Help with a Palm Tree Sprite

[Kurai]

Keep your fronds close and your enemies closer...
Get it? Since this request is about palm fronds?
Sigh... Tough crowd. XD

So I'm working on remaking Splash Hill Zone from Sonic 4 in a 2D style, which can be found here: http://www.vg-resource.com/thread-29192.html

But I've hit a road block... Those leaves! I just can't get them to look right whether I start from scratch or use a base. I was wondering if someone might be up to helping me out with this tree and the cycad like plant?

Here's a reference sheet courtesy of Dusk Golem: http://www.spriters-resource.com/wii/son...eet/34519/

[DarkGrievous7145]

I take the one of the left is yours?
I can't really entirely see what the problem is?
Looks to me like you're on the right path/process for this.

My personal approach to imitating something as pixel art is as follows:
grab the reference material(s)
re-draw the line art on top of or beside the original
create the color palette
base colors
shading/highlights (only one current project of mine is doing this)
touch-ups

If you'd like, I could walk you through my process with actual images?

[Kurai]

That could really help.

Thanks!

I think I'm sticking too closely to the original.

[DarkGrievous7145]

Seeing as the goal is to re-produce the style but at a lower quality/color depth, sticking close to the original should be fine?

and ok, i'll get to that!

lemme go get some materials to work with

[DarkGrievous7145]

i will try to get this done, but please understand if it takes me up to three days?
it shouldn't be THAT long, but i am kinda in a time crunch right now with irl

[Kurai]

No problem at all. Take as long as you need.

And thank you again.

[DarkGrievous7145]

I had every intention of doing this today, however...

I slept-in till 11, for a start. Also, my parents needed he computer.
We left hope till maybe 2 or so, and then my mom and I started baking my birthday cake.
There were some brief intermissions.
After the cake was out of the oven and needed to cool, I took a nap. (fail, right here!)
Woke around time to watch news, then we ordered pizza, then my mom and I made the two layers of frosting for the cake.

I used my remaining time to plan tomorrow's (now today's) schedule, and to deal with a few other things I just wanted to get done.

If I hadn't taken that nap, I probably would've gotten the example thing I planned done... sorry...

//end that bit

as to reply to your reply
Don't give me too much freedom, while I do take my obligations pretty seriously, it's best I'm conformed to a schedule, within reason, since I'm a professional procrastinator! XD

np
I love helping people.

[Kurai]

Well, I'm getting pretty close to finishing all the level tiles...

How does monday sound for a deadline?

[DarkGrievous7145]

My choice of reference material was honestly pretty insane.
I actually traced this one, I normally draw mine beside it, and at a fixed resolution.
However, the last time I pixeled something from an EBF game, it was not such a complicated sprite to begin with

ref:


my guide + an example:
   

I made a significantly lesser quality version of the 'small' yellow bee.
The wings I didn't put as much effort into re-creating exactly, because that would've been a major pain.

Sorry this took so long, got sidetracked, and also was extremely tired most of the weekend.
I probably would have delivered this later, except I've decided to attempt an all-nighter.

Anyways, this is more or less, my approach to re-creating something as pixel art.
I normally would spend way more effort to make it look nice.

1. line art
2. base colors
3. technically still base colors, but the way i created this one resulted in me taking a different approach to apply them
4. shading + highlights.
final: what it should look like in the end, might do additional touch-ups to get there. In my case, i dropped the wing opacity to 128, because the original sprite actually does have transparent wings.

Hopefully this is helpful?