The Resource WIP Thread 3

Thank you so much @Sharm and @starlight dream , sooooo much gold info here. I'll sit down and have a tinker and see if i can improve on this. I think I understand everything you are both saying now so I'll try to implement it. :kiss::kiss:

@Sharm @starlight dream How's this attempt? I tried to make it more true to chibi style while trying to make it not to wide. I also added clothes so hopefully it's easier to see as a sprite. I tried giving her a lot of bounce for cuteness factor :)



*EDIT* Just realized I didn't alternate the arm on the side views. It's been a long day lol.

I've been having extra health problems lately so I'm probably going to miss something important or trail off in the middle of an explanation and not realize it. Apologies in advance.

I don't think you can quite get away with that big of motion without more frames. Instead of looking cute it looks choppy. It mostly looks good. The biggest problem I'm seeing with the animation is that none of it matches. This is the most glaring when she turns from side to front and her bangs go from stretching many pixels and shifting drastically to only moving a little at the tip. What happened to the whole thing moving?

The side view ear is too far back, that's why you're having troubles with the shading of the jaw. With a side view the ear should be pretty much in the middle. That will help her hair look less awkward too. The going left bangs have these strange creases in them. I'm not sure what those extra shades and highlights are meant to represent.

The shirt in the back view is the perfect example of pillow shading. There are other shading problems but most of them look like a result of you just getting it roughed in and done, I'd expect at least most to go away as you cleaned them up during finishing. If you don't know what I mean here, perhaps it'd be good to look up PixelJoint's pixel art tutorial.

The shade of light pink between the base color and the highlight isn't doing you any favors. You could get rid of it and the piece would look the same. Save yourself some work. If you really feel like there should be something to make the jump to the highlight less harsh you could just use it only to anti-alias the highlight instead of being it's own big shading color.

I find it super cute! ^^b

I'm all for bouncy sprites I guess, but I'd expect every character to have a bouncy-type of animation so she wouldn't look too weird next to the others.

There are a couple of mistakes.
- In the back view, her front hair parts on the wrong side.
- In the front (and back) view, the ears aren't even. One starts lower than the other. They should be at the same level.
- From the front and sides, it appears as if her long hair is behind her shoulders. But when we see her from the back the pony tails don't seem to cover the back, they look on the sides. I *think* they should cover more of her back.

What I like:
Cute clothes. I love her arm movements (esp. on the front view)
And it's impressive you worked so fast.
I also like her pointy nose on the side direction!

Sprites require fine-tuning. Rest assured, it's normal to do several edits to polish them :)

Thanks so much @Sharm and @starlight dream for your time! By the sounds of mistakes I'm making, I think most of the errors are due to my general lack of drawing skills. Still having issues translating what I see in my head in 2D. What I might do is take some drawing lessons and see if that gets me a bit further ^_^ Thank you :D

@Andreyla Drawing skills is something you appear to have, but it's good to keep learning of course.


I believe most of the "mistakes" are simply indications that a sprite is in the process of being made, without having reached the final result. :LZScat:
You'd laugh if you knew how many times I've completed a sprite, imported it in the game, only to realize the hair is parting on the wrong side :p

It happens when we're tired and push to finish it... Hoping we're done... when there's more work to tinker with lol

I think you'd get a benefit from analyzing existing sprite sheets.
The RTP sprites for example, are generally designed with features that are balanced.
The hair often doesn't move, because this allows to copy-paste it, from frame to frame, without (m)any adjustments.
The hair is usually similar on the left and right side of the face (with middle partings or no partings). This allows to design the hair when the character goes left, and simply mirror the frames when she walks right, without changing the hair at all (or the outfit).

This type of simplicity allows for creation to go faster, and having less details to adjust.

Of course it's not mandatory to take that route. The hair style you created is more interesting and attractive. A sprite can be as complex as you like. It's perhaps easier to learn with simpler designs.

Your sprite is actually more detailed than normal, if we include the bounciness of her hair.
This isn't bad, in fact it looks like a high quality design, but it means a bit more work to get all the details as right as possible.^^
It'd be a pity if you walked from this thinking you're not good at it, when in fact you have strong skills, and only need the finishing touches.

An exercise could be to take an existing sprite sheet (something quite simple from the RTP) and edit it. Give it for example a hair cut, or change the skin colour, pixel by pixel. It'll help you focus on how it is designed, and you'll notice what stays the same from frame, etc.

