A Try At Spriting

[sfate]

Hi! So here it goes!

I started spriting around april, not that long I guess. I only work on stuff every once in awhile, because I'll spend 3 hours trying to figure out how to do something.

 

My Attempts!!!(In chronological order) :3

 

 

Thank You in advanced for any help provided :3

I am not very good at drawing either so anatomy probably doesn't look so great. ^//^;

 

If you want to request feel free, but I may or may not get to it, I am a college student with a job so I am somewhat busy >_>;

 

Edited July 1, 2013 by sfate

[Switch]

Hi! I'm not the best artist in the world so I can't really provide much anatomy crits, but hopefully I can give you a tip?

 

All of those sprites are saved as JPEG files, which is something you really don't ever want to use. JPEGs ruin the quality of a picture and make it fuzzy and add a lot of random pixels you don't want. I always save things as .PNGs, personally. Those don't ruin the quality.

I think you could also use a bit more contrast on some of those, which means darker shadows and brighter highlights. It makes the sprite look more 3D and less flat.

 

Like I said, I can't really give anatomy crits, but I hope that helps? They're not that bad at all, especially since you're just starting.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Switch

[sfate]

:3 thanks for the reply. That I did not know. I use pixia and all of the files are pxa so i just went with jpeg so I could upload. I took a digital photo class always used jpeg

Still trying to figure out transparent backgrounds and such. I usually go and look at all of these dragons and see how others are shading. Still not used to using contrasting colors always think they're too bright or dark. ><

[cfmtfm]

I can see that you're a budding spriter - keep practising and save in PNG. A program as simple as MS Paint is good enough (although you don't get transparency) - you can get custom colours and drag around the colour wheel and adjust the hues, etc.

 

I suggest you look at these threads - they're super helpful if you're new to the spriting world. Like Switch said, they're really not that bad. I can't draw to save my life. X3 You'll improve if you keep practising.

 

I'll watch your thread for any new sprites you make. o3o

[_Charky]

I took a digital photo class always used jpeg

That' was because it was just that- a photo class. Photos are actually best saved as jpeg, because the blending it does works fine on a photo. On pixel art though, such as sprites, or generally on anything where you want to keep the lines and colours exactly as they were, you need a format like PNG or BMP, or sometimes GIF, although that tends to mess up the colours a little when you have large areas the same colour.

[sfate]

Ok so I started with a base color by switching between my usual program and paint. The fill option on Pixia is really weird so I used paint to fill, at the base stage. Something not a dragon for once, a Maned Wolf. Lol. Pretty sure it isnt all that anatomically correct, but I think they're pretty cool! :3

 

 

The inner lines are more guiding at the moment so I know where I want the black fur to meet the brown :3

 

I do all of my base lines by magnifying since Pixia didn't seem to have the shrink option, so the lines still look a bit shaky. Maybe try and get the color a bit orangie like a fox.

 

Oh yeah I always get confused on how to end a point on something spiked. So the points usually end up not pointed and more round than anything. e_e

 

Thanks for the threads by the way, pillow shading does look pretty bad, still trying to figure out what places the sun is hitting or if wing or something else blocks that light, highly confusing! ><;

 

Not sure how long this will take me considering I have class in 2 hours. ;~; edit: 14mins.... Evil college education >:I *shakes fist at it*

 

If anyone has ideas on things to sprite lemme know. Will most likely take a bit of time but feel free to give me some ideas to get the creative juices flowing.

 

Update:

I think I made the lighting on the top too light e_e but I will just go with it, I've changed shades like 50 times already! ><;

Done! Did the shading too subtle again >< Oh well, must do better on the next!

Edited May 30, 2013 by sfate

[sfate]

The nice comments have me fired up! ><

How I start all of my sprites... use colors so I know what is important when I erase all of the extra pixels >< one by one...

No Idea what this is, but I think it looks nifty. Will be working on this later. Have to head to bed for class tomorrow e_e

 

[cfmtfm]

The maned wolf looks really neat! And I love the background. It looks so free and refreshed. :3 I'm not entirely good at anatomy either, so I can't give you crits there. X3 The light source/shadows are a little confusing though - underneath the 'upper mane' (to the right) it should be darker, because of the shadow from the mane. It looks like the light source is coming from the top left, but the lighter shading you've done under the top mane suggests that the light source is somewhere in the centre/beneath the mane?

 

And the image you've just posted is pretty awesome (loving the pose)! But with sprites, you should be able to almost see the individual pixels. That's where MS Paint comes in handy, because it's so basic. It's better to use the Pencil and draw 1px at a time instead of a thin paintbrush. It looks like you've used anti-aliasing, which isn't what you want for pixel art. Try looking at this guide.

