[Rk] - Rock Lee and Background

[Rollerkingdom]

Hey everyone i am new here and i would like your opinion on my art..
it's rock Lee from naruto with a mountain bkg.

C+C are welcome!




[The bkg by it self ]

[NaCl]

Hey Rollerkingdom,

Not bad. I think there are some things you've done well, but I'll just talk about what could be better.

First off, the anatomy. It is not terrible, but there are certain things that make it look very off. First, his right arm is much too long. You should be measuring each segment of each arm and leg as you make them to ensure they are the same size. Next, his left leg appears to be broken at a weird angle. His legs are too short. Remember that from the bottom of his buttocks down, should be half his height. I drew a skeleton over top of your guy so you can see the errors, then drew my own to attempt to show you how you can fix them:

First I outlined your skeleton, then drew a new one:


Then, I twisted your guy to fit onto my new skeleton:


Here is yours vs. mine:


Always keep in mind how many, "heads" tall you want your guy to be. In this one, he is right between 5 and 6 heads. I went ahead and made my guy 6 heads tall. There is still stuff wrong with mine, notably his right arm is still deformed. The upper arm should be shorter, and the lower arm longer. The face doesn't quite work either, it feels too crowded onto the small space you have to work with.

As for non anatomy things, you are using a heck of a lot of colors. This is something that I am still learning a lot about, but you need to learn to eliminate similar colors. On the guy alone no background, I counted 54 colors. There should probably be less then 20, maybe closer to 10.

The background is alright, but kind of boring and also color intensive. Having a perfectly flat horizon like that isn't very realistic, and since there is a mountain back there, why not make the horizon shape into the mountain? Also, the ground pattern looks a little too repetitive.

Hope some of this helps, good luck.

[Rollerkingdom]

thank you very much that helped alot@

but how can i make a good sprite with few colors.?
also how should the background be then and any tip on doing a good ground?

[hotnikkelz]

due to the general small size of sprites, u can make your colour ramp with very few colours (excluding the background)

a sprite rarely needs more than 16 colours. Experiment with the colour selection is the best advice i can give. That's how i learnt

[NaCl]

but how can i make a good sprite with few colors.?

Well, you essentially need 3 colors for each area. For most stuff, you need a midtone (which is what color the thing actually is), a shadow color, and a highlight. So for this sprite, you would have:

3 skin colors
4 colors for the green clothes (extra shadow color)
3 colors for the arm wraps
2-3 colors for the leg things
1-2 colors for the red wrap

Then, if you make the darkest green dark enough, you can use that for the hair, and the lightest white from the arm wraps for the highlights of the hair. The white from the arms can obviously be used again on the belt buckle, and eyebrows can use the same black as the hair. This is just a suggested palette, maybe not the best but it is probably what I would do if I was making this. You may think reducing the colors like this will decrease the quality of the sprite but it's not true, it will make it look cleaner and crisper. Forms will look less blobous and more clear. It will also make you carefully consider what you are doing, because if you do something incorrectly it will be quite apparent, and will not be fudged by the tons of colors.

[Rollerkingdom]

but how can i make a good sprite with few colors.?

Well, you essentially need 3 colors for each area. For most stuff, you need a midtone (which is what color the thing actually is), a shadow color, and a highlight. So for this sprite, you would have:

3 skin colors
4 colors for the green clothes (extra shadow color)
3 colors for the arm wraps
2-3 colors for the leg things
1-2 colors for the red wrap

Then, if you make the darkest green dark enough, you can use that for the hair, and the lightest white from the arm wraps for the highlights of the hair. The white from the arms can obviously be used again on the belt buckle, and eyebrows can use the same black as the hair. This is just a suggested palette, maybe not the best but it is probably what I would do if I was making this. You may think reducing the colors like this will decrease the quality of the sprite but it's not true, it will make it look cleaner and crisper. Forms will look less blobous and more clear. It will also make you carefully consider what you are doing, because if you do something incorrectly it will be quite apparent, and will not be fudged by the tons of colors.

Omg nice explanation thanks
Ill do a whole new thing to this sprite and post it again to check out the difference Ok

The only thing i wanted to learn first is the anatomy like you outlined..
Like how did u get the size of his head and knew that it would be 5 heads the height.
I am sorry if i am asking too much it's just that i really love pixel art and i am up to learn a lot of things
and how do i measure his arms?

[NaCl]

I am sorry if i am asking too much

Ask it up. I'll share anything I know (not very much), but that's what this place is here for. Learning.

I got the size of his head simply by measuring how many pixels high it was. Pretty simple. Then, I just took that number of pixels and made a line in increments of that amount. Putting the guy next to this I can see how tall he is. Then you can use these lines to get the parts in the right place. Regular humans are 8 heads tall, but you can distort it to virtually any number of heads less than that, with the smallest being 2 heads tall, or chibi. Google, "vitruvian man". It is a drawing by Da Vinci that I use to look at proportions, and it shows stuff like how long the legs are, how big the arm span is, etc...

To measure arms, I just know that hanging limp, the finger tips will about reach the middle of the thigh. You can measure that distance, and then make the upper and lower arm each half that length, or you can just eyeball it.

If you want to learn about anatomy, I suggest looking through some of the better artists posts on this forum. There is a thread in Things of Importance and Interest, called like, "Best Threads", and there are a few about anatomy. I believe Helm has some good posts about it. Hopefully someone better than I can come in here and explain the best way you should go about learning anatomy.

Good luck, don't hesitate to ask questions either.

[Rollerkingdom]

Thanks for the help ill give a look