Your art skills are excellent (being honest) you don't have a mountain to climb to get there :LZSrasp:

Thanks @starlight dream for the advice and the compliments :kiss: I'll try your suggestions.

Maybe I bit off too complex a piece. I have a background in sculpture, and with 12 years up my sleeve in that field I've been a bit impatient with going back to basics for 2D. Give me a lump of clay and I can render hair in 2 minutes, give me a piece of paper and a pen and I'm like what the heck? :guffaw:
While I have looked at the sprite sheets I find them quite difficult to understand visually. There's so much going on when they're fully clothed. It's part of the reason I decided to forgo armor and put the sprite in a shirt and jeans lol.
That being said, I did push myself to finish it in a single day. Partly because I was excited and partly because I was eager to see the end result. All that happened was a very long work day (which started at 9:30pm and ended at the wee hours of the morning LOL).

I wasn't ready to give up or anything, I just noticed that a lot of the critiques revolved around areas that I genuinely was riding the struggle bus for. It took me ages to figure out how to draw and highlight the hair, because I've never had to colour hair before. It was very understandable to hear that a lot of my errors revolved around it. Also, not getting it looking consistent on every angle was partly because I have no idea how to "turn" a 2D image around. My brain was a little inside out on that too. This is why my thoughts were to study drawing a bit more. I have plenty of time on my hands at the moment so it doesn't phase me too much :)

This thread has been very helpful. I don't think I would've identified my problem areas as quickly without it. Thank you :D

It's gotta be fun with a sculpture: you shape the hair from the front, then turn the head to the side and ta-daaa! The side-view matches the front!! :D

With 12 years of sculpting experience you have an idea when it comes to proportions and values. Any skills can come in handy, but you're right, it'll be good to practice 2D art specifically.
Spriting takes a loooong time. I've been up countless nights 'til morning, fixing pixels :p It does get easier over time, but a lot of people don't realize how much work and time goes into animating those prancing little people.

I'm happy if the suggestions were helpful, and that you took the time to explain your experience. Because it's weird giving advice: we don't know how the person will take it, or if they understand it. Best of luck and looking forward to more of your art (including some sculptures! They can be in a game too, why not?) ^_^b.

I'm currently working on a library map. This is the first set piece for the map.

I like the book on the bench. It's cute.

So, I'm trying to edit PandaMaru's gazebo tiles and place snow on them. I can deal with pixel art, but this painted style is really hard. I might just give it up soon.

So far it looks pretty good. You're going to want to soften up those corners though. Painted it just a different mindset, and in some ways is easier and faster, you'll just need to get used to it.

I took a made character from the generator and have been trying to recolor so that way I have a shadow 'monster' (still debating that part). However, when I followed the original shading and switched it over to grayscale, I ended up with a figure that looks like I pulled it out of a mudbath.


I don't know if just keeping the dark bend areas and coloring it all the same would look good. And I don't know how to get rid of the bootyshorts.

You can go darker if you use color, like a deep red or purple. The shorts will have to be edited out, there's no way to get rid of them otherwise.

Okay, so there's no purple shading, but the bootyshorts are gone. (Also realizing I'm missing a couple of dark marks to represent joints and natural creases. If those apply.)

Hello everyone :)
I've been practising editing the default MV sprites, and I thought I'd ask what could use a bit (or a lot) of improving, as I haven't done any sprites in a while :hswt:
I've only done the front view so far, they're meant to be Vishnu and Lakshmi :cutesmile:

And as a Gif, so you don't have to lug them into MV to check the animation :D

I also thought I'd try to make a blinking animation, as it might be cute with their big eyes and all, what do you think?
I've got it as three frames, so you can have a slow blink like the one above, or a faster one like this:

Feel free to point out anything and everything you think could use some work, I won't be offended, any advice will be very appreciated :)
(Also following @Sharm 's earlier advice, I put them on a grey background so they're a little easier to see, hopefully :))

@Snow White Those images aren't showing up for me.

Thank you so much for pointing that out @slimmmeiske2 , I just checked and they wheren't showing up for me either!! :kaoswt2:
Hopefully you can see them now? :)

@Snow White Your sprites looks really good but why walking sprites have their arms static?! It looks unnatural in my opinion. :kaoswt:

@Snow White I can see them AND enjoy them! :)
They are so beautiful and the animation is very smooth. It looks like lots of love went into the designs.