Some Custom Sprites

[Skye McCloud]

Not at all, go ahead. Pillow shading is what I want to avoid, but clearly I'm a bad judge on it.

I will note, I've typically been aiming for 3 to 4 shades per colour I need to use, depending on the size of the area and what it is, though I have gone up to five for this particular guy I'm working on for his red armour, simply because at points having only five was limiting my ability to show some of the smaller design aspects, even if a bit unneeded.

I will note, since this guy is suppose to be wearing metallic armour, I've been taking from the MMX 32-bit sprites to help me try to develop the shading correctly.

[Cobalt Blue]

you'd be surprised if i'd say that there is not much diference between the the x3 and x4 sprites, specially on bosses..


your main problem was not using shading and/or more shades per color. it was that basically, your shading was completely random and wasn't helping define an shape in particular. you were basically trying to cluster several small details with colors that had barely little to no detail at all, w/o a light surce or anything too really put a diference between an arm and a chest. for a sprite of that size, definition is king. adding more and more shades would ultimately make it way more blurry and way more undetailed and unreadable as well.

shading metals is purely based on high contrasts.

and i raised the saturation of the reds as welll to give more life and enhace even more the contrast between the armor and the character itself. still you have a lot of work to do, since you already have 20 colors for a sprite thats suposed to have only 16.

PS: the face and left leg are a complete mess, and i lowered the torso 1px(its 6AM leave me alone )

[Mega_Virus]

If thats your edit from his original I'm sorry to say his original looks better, his looks more metalic than this one.

And adding numerous shades of colors makes it more readable if the pixels are located in the right area's, besides making digitized sprites detailed comes to blurring a tad of area's cause there small to the eye, for example looking at something tiny in reality you see it blurred out cause our eye cannot see it well same goes for sprites/art when attempting to make the sprite/art tiny and graphical.

This is what he needs to work on:

Here if you look it shows the correct shading pattern that you kind of lacked I know because I worked on your sprite.
It also shows that when adding more shades of colors it makes it more graphical, I happen to ruin the original size but you can see already see which one looks better unfortunately you have to work with less colours so the right one would be your best bet for your digitized sprite.
deciding on your base color to shade doesn't really matter that much what matters is you do the correct shading pattern towards the shape you want to present for us.
So a square would have a square shading pattern and a circle would have a round shading pattern, I'm almost certian you know this but some people get confused when working with an unperferct shape.

[Cobalt Blue]

your main problem was not using shading and/or more shades per color. it was that basically, your shading was completely random and wasn't helping define an shape in particular. you were basically trying to cluster several small details with colors that had barely little to no detail at all, w/o a light surce or anything too really put a diference between an arm and a chest. for a sprite of that size, definition is king. adding more and more shades would ultimately make it way more blurry and way more undetailed and unreadable as well.

selfquoting to remind that problem wasn't amount of colors or tones used but rather randomly placed shades that didn't help define the shape of the part in question and was overdone with massive colors in such a small room that end being messy. same thing that happened with your example, in wich you're just focused on the "pattern" the gradient should follow instead of focused on using the shade to actually give volume to the object to help read it as a three dimensional element(as it is now, that thing has no shap at all and its just a flat object with a gradient on it)

also, some elements of the character desing itself didn't help to define shapes either as most were quite confusing in terms or readbility, so adding to the already overdone shading and messy lighting issues already makes it even hard and blurry to read. if you look carefully at some of the actualy game sprites, they do sport rather simplistic and midly saturated colors and shades in order to maximize their readbility(in some cases even ignoring a lightsource). and in most cases to the armor and "painted" parts of each reploid's armor isnt really shinny at all(X and Zero's armors have no metallic shading at all, for example). to be honest, i wouldn't say that such sprites use a metalic shading at all, it looks closer to a cellshading instead(saving metal-shaded elements to specific bodyparts). and no, his wasnt anywhere near being readable as being metallic.

also, i'd like to point one specific point: as i said before, for sprites of such size readbility and definition is king. in your example you have plenty room to add as many shaded as posble in order to make it more smooth(in fact, you do have to, since its size demands it). however, for the chest plate in thes aid sprite for example, adding more than two(or even three colors) would totally be unnecesary as the area you had would barely leave room to add such amount of colors.

finally, if you check the original colors used, you'll notice that most of them blend together as they all lack contrast and rather look dark and end merging with the outline in some cases, while zones such as the hands and feet have an extreme contrast with the rest of the armor poping out more than they should, breaking the whole image and drawing the viewer's attention towards them. like putting a soap in a buckle full of coal.

in a nutcase, it doesnt need to be "blurry" andn shouldn't never be like that unless speciic context demands it. in sprites of such size, smoothness comes from the readbility and definition of each one of the features present in the character. and that comes from a wise selection of colors and proper shading acording to the size of the sprite.

[Skye McCloud]

Ok, I went back to looking at the X4 sprites, this time pulling up X instead of Zero. I then did a quick sheet of the colours I used (I think I missed the two used for white of the one eye), then proceeded to limit it down to 16 colours.

I then went and played with the colours I now had, trying to get greater contrast between them (Most of the brightest shades were upped) and retooled the shading based on what the X sprite looked like. Since I obviously have less room to play than an X sprite (The armour is designed to be thinner than what X would have), I had to work around it. The intent was to go on Metaru's advice, drop out some shades, and give a less blurry look and a more metallic look to the red areas.

