Sou's venture into spriting

[SassySnivy]

I posted this for the badge thing for one of the gyms earlier, but I was pretty proud of it for not having many shadows. Though that was mostly because I couldnt figure out a way to light it that looked decent, but all in all, I'm happy with it. If it wasn't obvious enough by it, yes I am Team Litten xD

Not bad at all! It seems like you...attempted shading? But didn't do very much, so I guess I'm confused.

If you're going to shade it, make sure you've established a light source. Given your ears, it seems to be coming from the top-front. I'll get to that in a bit, though!


You've also got a few weird pixel stairs that don't quite line-up effectively. I was messing around with it and might have fixed some of it:



I think I got a little carried away though, so I ended up fixing a bunch of curves, too. With the tufts of fur at the top I made the ends squared / right angles since...augh, it's hard to explain. I think you see it? Overall though I tried to make its head more round. I also tried to fix the whiskers because judging by the art, they should be more of something that's jutting out of the head; here, it looks like it's part of the head.

Sorry, not trying to one-up you or anything, it's just so much easier for me to show than tell.

Okay! Now about the shading. I know you wanted to do a minimalistic approach on the shading...at least, that's how it seems. That's totally fine! That's cool. Sometimes less is more. Hell, you could even just go for an anti-aliasing approach (using AA around the lines and not opting to shade at all), but I'm just going to assume you meant to shade it. Like I said, earlier it looked like it was coming from the top-front, so that's what I'll go by! I'm not going to add detailed shading for you, just indicate what should go where just to help a little. (Also tfw you get rid of Litten's head stripes and it suddenly looks almost just like Guntz from Klonoa o A o) Also sorry I just now realized that I corrected the eyes all weird so I re-corrected them. xD

Don't ask about the dithering, I guess I just added that so that its forehead doesn't look shiny.

Again, I probably edited more than I originally intended. Just got carried away! Sorry. But yeah, I didn't choose to shade the lines...so if you want that's not a bad place to continue! :D

[Sou]

Not bad at all! It seems like you...attempted shading? But didn't do very much, so I guess I'm confused.

If you're going to shade it, make sure you've established a light source. Given your ears, it seems to be coming from the top-front. I'll get to that in a bit, though!


You've also got a few weird pixel stairs that don't quite line-up effectively. I was messing around with it and might have fixed some of it:



I think I got a little carried away though, so I ended up fixing a bunch of curves, too. With the tufts of fur at the top I made the ends squared / right angles since...augh, it's hard to explain. I think you see it? Overall though I tried to make its head more round. I also tried to fix the whiskers because judging by the art, they should be more of something that's jutting out of the head; here, it looks like it's part of the head.

Sorry, not trying to one-up you or anything, it's just so much easier for me to show than tell.

Okay! Now about the shading. I know you wanted to do a minimalistic approach on the shading...at least, that's how it seems. That's totally fine! That's cool. Sometimes less is more. Hell, you could even just go for an anti-aliasing approach (using AA around the lines and not opting to shade at all), but I'm just going to assume you meant to shade it. Like I said, earlier it looked like it was coming from the top-front, so that's what I'll go by! I'm not going to add detailed shading for you, just indicate what should go where just to help a little. (Also tfw you get rid of Litten's head stripes and it suddenly looks almost just like Guntz from Klonoa o A o) Also sorry I just now realized that I corrected the eyes all weird so I re-corrected them. xD

Don't ask about the dithering, I guess I just added that so that its forehead doesn't look shiny.

Again, I probably edited more than I originally intended. Just got carried away! Sorry. But yeah, I didn't choose to shade the lines...so if you want that's not a bad place to continue! :D

Oh no no, dont ever think I'm thinking you're trying to one-up me! haha. In fact, I was secretly hoping you'd appear because I was abit afraid to ask myself orz. It is true, I did very little to no shading, because i was honestly kinda stuck on the "how-to" part of it. I run into shading problems with regular art too, but practice and baby-steps right?

I love how smooth your lineart is for pixels so its really cool to see how you took my kinda messy lineart and made it smoother. ah. One day maybe! I couldn't figure for the life of m how to smooth it out. I do remember some of the stuff you explained last year as far as the, having pixels around the same number right next to one another. In any case, this really does help alot, and I hop I can slowly improve. Probably best to start small huh? :>

[SassySnivy]

Oh no no, dont ever think I'm thinking you're trying to one-up me! haha. In fact, I was secretly hoping you'd appear because I was abit afraid to ask myself orz. It is true, I did very little to no shading, because i was honestly kinda stuck on the "how-to" part of it. I run into shading problems with regular art too, but practice and baby-steps right?

I love how smooth your lineart is for pixels so its really cool to see how you took my kinda messy lineart and made it smoother. ah. One day maybe! I couldn't figure for the life of m how to smooth it out. I do remember some of the stuff you explained last year as far as the, having pixels around the same number right next to one another. In any case, this really does help alot, and I hop I can slowly improve. Probably best to start small huh? :>

Okay, that's good! And nah, I think you're doing great as of right now! Sure it's good to start out small, but imho its even better to take a risk. At least sometimes. When you take that risk, you're opening yourself up to either success or failure; either way you can't learn without making mistakes! Not saying that's the case here, though. You're doing great! I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll show us next. :D

If you have problems with shading, it's good to study the bare basics of shading: light. There's plenty of good resources you can find to help! :D