First ever Half-Kaiser: please comment!

[Tamino]

I've been using RMXP for about a year or so, and recently I have decided to try and make a game under my own steam - resources, music and the like. I have a lot of good BGM music, and eight well-fleshed out storylines in a folder on my desktop, but when it comes to creating custom sprites, I have no idea what to do. I found Showkaiser's Half-Kaiser template, a few palettes, and a variety of examples, and I thought spriting on that template didn't seem too tricky.
:down:
Eventually, (after seven shading tutorials) I made this, my first (finished and good-looking) H-K sprite. But there's still something wrong with it that I'm not exactly sure of. If a spriter could please point any problems out, I'd me much obliged.

(P.S: The freshly-shaved black hair is temporary - until I can get the knack of spriting proper hair, the barrels of green hair dye and the five-foot-long bangs will have to stay on hold. :sad


Here you have it: the Humanist. If it helps, it's a class, like Thief, Black Mage e.t.c (Think Final Fantasy Tactics A2!) that I designed to be in a sort of fft-stylized game that had to be unlocked by mastery of other classes. The sort of class that you see jumping (and flying) around the battlefield blasting everything it sees into oblivion with a load of epilepsy-inducing spells.

 

[Berserker]

No where near enough contrast between your shades.
Stop dithering, personally i love dithering, but on characters it looks bad and unnecessary.
Choose a better palette because this looks very dull to me.
The biggest problem which is so common its cliche... Your Pillow Shading.

Light isn't coming from the center. Define your light source to the top left corner. Also light doesnt reach everywhere, light can be blocked by the clothes and folds.

Hair is the most difficult part of spriting for beginners so you must get a handle on your basics... Colour, contrast and shading.

 

[coyotecraft]

The Half-Kaizer Construction Project has a gallery of color palettes, templates, clothes, hair styles, ect...

There's not a whole lot there. Most of whats there is made for the older template, which is what you're using.

As for spriting advice, I think you need more depth in your shading. You seem to shade everything to evenly. Light at the top should be stronger then light at the bottom. Therefore, you should only use the lighted shade of green at the top, and only the darker greens on the bottom. Don't leave the outline one color, it to should be lighter at the top and open areas.

 

[PixeL]

Well, honestly, yeah, the dithering looks like crap.  Sprites do not generally benefit from dithering unless it is done in moderation AND extremely well.  The bandana is horribly pillow-shaded, please fix that.