my custom side view battler -wip-

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

well hi there everyone, i was wondering if i could get some critique on my work here
yeah i know its not really original work, but i worked pretty hard on this, mixing and matching and recoloring and changing shapes and junk, and everything i used was made by dollmage, so credit goes to me and dollmage.
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/3802/biggervo4.jpg[/img]http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/5817/newcharacterfo2.jpg[/img]
http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/4194/newcharacter2ub6.jpg[/img]http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/7397/newcharacter22vb1.jpg[/img]
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/6100/newcharacter3sh9.jpg[/img]

 

[JD_Slasha]

I really don't see why you deserve credit for splicing up someone's work and posting it. I'm not a mod round these parts, but I'll ask anyways; did you ask permission from dollmage to mess with his work? If so, is he allowing you to distribute it as such?

As for critique itself, I don't see too much I can really comment on. I will say that the hair is too much. It literally looks like a poorly sprited Sonic-head. The sword doesn't match, it just seems like something you put on em'. I would recommend making the face a whole lot more visible and either spriting a sword better, or getting rid of it all together.

 

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

i'm pretty sure i remember dollmage saying somewhere that he doesnt mind as long as its not for commercial use.
i suppose i can send him a pm if it will help though.

how is the hair too much? color or shape? just so i know what to fix.
the sword i wasnt to sure about either, i want her to have a sword, i was thinking big haha, but maybe too big..
or is that the problem, is the sword to big? i can try and make it match a little more too, what kind of sword would look right?

about the credit, i just though since i took the time to actually put it all together and do all that recoloring and reshaping some stuff that i deserve some credit, i mean there are people on here that have little workshops that are just for re-coloring and i'm sure they all want credit, and i did a bit more than just recolor everything.. but the credit doesnt matter so much, as long as people know that it was made out of a bunch of dollmage's materials, cause im not sure if i am going to release the completed version yet until im done with my game. then i will worry about credits.

*edit* hey guess what, i made my very own hair and sword, now am i really able to ask for credit lol, - edited the first post-

 

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

i started on another one, yes again mostly dollmage's people, but i recolored and switched heads, changed up the hair, and made my own weapon and bandana tell me what you guys think.

edited the first post, red on is new

 

[ZephyrSkye]

1: desaturate.
2: save as a png, not a bmp or jpg. It get's all blurry otherwise.
3: work on your highlights and shadows.
4: only use about 4 shades for each color.

Try those out.

 

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

im a little lost with the desaturate thing, i dont really know what that is... sorry,
can you explain the highlights and shadows, can you show me an example or something so i can see what to do.
haha yeah i guess i went a little overboard with the shades of each color, i was kind of experimenting, i'll cut down.

thanks for the help though.

 

[ZephyrSkye]

Okay, saturation is how vibrant a color is. If you used paint, all the colors in the regular pallette are 100% saturated. That is a no-no. It gives all the colors a "WHAM! Look at me!" feel to them. Not really what you want when making a character.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w4/S ... /color.png[/img]
Here is the same color. Everything is the exact same, except for the saturation. See what I mean, now?

Now for highlights and maybe saturation, too. Look at the girl in the spoiler. Look at her hair. See the highlights on her hair? It makes the front of her hair look round. You did this a bit with the first one, but the rest have none of this. Just try this stuff out for now.

Spoiler

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w4/Someonetookmyusernam/Sprites/Celest2.png[/img]

 

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

ah, i see, thank you, i'll work on this. i use PhotoShop, so i know what you mean with the saturation, i'll try fix them up a bit.
i see what you mean with the round head, yeah i can fix up the blond haired one pretty easy, haha the guy with the ax looks like he's got a flat head, i'll see what i can do about him too,
thank you. i'll update and fix stuff tomorrow.

 

[boon]

You know, for Pixel Art, I wouldn't suggest Photoshop unless you are very good with it. Everyone makes things blurry and harsh.

 

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

hmmm, i would say im pretty good with photoshop, i know how to do everything on there, lol you name something and i'll do it, and i'll do it with good quality.. what else would you recommend using anyway? i can't stand using ms paint anymore... i used to use it all the time until i learned photoshop, now its just a pretty useless program in my opinion.

 

[Mascarpone]

soo... you paste parts from dolly's battlers together then add your own hair it looks like...? If you're going to go half way you might as well edit her weapons and hairs into ur stuff too, the MS paint incongruent bits slapped onto them break up an apearence that's already broken by the very nature of being a franken battler <_<

Practice up, and use a different program for spriting... Paint is kinda meh. I dont know what the good ones for that are anymore though. I used to use iDraw back in the windows 9x era.

 

[Lost_in_Exsistance]

hummm, i've been trying to create my own battler from templates but im really no good at starting from nothing.. so i just decided to mix and match dollmages battlers cause alot of them fit in my game but not quite, so i play around with them, i have never tried even a recolor before this.. so you could say that these are my very first works, i never used paint on any of these, ive used nothing but photoshop, i made that sword myself, well the blade, in the blue haired one, i used a handle from a dollmage weapon, and in the blond haired one i cut off a bunch of the pirate's weapon and used it from the hilt, but other than that i created the blade of the sword and the ax all from nothing, the sword turned out pretty good to me, and the ax did too, but it just still need a little bit of work to finish it up and look like it goes with him, same style.

 

[ZephyrSkye]

My advice, if you want to continue using photoshop, is to only use the pencil, layers and a pallete. Don't use any of the other fancy tools. Those three are all you need to make a good sprite. The others are good for some things, but they have some problems with them, like changing the contrast and everything like that.