This is what I got:

[Cobalt Blue]

it certaily look way better, to me. try using a bit more dark outline on the hands, and the left leg's foot still troubles me. it does look way too tilted for what it should be. keep both feet in the same line since all X sprites follow a single floor line.

[Skye McCloud]

I've been ignoring how the X sprites do floors, because while I want to use that style for the metal, for the most part these sprites won't have the X style. This is the only character for the game who will have metallic armour. If you look at the sprites for Groove Adventure Rave, the original base, you'll see they're using more than a single floor line. It has a more 3D area to it. (I could be wording myself poorly here)

Regarding the hand outline I can probably do that on the right hand, but the left hand will have issues since the end of it overlaps his thigh, which is dark in colour. It creates a bizarre look, at least to me. I think the only way I could deal with that hand was if I was to lighten the pants near where the hand overlaps, or to redo the entire arm so it's not overlapping the leg, which is a bit more work at this stage (Since every change I now make has to then be retroactively done to all the animations I've done thus far (Only two, but a pain in the ass nonetheless) for this char) than I'd like to do... actually, I could also redo the shades entirely, killing the darkest shade and reshading the hands to be similar to X style again, which would solve the problem.

I am, however, making some other needed fixes to the hands, which should restructure them to look better anyway.

[Mega_Virus]

Okay.. so you pillow shaded it giving it a glossy look.

Here is mine yours and McCloud's:


I used a proper shading technique that I explained previously to give it a smooth look. Your sprite is quite dark thats why you cant make up the hands that needs a dark outline.
McClouds sprite looks kidish and not serious due to his contrast, I agree that you don't need more shades of colours cause you obviously have enough in certian area's but not all area's.

Here's my pillow shading on the same sprite I worked on, which I admit looks pretty good actualy I don't know why I didn't think of it.

[Cobalt Blue]

i've said all i had to say already.

[Skye McCloud]

Ok, so I'm getting mixed ideas here.

I do it one way, I'm told it's pillow shading. Ok, so I change the shading rather significantly to make it more directional, and again it gets called pillow shading. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't pillow shading the act of "shading a sprite by going around the outline with increasingly lighter colour". So basically, it treats the light source as if it's in front of the character.

Given that, I don't quite see how the last one I did is pillow shading. It seems to me like I set a very significant light source to the top left corner of the sprite (With the extra shine to signify this). Also, given the armour design in the chest, that obviously needs a very particular look to be remotely correct, which I had thought was well done.

So then, what exactly am I doing that makes it pillow shading? I've reshaped the shading over and over, redoing the colour scheme and the actual shading so many times. I need more of a grasp on how what I'm doing is pillow shading, since to me it feels like it's not yet I'm being told it is.

[Mega_Virus]

Not pillow shaded.

Pillow shaded.

Pillow shading is useful for making an object look like a marble or to give a shine on the object
making it seem polished metalic look a good example is a polished rock.

[Skye McCloud]

Ok, yea, so then my understanding of pillow shading differs. That would be why. You're basically saying my adding the shine, to make it more like metal, is what makes it pillow shading. Bleh.

[Toad]

Adding shines is not pillow shading Mega_Virus.

[Mega_Virus]

Adding shines is not pillow shading Mega_Virus.

Sparkle shine is not pillow shading if thats how your lookng at it, but more like a glossy shine, like for instance not a shine that is on one side but more like in the middle
so taking my polished rock for example, when you take a polsihed rock and put it under the light it forms a centered light/shine so the main reason why I compared it to polsihed shine is because thats what it looks like cause the light is not taking any side completely and sticks more to the center if you look closely to my sprite edit here that I claim pillow shaded the bright light doesn't touch any side completely.
Pillow shading is done generally on top of objects, and in this circumstance but you need to have a proper shading first then adding a brighter color in the center making the sprite look glossy by using a pillow shade technique.
Explain what you believe pillow shading is then just don't add someone elses idea on it
I would like too know exacty what it is if its not the way I'm looking at it by your own perspective.

[Skye McCloud]

From my understanding, pillow shading is more or less what I described above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqBu3vG2LAo

Just skip to the end to see the final thing. That's a pillow shaded sprite. Sometimes it's used to do very poor, stupid shading that is overall unrealistic, and sometimes it's used to try and create anti-alias in a rather poor way.

http://www.rjanes.co.uk/tutorials/introd...el_art.php - This one shows you what the anti-alias thing is like. It's more or less the same., starting from the outside and shading as you move in.

Edit: Ok, so I just finished tweaking the shading on the next colour test. I went back to the sprite of 32-bit X for this, noting carefully how it was done and altering my shading to work. The left hand was redone to try and make it look more like a hand, some darker outlines were added to the right one, the shading on most red armour was redone just a bit (I pulled my darkest shade from the chest). At this time, this is probably what I'll stay with, since it feels rather complete. The only exception will be the left leg, where I had also pulled the darkest shade. I may re-add it, though, if it appears to be a problem.



So how is this one? Good? Bad? I hope I've avoided most of the problems I've seen mentioned thus far.