Elysian Shadows

I'm really new to pixel art, and in my perspective I am absolutely horrible at it. I've been messing around on MS Paint for awhile, and I've come with something decent... I think. I made a sprite for this one game I plan to program, but I need both feedback and advice on it. These will both be appreciated! :D

Here's the guy I made.

Well... It looks pretty good at first glance. However, when you look closer it looks like a suit of armor with a large wooden ball in place of a helmet/head

yeah the highlighting bits look good and the light source is roughly coming from the same place. makes him look shiny.
if the brown is meant to be hair, maybe put some shape (a cut/part) into it so it doesnt look like a round ball
the sword looks a bit flat, maybe split its color down the middle grey/dark grey, and put the same white highlight line on the edge
also maybe put some handle on the sword maybe so you can tell its a sword better eg 0==|=======> lol

Thanks. :P Yeah, I'm absolutely horrible at hair and I really like the top-down view so I just put a ball. Sort of like those Flash games like Athalina RPG or Hero RPG. After taking the advice, here is the updated version:



Don't mind the purple background, that is for masking purposes.

I went ahead and edited your sprite to be able to give some advice, hope you don't mind.

The generall changes are:
1. The hair colors were reduced appropriately to three shades of brown and some detail was added to the hair.
2. The skin was changed to more natural color, highlight leaning toward yellow/orange and shade toward red. The darkest hair color used for the face's outline.
3. The shoulders were moved to a more natural pose, shaded and dithered and the armors perfect grey color got a hint of blue to give it more depth. Some of the original colors removed.
4. The feet were moved a little as well to support the weight of the sword in this pose, the hair color was used for them as well.
5. The swords shape was given more depth.

I understand why the background is purple, but using it for a background color while you're still editing the sprite isn't a good idea because it's uneasy on the eyes and won't display the other colors anywhere near as they will be seen in-game. I changed it to a dark green, mainly since I imagine this character in a dark dungeon.



General advice would be not to use more colors than you need (three-five colors is usually enough, it depends on what you're doing with it), imagine the actual pose in your head or even try to stand in the pose to get an idea (in this case with a stick or whatever for the sword), use an appropriate background color while drawing.

I forgot to change this before uploading but make it a habit to use image sizes according to power of two numbes (2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on), in this case 48x48 or 64x64 px would work, older graphics cards may not always support other sizes.

Hope this was helpful/useful.

Thanks. And man... That is incredible. I've tried to do things like that, yet they never turn out as planned. :\

Exiled wrote:Thanks. And man... That is incredible. I've tried to do things like that, yet they never turn out as planned. :\

That's fine really, your sprite is good tho since it's easy to tell what it is, quality will come later. It helps a lot looking at how other artists do things or just look at photos when you feel that you're stuck and don't know exactly what to do.

Hopefully, haha. :P

I've redesigned a lot of it after taking everybody's advice. I haven't added in the sword in yet, but I think I did a better job on this one. I didn't use dithering because I can't, heh. I'm pretty intimidated by dithering overall, so I probably won't be using it yet. I added more shading on the hair to show mild creases and parts and I've also added the hint of blue you were talking about. The boots have 3 shades of color instead of 1 now as well.

Exiled wrote:Hopefully, haha. :P

I've redesigned a lot of it after taking everybody's advice. I haven't added in the sword in yet, but I think I did a better job on this one. I didn't use dithering because I can't, heh. I'm pretty intimidated by dithering overall, so I probably won't be using it yet. I added more shading on the hair to show mild creases and parts and I've also added the hint of blue you were talking about. The boots have 3 shades of color instead of 1 now as well.

Wow, that is a BIG improvement. Nice!

Thanks :D

I agree with ismetteren, that looks much better.

Its amazing how these small tips can help so much. I know that when I'm doing art I have to look at other peoples stuff for the little things that make the big differences.

It is amazing, it's helped me a lot. My first one already looks worse in my eyes.

Exiled wrote:Hopefully, haha. :P

I've redesigned a lot of it after taking everybody's advice. I haven't added in the sword in yet, but I think I did a better job on this one. I didn't use dithering because I can't, heh. I'm pretty intimidated by dithering overall, so I probably won't be using it yet. I added more shading on the hair to show mild creases and parts and I've also added the hint of blue you were talking about. The boots have 3 shades of color instead of 1 now as well.

With a good palette dithering isn't necessary but definetly looks nice in some cases.

Looking at the last sprite you're using about seven colors on the armor, for details this small that amount is overkill, you should be able to cut it down to five at least and give them a bit stronger brightness/darkness respectively.

The hair almost appears solid and could use a lot more contrast consider it uses four colors.

I'd also recommend having a look at Gimp, Graphics Gale or just something else because Paint lacks the hotkeys to be used efficiently, on a learning curve it's just not worth it.

I have used Gimp, in fact I use it for my website templates. I've never actually tried pixel art on it though.

exiled that definately looks better than your first one
but yeah i would suggest zooming right in and looking at how pritams sprite looks.
i think generally, you need more variation between the shades in the palette you are using. the colors are too close together to pick out distinction of the features etc.