The VG Resource

For the most part, but the shading on the shoes was shaped better on the old one. Having just flat light over dark looks banded. Other than that, I guess just try to make his hair look rounder and then, yeah, it'll look good. How far do you plan to take this?

I plan to make a sprites sheet of this, and maybe do the whole normal boots cast.

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better?

The colors are much too dark in general and they bleed together too much. I'd suggest having a look at the colors used in CaveStory if that's the type of style you're aiming for. Dark Clothing simply doesn't work well for character sprites at such small sizes. it's very hard to read the sprite at its normal size against a white background because all of the colors are bleeding together against the background.

I tried a blue shirt since he wears blue shirts quite frequently. Any better?

I think the light brown should be even lighter. The shoes are still very difficult to make out, as is the hair.

I actually really would like him to be in a black shirt. Any suggestions on how to do it with out bleeding the colours?

Here's a sprite from CaveStory+ for a better idea of how to go about this:


Notice how the shading is minimal, but the contrast between shades is crisp and clear; there is also a large amount of hue shift implemented here, and the colors are laid out in a way so that you can see the distinct shape of each body part. try using 3 colors: 1 for skin, 1 for hair, shoes, eyes and shirt, and 1 for his pants and once you establish the proper shapes, THEN add small bits of shading.

Maybe this helps

The first sprite is the original updated one

the second has contrast updates and a little editting

the third is an original style.

After seeing Dragon Thrones custom version I figured I could try something like that mixed with the original. Which do you guys like better? This or the original?

You're getting there, but there are still some things for you to deal with. One of the most jarring ones to me is how the legs are shaded. For some reason, the light source on them does not match the rest of the shading used for the sprite.

The first thing I had to do was give him a smile

Better?

This version is a great improvement over the previous two, but i still has some issues:


Here, I increased the brightness of the lighter brown shade, adjusted the shape of the arms and legs, fixed the depth shading on the pants, and trimmed out a few colors that were difficult to tell from black. I hope this helps out.

How's this?

There are tons of shades that are way similar to each other that you really don't need. you can easily cut down the amount of colors to 16 a like so:

But wait, there's more!
The colors you're using are still too dark and too similar to each other to be readable. I'd recommend at the very least lightening his hair and jeans considerably.

Here's an updated version...


But I tried another version that combines the cartoon style of v2 and the "seriousness (I guess?)" of v3.

Which one do you guys prefer, V3 or V4?