General Spriter's Showcase!

[ZrowNoodles]

Hey guys! Uh... Sorta new around here. I'm a more... Physical artwork sort of guy. But I haven't really committed anything to a plan I've been having in mind yet. Sort of just setting up for it, really. Speed-X has been a great big help with answering some questions too. C:

Anyway, I digress. In relation to my future possible artistic endeavour as well as huge credits to Speed-X for this style of artwork, I sort of made this... Odd little Squirtle. It's simple, I know. It was missing a couple of pixels after the scale down process... I tried to cover it up and after like fifteen minutes of zooming in and out and in again, I thought it looked a little more complete... Feel free to critique it in any way possible though! ^w^

laDIadO.png

[SassySnivy]

Did you do this for the XY icons instead of like, the main sprites? x] Just wondering! That is freaking adorable though. You should totally try some more! As for critiquing, my Chrome browser on my phone jpegs any kind of pixel art / sprite so I WILL get back to you on critting this! 8D

I have a serious soft spot for miniature things AAAAAAAAAAA SO CUTE.

Edit: @ZrowNoodles

Okay! Let's see what the damage results are! Firstly, I suggest that if you're using Microsoft Paint, to enable the thumbnail feature. It takes a while to get used to, but it will relieve you of having to zoom in and out (because what a sprite looks like zoomed-out is 99% the most important thing).

In all honesty, despite that there's not much to critique it mostly looks fine. Just the top of the head is really jagged, and make sure you complete the outlines (for the tail and the foot closest to us) since the lineart is an important element of this style of icons. It's a little hard to explain; mind if I show you what I mean, just for this example? Also, don't mind the green background...and I enlarged them just for convenience's sake:

:>

[ZrowNoodles]

Spoiler:

Did you do this for the XY icons instead of like, the main sprites? x] Just wondering! That is freaking adorable though. You should totally try some more! As for critiquing, my Chrome browser on my phone jpegs any kind of pixel art / sprite so I WILL get back to you on critting this! 8D

I have a serious soft spot for miniature things AAAAAAAAAAA SO CUTE.

Edit: @ZrowNoodles

Okay! Let's see what the damage results are! Firstly, I suggest that if you're using Microsoft Paint, to enable the thumbnail feature. It takes a while to get used to, but it will relieve you of having to zoom in and out (because what a sprite looks like zoomed-out is 99% the most important thing).

In all honesty, despite that there's not much to critique it mostly looks fine. Just the top of the head is really jagged, and make sure you complete the outlines (for the tail and the foot closest to us) since the lineart is an important element of this style of icons. It's a little hard to explain; mind if I show you what I mean, just for this example? Also, don't mind the green background...and I enlarged them just for convenience's sake:

:>

Bulba:


Ivy:


Venu:


Yay! Thanks for the tips! I took your advice and tried my hand at Bulbasaur and its evolutions. Also, I noticed when trying to re-color, there are some... Shades of green that were so similar I missed them entirely. :<
x84Bn8a.jpg
For some reason, the top 3 pixels are different shades? I assume it's because these are newer sprites so they have more... Color to spare? :S

Also, I swap between Photoshop and MS Paint. It's tough to recolor on Photoshop. But it seems I can do some odd eraser trick on Paint. 8D I can't save transparent backgrounds on paint. v n v Which is why I prefer swapping over to Photoshop.

Edit: P.S. @Speed-X Yes, I used the XY Icons instead of the main sprites. '^' I thought since it was already compiled together, I could just grab, test and practice with any pokemon rather than look through several web pages to get something I liked. >w< I'm lazy like that. .n.

[SassySnivy]

I think that mainly has to do with how they're ripped more than how they actually are in the game...since the 3DS is kinda a funky thing to just hack into in general. Most of those sprites in that compilation I linked you to are "cleared" meaning that you don't have, like...50 different tiny variations of one color, and some aren't. Your best bet would be to clear / recolor them by hand. :>

As for Bulbasaur, your best bet would be to get rid of the stray pixel next to its farthest eye and just make it a straight shot. Adding a little corner to the top-left of its head will also help, too, as to make it at least seem like the ear is there. I'd also put fewer striations on its bulb, since, when you go smaller, sometimes you have to sacrifice detail to get the bigger picture to turn out better. Which is why it's more ideal if you start out doing something of a more...ideal size, maybe, but hey, that's to your discretion. Start off with what you will! :P

Ivy also turned out pretty good but the leaves off behind its head are non-existant. By the way, just out of curiosity: how much do you shrink these before you edit them, anyway? Just wondering because this is just adorable and I'd like to try it out sometime. >w< And by reducing the size to half, it's just...a bit too small.

