My Fakemon and Other Pokemon Sprite Stuff

[Hoeloe]

EDIT: At the time of writing, the last post was by Gensu. It takes a while to write this much spiel.

Okay then. Here we go. I was a little preoccupied while posting, so I didn't give much detail, but if you want it, here you are:

I'm not going to comment on the designs other than saying they are bland and uninteresting, I'll talk solely about the sprites from this point onwards:

First of all, your poses. You seem to have no concept of shape, support and balance. Even if these are your own designs, you need to have some idea as to how anatomy is built in order to avoid things looking awkward and unbalanced. Your first one doesn't have enough leg to really comment on this, but the other two do. For the second one, the legs are slanted forwards, making it look like it's about to keel over backwards. Pay attention to where the centre of mass of things is, and you may be able to avoid this. For the third one, Not only does it look incredibly bottom heavy, but it's pose is very stiff and awkward, like it's been frozen in carbonite rather than standing. Aside from technical issues, all of your poses are dull and boring (let along in the wrong plane. I'm assuming you're aiming for Pokemon style sprites, and in that case, they should be facing down to the right, not straight forwards or straight to the side).

Secondly, your lineart. I'll be blunt, it's horrible. Your lines are not smooth, and you have a poor understanding of shape, form and consistency. Let's take the first sprite as a case in point. The tail changes width at least 3 times in that short space, and it appears to do so arbitrarily, making it look ugly and awkward. The leaves (or what I assume are leaves) in these sprites do not look anything like leaves. Leaves are not generally circular. If you want to sprite something, I suggest you look at reference images (here, bark and leaves, to get the texture you want).

Thirdly, your colour choices. Dear. God. Are those MS Paint default? No, just no. The saturation is WAY too high, making the colours burn into your eyes. Your contrast is far too low on the leaves, making the shading almost pointless, too (not that it isn't already, I'll get to that in a minute). Again, try looking at real world objects and seeing how light affects them. Take a look at techniques like hue shifting, too. As for the colour on the outlines, again, no. You have no idea how to effectively build an outline. Again using Pokemon sprites as a reference, they use a technique called sel-out, which means actually shading the outline in accordance with how much light is available to it. I suggest you look it up.

Fouthly and finally, your shading. It's dreadful. The purpose of shading is to build volume and add depth to your sprite. Your shading does none of this, and I will explain why. You shade along the edges of objects, completely arbitrarily. This does nothing but make your sprite look ugly and unprofessional. Choose a single light source (for Pokemon, this is usually the top left), and then try to shade as though all light is coming from that direction. Darker colours should be further from that lightsource, and lighter colours closer to it. You can and should also use shading to do a lot of the jobs you've tried to use the outline for. Using a black outline to define fine shapes (such as the veins on the leaves) is a poor decision, because it invariably looks messy. Instead, you can add a little shading to suggest a slight change on the surface of the leaf, which looks a lot neater, cleaner and, in all respects, better. However, remember that lightsource! Your shading has been applied solely because you think you should add shading. Before doing something, think about why you are doing it. If you don't know, find out, first.

Basically, these sprites are beyond saving. There is so much wrong with them. However, this doesn't mean you can't succeed. Like everything, it takes a lot of practice.

P.S. I apologise for the harshness of my previous post. I am pretty knackered right now.