be nice to tie the script to the onDomLoaded instead of body.onLoad but, thats a bit off topic.

Firefox with Image Zoom extension is the way to go for anyone serious about COMPULSIVELY ZOOMING IN ON ANY PIXEL ART THEY FIND ON THE INTERNET