The VG Resource

Trying to practice spriting again, since I'm working on sprite art for a game project (unrelated to this). Felt like spriting some Touhou.

No particular style.



Most Recent:

The shaping of the head kind of makes me feel like the face should be up one pixel higher.
There's no need for the shading on the bangs to be so busy. I think pixel clusters tend to look better when you use a lot of the same shade in a space, rather than trying to fit in some muddy looking clusters all stuffed together in a small space. They're kind of weirdly blending in with the white part of the hat, too, since yellow and white are both so bright. Maybe try making the gray shade a little darker?

The purple part kind of looks like a random clump, but after looking up the character, it's just supposed to be a bow, isn't it? Try to get the shape down. The frills are kind of coming up to a point, but I think it's just supposed to go around her head. So, it doesn't really look rounded right and it doesn't really look like it's under the hat. Try to get a good grasp of your references, and pay attention to how stuff should overlap. It's gotta make sense.

Will do! I'll have a look into all of that tomorrow. I wasn't sure about the bow myself, and I had noticed the point on the frills. Thanks for the points.

EDIT: Screw that, I did a VERY QUICK edit addressing those points to some extent. Will do a proper edit tomorrow (hopefully)

those black pixels on her forehead are pretty bad, remove them. selout in that case is completely unnecessary and only makes the sprite dirty.

Will do! I'll see what I can do there along with the rest of my edit.
EDIT: You were right, it looks a lot cleaner when I got rid of them. I have another edit to show, now.

Changed some of her hair, altered the shading on her hat, changed the shading on the bow a bit, removed two colours, and fixed up another couple of things that were annoying me.



Again, not necessarily a final edit, but I thought I'd post it up anyway to make sure I'm heading in the right direction.

the green bow may be her characteristic feature, but in a sprite this size, it can be removed. The green mixes weirdly with her hair, and makes it dirty.

You may not have used any specific style in this sprite, but it is clear that there are some Mario influences, mostly SMW. The rectangle eyes, huge ears and ball hands kind of scream SMW. I suggest making her ear less massive and make her arm away from us more hidden by her body.

Hmm... I'll give that a try later, I'm a little busy right now.

EDIT: Gave it a go. Looks all right to me, but I'll see what you guys say about it. It's interesting that you say SMW, though, because I have never really played much Mario, and never cared much for it's sprites, so how SMW got in here is beyond me. Anyway, here's the updated one:

As Starsock pointed out, your sprite is very busy/noisy for its size: there's banding, you're trying to put a lot of shades in such a small area.
Here's an edit:

I know you weren't spriting in a particular style, but I think that there is a lot that can be learnt from the way Touhou is drawn; the stylisation is simple and clean, especially on the SD characters.
I hope it helps!

Hmm... I kind of see what you mean. I think part of my problem is that my sprites always seem to come out a lot smaller than I intend them to, meaning that my shading style is usually geared towards a larger sprite :/ I'll have to work on getting my shading styles and sizes right...

If there's something you want me to go over specifically, just say so.
Bear in mind that there is no "right" shading style or size. There's:

• the shading style and size you've conveyed
  
• the shading style and size you want to convey
  
• the shading style best for a clean rendition (ie little noise/business) in relation to the size
  

These poinst can converge. I'm basically trying to explain that it all depends on your intentions.

(01-07-2012, 06:28 PM)Chris2Balls [:B] Wrote: [ -> ]If there's something you want me to go over specifically, just say so.
Bear in mind that there is no "right" shading style or size. There's:

• the shading style and size you've conveyed
  
• the shading style and size you want to convey
  
• the shading style best for a clean rendition (ie little noise/business) in relation to the size
  

These poinst can converge. I'm basically trying to explain that it all depends on your intentions.

Yes, I understand that. What I was trying to say was that the shading style I convey usually ends up suiting a larger sprite, because I often accidentally draw the sprite too small. I would usually pick a cleaner style for a smaller sprite, I just tend to get the size wrong when blocking out the shape :/