fighter sprite

[reydragk]

I'm having a lot of trouble with figuring out the rest of the body...any tips?  The portrait should be pretty easy for me to finish, but the sprite is proving difficult...I have enough trouble just drawing anatomy, pixeling it in with a mouse is tougher...

Almost done now, the sprite is pretty much finished, if you have any crits let me know.  The portrait is mostly done, just gotta finish the tree-arm thingie
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[reydragk]

it's been updated, the image had the same name so it's been replaced in the first post automatically, but I'd still really appreciate some crits, comments, whatever, just to see how you guys feel about it.

[Andy Tran]

 That's pretty good shading there. Here are some tips on using shading on skin tones. Make them well contrasted and follow the blue shadow rule on varying hues. For example, in your fighter sprite. Make the highlights more yellowish as it gets lighter. The brighter, the more it becomes yellowish. The darker, the more it appears blue. So the shadows of this sprite would be darkish red. Highlights are light yellowish orange. Dithering on the breasts would spice it up more.

[reydragk]

That's pretty good shading there. Here are some tips on using shading on skin tones. Make them well contrasted and follow the blue shadow rule on varying hues. For example, in your fighter sprite. Make the highlights more yellowish as it gets lighter. The brighter, the more it becomes yellowish. The darker, the more it appears blue. So the shadows of this sprite would be darkish red. Highlights are light yellowish orange. Dithering on the breasts would spice it up more.

thanks for the tips, but your pallete is too dark in some places...maybe I should add another color for the shading on the lower body to be darker though

as far as dithering, It's too small a piece, the dithering would start to conflict wtih detail work if I used it anywhere but the pecs, and I feel like having it in just that one place might look incongruous with the rest of the piece

[reydragk]

update!  almost done with it, just gotta spruce up the tree-arm thing  on the portrait a bunch and then I think I'm done

[yosh64]

hey

I can see you have put alot of work into this, so I'm sorry to hit you with all my comments... anyhows I sees quite a few things that poke out at me :\

firstly his right arm seems disconnected from the body? and the anatomy looks quite odd to me?
the shading/highlighting of his arm and body looks quite flat? pillow and gradiant shading comes to mind? but i dunno...
his legs look quite stiff also, like he has no knees? how can he walk? hehe...
the way his hands are gripped on the weapon, it seems the weapon should be tilted the oposite way and forwards?

everything seems to be conveniently drawn away/apart from each other, facing out flat with nothing overlapping? this would also destroy alot of depth... reminds me of 3d modelling, when firstly modelling a character flat with open arms and legs, before rigging and posing...

the anatomy of the area above the abs looks odd to me? especially in the portrait...
there seems to be no flow from the neck to the body in the portrait?
AND where is his right arm in the portrait?

what I like is the head in both the portrait and the sprite. I also like like the weapon thingy he has in his right hand and think you should somehow incorporate it into the portrait? I also like the form of his woody/stickly figure left arm of the sprite, although it also seems to lack depth?

his pose is also quite boring... especially for the portait!!!

his woody/stickly figure left arm in his portrait looks very very flat, and judging by the way its pointing, it should look like its poping out and grabbing you? alike Acke's fighter portrait below... AND I wonder why ther are no intertwinded branches in the portrait? as ther seems to be in the sprite? (hehe, I do think that would be very tough to draw)... anyhows you still are not done sprucing it up, hehe


I seem to think ther was very little design/planning before drawing this fighter? I myself usually draw stick figures and sketches on paper trying to come up with good poses and such, and then when starting on my computer I draw a basic figure of how I think the shadows and lighting would be...

sorry I'm just speaking of what comes to mind... I'm quite uncertain of my comments :\ but maybe others with better knowledge can extend on or confirm my comments?

anyhows goodluck with it!

EDIT:
I was just thinking a lil, and something came to me... I was thinking that (especially in the portrait), the line art of the body and neck seems seperate from the color/shading/highlightiung? I think they need to become one/whole? if you can understand what I mean? I think doing this will also improve his joint flow? but I dunno, maybe I'm just crazy? hehe

cya

[reydragk]

your comments are all good comments.  i'll work on putting some of them into fixing up the sprite, although I'm not gonna completely re-do anything...mostly just tweaking.

as far as the arm, I might need to re-do the forearm, 'cause now that I'm looking at it I think I put the muscle on upside-down   as far as it looking disconnected from the body, i'll try tweaking the lineart a little.

as far as the weapon, I don't see what you mean about it's tilt...it looks right to me...

for the "everything being 'flat' and overlapping", that's because this is my first fighter sprite and I did end up kinda doing it like a puzzle--do a piece, combine it with the rest, do the next piece, etc...I regret that I don't have much experience with drawing accurate anatomy, much less pixeling it--I based my musculature mostly off of sprites of Sagat and...what's his name, the guy from Street fighter who looks like a dark-skinned Gill

I'll admit, i think the abs look weird in the portrait too, I think I'll try tweaking the shading there to make them look more natural.  I think I'm missing some shadows in certain places.  I'm not sure what you mean about the neck...
For his right arm...i'm trying to decide if I'm going to pixel it out, or just have it go off the edge of the screen...if I'm going to incorporate the weapon into it, though, I'll definitely have to include the shoulder 'cause I'll have to have his whole portrait more to (our) right.

I'll admit, my planning was kinda shoddy.  I planned out the face a lot, then just kinda went with the flow for the body, thus the less than dynamic pose...I do think I'll try to define his knees a little better, although they're not supposed to be too obvious--check out pictures of satyrs online to see what I mean.

For the tree-arm in the portrait, I know it's flat, I haven't done any actual shading or anti-aliasing yet, it's just a rough.  I'll try to make it look more branch-y too ;p  For the shading on the rest...I get what you mean about the lineart standing out too much...I'll try using a little bit of different colored outlines on parts of him to see how it comes out.

Thanks a lot for your tips, it's a lot of crits, but that's what I posted it for.  I can't get better if everyone just says "oooh, pretty", you know?