Fiddled with the colours a bit.
edit: transparency
edit2: and another update:

The handle looked very flat, just realized that.

Edited by arrrgh - 08 August 2009 at 10:18pm

An edit approaches:



Handle was very stubby, all parts of it needed to be longer and more slender. The pommel was huge!

By far, you're biggest problem is colors. You need to shake the GREEN IS GREEN, YELLOW IS YELLOW, GRAY IS GRAY mindset. Also need a ton more contrast. The palette in my edit isn't great, but try to analyze it and figure out why I did what I did.

[EDIT] Also, I like black outlines :D


Edited by Hatch - 09 August 2009 at 7:44pm

I personally think black outlines would make this look better :o

i think the outline defines it better i like it,

I get what you mean about the gem contrast stuff, I added a highlight and it looks much nicer now. They're meant to be more of a stone rather than a gem, so they're smooth and round. But still shiny!

I agree with most of the comments on regards the issues... you should try less flat colors... did you do this in paint? not that it matters much, but with other programs you could easily change the color palette, and mess with it really easy... anyways, deffinitely download that edit hatch did and observe it, since it is a good reference.

Also, go ahead and check sprites of swords from games, those help come up with ideas to improve it.

I think your main problem with the blade, is your choice of lighting. The way you made it, it looks hollow along the middle, or almost like 2 narrow blades side to side.
Look at this, it is easier to explain with a picture (btw, this work is amazing, but I don't think it is very good pixelart: it's too large and misses the point).
This blade clearly has 2 well-defined halves, one reflecting the light source, the other not. Those halves are even slightly concave, which adds to realism (but I doubt you can do this at the scale you're working).
There are probably other nice swords on PJ, I used the search engine and stopped at the first good one.

Much better! But not there yet...
The hilt still looks very flat. Too saturated and/or too little contrast. Look again at Hatch's edit and Grim666's piece.
You have to decide if it is brand new: shiny, with highlights and flares; or old, dusty, dirty, rusted, bumped. (and the blade could use highlights too)
Also, you should shift hue and saturation when shading, not just lightness. Look at Hatch's: he shifted the shadows towards red and the highlights towards green.
Depends on what kind of light you want to make it: this is what you get in a warm-colored room; in the outside on a sunny day / blue sky, the shadows should be blue / green.

You have room for a little texture too.

The jewels are really flat. Look carefully at Grim666's: they're just perfect. Yours are big enough to do it too.

I have a problem with your outlines. Your 'selout' doesn't work, because you just have 1 color for the blade and 1 color for the hilt. You have 3 options here: - no outline; - real selout (darker outline in shadows); - uniform outline. Depends on what you plan to do with this piece.

Gallery: well, I understand you want to upload something, but. As it is, even when it will be good (it will!), it is more of an exercise than a real self-standing piece.
It depends on your further plans. Will you make more of these, weapons, armour? then a good idea would be to make a sheet of them when you have a bunch and upload that. If not, maybe try to add some background, so that there is at least the beginning of a story, for the viewers.

These stones are still reflecting light and look shiny. Look at Hematite and Pyrite, they have a white line because of the light. And none of them look as smooth as yours. A polished stone always have some strips on it. Particularly as the one in the picture are really small, I think the one on your sword are somewhat bigger, so more likely to have such marks.

Hatch effectively closed the case - colours, rendering all look tasty.

With different route you took, you can add extra shine on gem by changing highligt to 2x2 pixel rectangle and eliminating middle colour between white and second grey. With so much tones of grey highlight is not so obvious, so it's better to put more contrasting colour under white.
Colours on gem:
1 white
2 light grey (fill this area with (3))
3 darker grey
4 darkest grey.

Hmmm... Maybe first one looks better, after all, but I'm not shure now.

Well, I don't know exact name of this colour (not too blue and not too grey).

Edited by A.B. Lazer - 11 August 2009 at 6:38am

Big improvement from the beginning, though I think that some darkish fabric on the grip would make more sense and look better, as well.

sorry for late edit, mainly cuz i was bored, i hope if you decide to work on it a bit more you can use it a bit, and else might be able to use it too.

* Note the black outlines