16x16 animated game character
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=23675
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 12:02pm
Topic: 16x16 animated game character
Posted By: bytebob
Subject: 16x16 animated game character
Date Posted: 09 June 2015 at 7:34am
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Hey everybody,
I'm looking for some critique on my first character sprite for a video game (kinda NES-like) I'm just making. I'm working on it now for quite a long time, but I'm sure there are still some pixels which need improvement. Here is the sprite, he is called "Chiliboy": 
In his face you can see two brownish pixels... I wanted to make him smile some how, but I'm not satisfied with the solution... 
Without the smile he looks so serious, but I want him cheery. Any suggestions? For the animation I'm also looking for some hints on how to improve it: 
Can you give me suggestions for improvements? |
Replies:
Posted By: Geki
Date Posted: 09 June 2015 at 10:51am
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Hi,
I would love to see what background he moves around in. Also what screen resolution is your game running in? Seems a solution would be to make a higher reoslution character. Alternatively make his face one pixel taller by moving it down a little (assuming you want 2 pixels of hair). |
Posted By: bytebob
Date Posted: 10 June 2015 at 3:05am
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Hey Geki,
the screen resolution is 256x192 pixels and the screen is made up entirely of 16x16 sprites. Thus he can't be bigger than 16 pixels. Here is a screenshot from the game: 
I will experiment with making his face taller... |
Posted By: Geki
Date Posted: 10 June 2015 at 4:28am
Looks fun. Yeah I guess if you need him to fit in between the 16x16 tiles then you can't change his height or width. From what I can tell, most other people who use 16x16 sprites just completely remove mouths in order to spare pixels. But maybe you can use the sprite from "I wanna be the guy!" as inspiration
He seems pretty happy :) |
Posted By: Iscalio
Date Posted: 11 June 2015 at 5:30am
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How big will he appear on your screen? Will he be as big as the initial sprites you showed or as big as he appears in the screenshot? Or did you blow up the screenshot?
He's unreadable at the first size you showed but looks fine in the much larger image. Also red/pink/orange isn't very clear by color. Mario from Super Mario World is very clear with more varied hues. I'd suggest at least two or three fairly different hues on your character, like red/green or pink/blue or something. 
Your face is pretty much flat colors, but your body has shadows. I'd pick one uniformly. Since your environment seems to have light/shadow colors maybe your character should too, which would mean at least adding shadow colors to the head. |
Posted By: bytebob
Date Posted: 11 June 2015 at 9:45am
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Thanks for your suggestions Geki and Iscalio!
The sprite will appear as big as in the screenshot. I just posted pixel-perfect versions of the images because you can use the zoom function from the forum to blow them up. The face from IWBTG looks quiet similar -- I didn't know... 
I tried your suggestion Iscalio to use more hues. You can see the results above. Most of the hues don't seem to me to fit, as "Chiliboy" has to look in some way like a chili pepper. I tried a blue Mario boilersuit but discarded it. But a chest might be try. Furthermore I tried to distribute the hues, by applying the face color to his feet. The stripes on his chest are now simplified and use one color less. Your observation, that the body has shadows and the face not, brought me to drop his stumble and treat the lower left section of his face as a shadow. This way, the shadow may hint a little bit as a smile... The most difficult thing was and is for me to apply light and shadow to his hair. I have no clue how to do it better. Maybe he will remain "semi-flat". What do think of the new versions? Which one do you like best? (The Chiliboy in the middle is a just-4-fun-NES-version.) Thank you both for your valuable ideas! Without them I wouldn't have been able to work on the sprite that way. Any more suggestions? |