Slime Salad

I can tell it's hair, but it does pop out a little more than it should. But all in all, the graphics look pretteh.

Jack wrote:I'm not sure I understand the main characters hair. The blue bit looks like its jutting out from his/her face, and I'm not sure if the red part is a bandanna or not.

It's supposed to be sticking out from under his bandana. Oopsie! ^^;

BMR wrote:

Jack wrote:I'm not sure I understand the main characters hair. The blue bit looks like its jutting out from his/her face, and I'm not sure if the red part is a bandanna or not.

Agreed. It looks rather strange. The overall character design is pretty nifty, and I like how you've done it. But I'm with Jack on this that the hair needs a bit of work, it's hard to tell what I'm actually looking at.

I rather like the slimes though, but they're so cute-looking it's almost a shame to have to kill them, hehe.

Thanks a lot, and yeah, those slimes get less cute when they start attacking you. XD

Meowskivich wrote:I can tell it's hair, but it does pop out a little more than it should. But all in all, the graphics look pretteh.

I'll try to fix that! Thanks!

So, it's no secret that my PCs/NPCs are pretty bad. They clash horribly with the rest of my art. High-saturation sprites walk about dirty and grimy detailed background tiles. I've been doing a lot of wall, floor, object, furniture, etc... making, so I thought it was high time to try to improve my sprites.

Original


This is the original walking sprite for the main character. It serves its purpose I suppose, but I wasn't happy with it, particularly the face and how it blended too much into the background.




HotOHR Revised


This was the revised version for the HotOHR. An improvement I suppose, but far too jerky for my liking. At least now he stands out better. Problem is, his art style and color scheme clash horribly with my backgrounds. A change was needed.





Current Revision


This is the current one I'm working on. It's better (I think) than the previous ones, but I'm still not happy with it. (The legs! Ach crikey, how horrible the legs are!) Perhaps I should go super-deformed ala a lot of JRPGs? I know that I can do better than this. More work is needed.


Any suggestions are most absolutely welcome.

current is the best yet.
as for legs, one of the many things that I can't get right myself.
one way of maybe improving it would be to watch the way people walk and how their legs move and such like some sort of a creeper, I'd suppose.

BMR wrote:The legs! Ach crikey, how horrible the legs are!

I think the issue with the legs in your current one is that when they go back, they get bigger, and go outwards. Basically, it looks like he's dancing rather than walking. Instead, his leg should go inwards, and get a bit smaller. The arms are contributing to this awkward dance, too; rather than going back and forth, he's just shaking his elbows around. Change the shading to go from light to dark starting at his elbow. Also, that one strand of hair on the left keeps blinking at me.

Here's a really cheap example of what i mean:

Tried fixing the thing with the dancing elbows and the legs, but not too sure how successful I was. Here are the new bases:



Old base used in the third sprite above




New, revised and enlarged base





I'm still not completely happy with it though. But it's an improvement I think. Though I could be wrong, heh.

you should totally keep the dancing versions for random dancing npcs!

I think the dancing version looks more girly, so maybe use it for the girl characters?

I really like how the new version has a more defined chin.

Why does his left ear seem to be flapping? I notice the template doesn't have that.

Overall, lots of improvement, good work!

Bob the Hamster wrote: Why does his left ear seem to be flapping? I notice the template doesn't have that.

And thus it can not be unseen...

@BMR - I really like your new revised and enlarged base sprite. I'd definitely go off that one moving forward with your game. Nice work!


AND just because I haven't posted updates in a long time... it doesn't mean I've abandoned the project (for once)! Just found some time to finish up my rock ledge tiles.

speaking of enlarged sprites, how does one even do that? Is there a tutorial of some sort?

Meowskivich wrote:speaking of enlarged sprites, how does one even do that? Is there a tutorial of some sort?

Here you go.



And VampiDucki, those are some amazing graphics. Can't wait to see that in action.

The boys and the gels. The girl in particular needs quite a bit of work. Any tips on how to improve it? Any help at all would be very much appreciated.

Cheers!


EDIT: I rather think her abdomen and torso could do with a lot more work...

My first thought: The girl's hips are way to small. She lookes like a boy, if you don't look at the upper part of the body.
Also her stomach is a bit to long in compairison to her legs. Better let her have long legs, that's more pretty, people say.



In most of my books about drawing, they say women's body look like eights and men's rather like a triangle. I ofter wonder then people (not you in particular, but I also saw other people do this) do not consider while making computer graphics, that you can hardly make a female version of sprite just by adding breasts. The results are often a bit ... strange?


But, besides that critcism, these sprites look really cool!