As for Venusaur, when you shrink the sprite sometimes you get mashed up details that are just...too far gone, so you usually are best off erasing and adding your own in there rather than worry about fixing them. This is also easier to describe with an example, if you don't mind. :>

You can probably see that the shape of the flower is...completely different. This is because I just erased all the little details in the flower and just reworked said details and the shape, especially. ^^

And heck, why not? The XY icons are great. 8D And yeah, when I was using Paint I'd just use Paint.NET for transparency purposes. ^^

[ZrowNoodles]

@Speed-X Thanks for all the help and advice. c: I'll keep them in mind while I work on more miniature sprites! Also, I usually shrink them on Photoshop, since I can see the changes immediately. Usually I use the XY Icons and shrink them with free transform to about 70-80% from 100%. Usually, anything lower than 70 makes it look pretty bad. :x

Also, I totally don't mind you touching up my stuff. o3o I love learning more! Though, I might require some more serious practice. I'll probably open either a thread to put my stuffs... Or just post them in my blog post! Thanks for all the help! :3

[SassySnivy]

I think you're best off posting a thread, that way more people will see and/or be able to comment. I usually like to think of the blog feature as just...little snippets of life / snippets of thoughts that might not be "deep" enough to post a whole thread for. x] Also if you post a thread it could potentially help increase activity! But that's just my suggestion.

And you're very welcome! Can't wait to see more from you.

[ZrowNoodles]

I think I'll double post... Of course, not on purpose! I'll keep my art on a thread somewhere. Make it nice for people to come see a compilation of all I've done. While I post on this showcase thread a regularly too, just to ask for criticism. '^'

Speaking of which... I attempted a recolor. It's pretty bad. But I sort of... Just doodled with colors after I turned the Bulbasaur into a golden looking thing with Raichu's palette. .~.



EDIT: To avoid double posting. I thought I'd leave this here... It's not really nice. :< I'm using normal sprites now though. Just to test. I drop them down to exactly 50% on the dot on Photoshop... I think I have lots of mess ups. >n< I still can't quite grasp the concept of how and where pixels should go, I should probably revisit the spriting encyclopedia more often and just sit solid to learn. '^'

torch evo mini.png

[ZrowNoodles]

So. I recently stumbled across a sheet of "Moemons" and I thought why not try to miniaturize them. '^' I tried it with only Bulbasaur.

Mini Bulba Moemon.png

[SassySnivy]

Yeah, as of the Torchic line maybe you should check out the Encyclopedia some more! I think it's best to start with realistically-sized things. I think it's great that you're trying to start with stuff that's a little more advanced! I'd say keep going down that path. Just maybe try out some things that are at an easier-to-manage size. ^^

[TheoreticalSelkie]

@ZrowNoodles

It's been a while since I've done a sprite critique so bear with me. Might mess up here and there but oh well.

For the Raichu/Bulbasaur recolor, the one on the far right looks the most off to me. You have a lot of pillow shading going on with the lighter colors bordering the outlines in the shaded part of the sprite. It looks a bit messy/noisy, and you can fix it by cleaning up that area. I am not sure if you were going for an overshade here, but a lot of the lighter colors are really close together in shade (there's a slight difference) and barely noticeable. You're probably better off going for a solid single-color in the lighter area. Another small thing is that you have a darker color between a lighter colored region and a darker colored region on the bulb, which has the effect of making it pop and stand out. However, the transition isn't very smooth so you could erase that part and go over that with the darker color bordering that lighter region.

Sorry if that was confusing, I can try clarifying and fixing the sprite myself if that helps.

Also, your Torchic line sprites seem to be blurry. If you're using Photoshop to resize it, change your interpolation to Nearest Neighbor so you don't get blurriness/distortion. Might have to repixel over the sprite to make it cleaner.

Edit; never mind on the Torchic, I didn't see the full-size version for some reason.