 

If you copy it into Paint and then zoom in (as much as possible), you'll see what I mean. I can't wait to see what you do with it, though. o3o The pose is interesting.

Edited May 30, 2013 by cfmtfm

[diaveborn]

I really like the colors in this image!

[StarSea]

The nice comments have me fired up! ><

How I start all of my sprites... use colors so I know what is important when I erase all of the extra pixels >< one by one...

No Idea what this is, but I think it looks nifty. Will be working on this later. Have to head to bed for class tomorrow e_e

 

Not bad, but before you start pixeling him (or her), I wanna help out some and possibly give a few pointers on anatomy (I'm not the best, but I'm working on mine as well. )-

Take a look at the near back leg; you want more of a butt, so kinda curve the upper part of the thigh a little more. You also don't want a flat leg, so curve the part closest to the thigh on the second leg segment up a bit. Finally, you want more of a smooth transition from the middle leg segment to the last one, so in the crook of the two, curve that a little more.

Stomach/Abdomen time- try to flatten that out a bit. That's all I gotta say.

Tail- Try to make the curves smoother and not so rugged. The tail also changes thickness a few times, so try fixing that up too. ^^, If you need, count out how many pixels you use for each direction. Diagonals should usually be one or two less than up and down or left and right.

 

That's all for now. I can't wait to see what you do! :DDD

[sfate]

I have issues with trying to figure out how to show where the light source is coming from and how it will effect the area I spent all of my time trying to shade and lighten up the furry areas ><;

 

Yeah, the last butt that was there looked so circular >< so now it looks like this. I will probably erase the whole tail and do it over, it bends weirdly so I want to fix that.

 

Headed out to classes I'll see what I can work on when I get back home e_e classes end at night.

[Pinch of StarDust]

I use luna pic for making backgrounds transparent. It is free and easy to use. Here are the steps for making transparent backgrounds:

1. cursor on EDIT, scroll down to Transparent -> click

2. upload your sprite

3. change FUZZ from 5 to 1

4 click on what you want to make transparent

VIOLA!

 

Now save it to your computer easy peasy

[sfate]

Sorry I am busy with my summer college classes and work so I won't be super active ><;

I'll be taking a little while on spriting.

[Princess Kiara]

You should post sprites to get crits in this thread: http://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?act=S...t=65824&st=1320

Good luck!

[sfate]

 

Okay I finally got the time to do the outline, now I need some help. Supposed to be fur along the back and well it looks horribly not like fur, not sure how I should go about fixing this...

 

Oh yeah anyone is welcome to redline, all input is welcome! :3

 

The blue ended up there somehow, I merged the base layer with the second layer. Made the base transparent so it wouldnt show up after merged, so now the whole thing is blue. ;

 

I think I may have to fix the feet too, they look a bit on the sorry side. >< really hard to get consistency in regard to making stuff go together properly.

 

 

Okay so I tried fixing the fur, not sure how that will turn out, I am still trying to figure out how to shade the facial features of my sprite >< such a small area to cover.

 

Wanted to know if the shading is good so far what areas should be fixed in regard to lighting which is coming from the upper right.

 

Also, how do I switch such drastic colors when they meet? It looks really weird to me right now.

 

Is it contrasted enought? I really have no clue, but it looks nice so far to me, I can see I need to fix that weird looking bright line in the front leg.

 

 

next up is the fur part >< not looking forward to it...

 

 

LOL banana. any color suggestions?

 

Edited June 30, 2013 by sfate

[Dragonhatchling]

One suggestion I could make on switching drastic colors... I'm not entierly sure what you mean by that but.... you could use a process called dithering to somewhat 'fade' the two colors into each other and not create such a drastic, starc, change from say, green to purple by the feet. But if you wanted that starc change then forget I said anything.

 

If you mean by shading colors... dithering can also help there. But small amounts. Too much can give it a 'pillow effect' (which means there's too much dithering and no clear light source anymore) and that's not good.

[sfate]

I think I'll try that on the next one, not sure how I'd dither with so little space. I think I'll make something a bit bigger to try that out on. Thanks for the link :3

[sfate]

 

Fixed the colors... Project Completed!!! :3

[sfate]

lol. well I haven't been doing much besides shade for http://forums.dragcave.net/index.php?showtopic=137760&st=0

Lantern Dragon. Been really lazy about it since I have classes right now. I have realized my sprite lines suck at this point >_>; xDragonia did the sprite lines and they're very neat and mine are all wonky. Guess I'll get the hang of it sooner or later.