A first attempt: Slime Kings
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19129
Printed Date: 12 September 2025 at 6:18am
Topic: A first attempt: Slime Kings
Posted By: RedRiderX
Subject: A first attempt: Slime Kings
Date Posted: 22 June 2014 at 10:03am
A first attempt at making some sprites for a WIP game. They are in order: * Slime King * True Slime King * Zombie True Slime King * 6 Million Dollar True Slime King Any critiques are appreciated. |
Replies:
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 22 June 2014 at 11:18am
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Hey there :) just sent you a PM in the gallery. Unless its absolutely needed try not to submit pre scaled pixelart. The -+ under all art is a zoom feature in the gallery and in the forum just clicking any image zooms it. This is especially true in the full pixel of your avatar Jesus (?)...that's waaaaaaay to scaled, k. I'll be honest that this piece was good enough to add but I mistakenly thought you were missing pixels in the crown's broken bits  . Because they were scaled and we dont want you having bad habits I didn't get bent out of shape over my error.------------- |
Posted By: RedRiderX
Date Posted: 22 June 2014 at 1:06pm
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No worries, thanks for letting me know about the no-scaling rule.
I've resubmitted a non scaled version. |
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 22 June 2014 at 1:38pm
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Its not a rule. If you or anyone makes a design choice and we know (usually in the description)then we can't judge that. Its just that pixelartists like to see 1X and then zoom in if needed to view, review, study and inspect. Anyhoo, its added to the gallery now :) ------------- |
Posted By: AlexHW
Date Posted: 22 June 2014 at 9:57pm
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To help make them look more box shapes, you can use different value on each side of the slime. One side should catch more light than others, usually. At the moment you're using one tone across the entire slime, which doesn't really help convey depth/spatial changes to surfaces. If a surface bends/changes, usually the value produced by the light hitting it will change as well because the light will reflect differently at a different angle. |
Posted By: ZachyEatWorld
Date Posted: 22 June 2014 at 9:58pm
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I think that the square slime is a cool design choice because I always see little round slime creatures. Your forms are strong and readable so it conveys well what you're trying to to get across. It lacks depth because even though we can see 3 sides of the slime, they're all the same color. You should pick a point where your light source would be coming from and color the sides different shades.
I also think dithering is so difficult and I have no idea how to do it and no room to criticize anyone else who does it. I just don't really know what it's purpose is on the slime. It seems like highlights on a slime would be round and really smooth looking while this gives it sort of a rough texture. I made a few edits to your first slime to give you an idea of what I mean. In this version the slime is also slightly translucent so I tried to show all of the sides not currently pictured. Again, I'm no expert and I'm sure you can improve on it but maybe it will give you some ideas. 
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Posted By: RedRiderX
Date Posted: 24 June 2014 at 7:40pm
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Wow I really like how you added that layer of depth there.
I do admit that I really struggled with the dithering/shading and how to approach it for this sort of object, the shading you used seems much more appropriate. One thing I probably should have mention in the OP is that one of the requirements I had was that these sprites conform to the NES' color palette, and that they try and keep to the general feel of NES era sprites (FF1, Dragon Quest). That does constrain the variety of shading I can do while keeping uniform shading across sprite recolors. But even with that I should be able to implement some of your's and AlexHW's suggestions. |
Posted By: Limes
Date Posted: 25 June 2014 at 12:15am
| Dithering is entirely unnecessary at this low of a resolution. |
Posted By: FrostPumpkin
Date Posted: 25 June 2014 at 3:43am
| Well, dithering is not really a matter of resolution in this case. It's more a matter of texture. The dithering makes it look grainy/noisy, but since these are slimes, they would rather look smooth, gelly. Zachyeatworld made a nice edit on the way to go about this. Also, black outlines doesn't seem to work with the translucent feel you are looking for. |
Posted By: 7heSama
Date Posted: 25 June 2014 at 4:08pm
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God damn it, technos. Anyways, RedRider, aside from the issues of depth, I also think you would do a lot better with an outline color other than black; for something semi-transparent it doesn't make much sense to have such a dark edge. |
Posted By: Meapers
Date Posted: 25 June 2014 at 6:55pm
Here is how I would've gone about shading it (sorry about the sloppy edit)
Also why do you bother doing this technos... 
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Posted By: FrostPumpkin
Date Posted: 26 June 2014 at 12:27am
I made a quick edit yesterday evening, I was kind of drunk and tired but yea, just poiting out a few things.
Mostly about depth and hilights, kind of what Meapers did but more translucent. Hope it helps ! |
Posted By: Limes
Date Posted: 26 June 2014 at 1:12am
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Technos has been going all out lately.
Meapers, I really love how you shade, wish I had the same talent. |
Posted By: Meapers
Date Posted: 26 June 2014 at 9:35am
| Also another thing that I noticed is that on the two red smiles is that the highlights are barely noticeable. |
Posted By: RedRiderX
Date Posted: 26 June 2014 at 4:17pm
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Wow thanks so much for the feedback all!
I can really see how I can use very different styles for shading and depth in these sprites, thanks for taking some time to show me what can be achieved. The red slimes not having strong contrast is definitely something I can see and really is a result of me struggling with the NES color palette trying to get some good color variations for these different sprites. I'll see if I can try to implement some of these suggestions this weekend, thanks again all! |