Agent 47's Spriting Portfolio that's not a portfolio.

[Agent 47]

Because I'm currently trying to improve my sprites, I figure "Why not do a whole crapload of sprites, purely for fun, of anime, video game, and movie characters? It'll help me improve my speed at spriting, and it'll be a great way to boost my ego! Isn't that right, my widdle-ego-ego-ego! Who'z a gud ego, whu's a good ego? You is a gud ego! You i-"

Back to the business at hand.

I'm going to post the characters I've done in tiers, groups of 5 to 10 (One frame poses arn't too long to do, I guess). However, none of these sprites are for use without my permission, be it in this topic, or by PM (as useless as one-frame poses are).

What I do ask for if you look at these sprites, critique. I want to improve my spriting a bit. I won't respond to critique trying to justify something, I just won't take if I disagree with it. Also, excuse things like, say, character inaccuracies, I'm not perfect, sometimes I make modifications or can't see an eye color, things like that. Also excuse the ones that are painfully obvious, Tier 2 will have ones you won't recognize, probably.

Spoiler: TIER 1

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-07.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-01.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-08.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-03.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-09.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-06.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-04.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-02.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t1-05.png[/imgzoom]

Spoiler: TIER 2

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-01.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-02.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-03.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-04.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-05.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-06.png[/imgzoom]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/Agent_47_495/TDB%20Screens/t2-07.png[/imgzoom]

Also take note, I am accepting idea requests from people for other characters I should sprite (provided I like the idea), just include a link to some page that has a description of the character's personality for the pose, and an image of the character. I might also accept characters from other people's games, but no guarantees.

 

[saikyo765]

Loviing the Kane and Lynch chars! If that's who it is. :]
All of them look fantastic.
Great work!

 

[Agent 47]

I've updated the first post with the tier 2 images. I took into account the pillow shading as best I could, but I left the template alone, as it's not mine. I can't recall if it was Tana or She-Who-Must-Not-be-Named or ShadowKaizer or someone else who made the big sprite sheet of poses for the GRTP. Unless the template being refered to was on Joker, which I just desaturated lazily, my bad.

And for anyone who likes to guess, I put in much harder characters this time, MUCH harder.

 

[Venetia]

Well, the gRTP was a little project that was designed only to use 3 shades per color. If you wanted to use the gRTP templates to make sprites with more shades per color, you'll need to update the template skins with more shades.

Now then, were you to delete ALL the fill so you just had outlines, I'd say, "them's are some nice outlines!!". But with the shading, they look pretty amateur. Really I don't mean to offend there--everyone starts out as an amateur

Firstly, I'd like to recommend taking a gander at my HK Hair Tutorial.
http://www.rmxp.org/forums/index.php?topic=36738.0

It might actually also learn you a thing or two about what you did wrong in the clothes.

Don't forget to shade the outlines, and to follow the same light source for everything. Avoid hard blacks; use hues like blue or purple to demonstrate dark colors (greys look TERRIBLE in pixel art most of the time).

Your palette selections are hurting you immensely. They're very haphazard and bland. Try pepping them up by adding in different, contrasting hues as you get darker. They'll pop a lot more, and will show a lot more contrast.

And that's just for starters

 

[Agent 47]

Giving up on the whole "Tier" thing, no point in practicing sprites if I'm not doing them right.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b28/A ... nTest1.png[/IMGZOOM]

I tried a few of the things suggested (skipping over the shading the template, I'm just trying to get used to doing different poses and such), but I can't say I was satisfied with the results completely, so I'll probably go back to using whites and blacks and greys, and just tint them when it really doesn't work.

 

[Venetia]

Well it's a decent start, but it's far from complete.

so I'll probably go back to using whites and blacks and greys, and just tint them when it really doesn't work.

May I ask what you mean there?

There's a proper method to pixel art, and if it strays much from this (note: the steps can be rearranged in their order sometimes), the results are almost always crappy:

1.) Consider the colors you're going to need, and make a palette/set of palettes.
2.) Make a big, solid figure, totally filled in, with the next-to-darkest color.
3.) Outline it with the darkest color and delete the fill.
4.) Refine the outline and add outlined details.
5.) Fill the outline with the appropriate midtone colors from your palette.
6.) Select only the fills, the "block" in highlights and shadows (use your 2nd-brightest color and your 2nd-darkest color), following a light source you determine (usually top-left). Remember that hair highlights follow a halo around the scalp.
7.) Using the tones between your midtone and your highlights/shades, carefully paint in some ascending/descending shading. Use a small amount of dithering when necessary.
8.) Refine your outlines. Select only your outlines, and then draw their colors to be approximately 1 shade darker than the color they're touching. There can be discrepancies here, and selout should be practiced, but otherwise that's the basic rule for refined outlines.
9.) Pass over your work and refine it over and over and over. Don't forget to zoom out to 100% often to see how it looks as you go.

You seem to have shapes down fine, but you're overdetailing and your shading lacks a LOT of substance.

here's an example of that process in an animation (note: not by me!!!):
http://gas13.ru/newskul/spacebath_inprogress.gif[/img]

And there's always that tutorial I directed you to earlier. If you follow it PRECISELY, you'll get the gist, honest!

 

[Agent 47]

When I mentioned the blacks and whites and greys, I was responding to your saying that flat blacks look bad. I tried it, and I disagree, for my style at least, that's all. As for the tutorial, I've been following that since Tier 1, and long before that even. I did go back and try to follow it to the letter in the last sprite I posted, but in the end I wasn't satisfied with the results at all, and went away from it.

While I appreciate the help with the spriting method, I don't have time to relearn how to sprite from scratch, or else I'll never get anything done on my game. The kind of critique I'm looking for is things like how I'm overdetailed, like you said, or the pallet and shading advice in your first post. Basicly, errors like that, that I can watch out for or try to avoid.

Sorry if I come off rude, I don't mean to offend by rejecting the whole new spriting method thing. But I have to keep in mind that art's a very opinion-oriented thing, and I have to draw the line between improvements, and style opinions. That's why I think your tutorial didn't work for me, your style and methods in it didn't work well with my own styles. I do appreciate comments on things like the shading, or the color pallets though, because the line between style and simple light physics is a brick wall.

Are there any more comments on the actual sprite's shading or lineart? Not to brush everything else off, but I kind of want to hear all the issues with the sprite now, so I can start fixing some of them when I work.