Trying to make portraits from low rez sprites
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=25147
Printed Date: 06 September 2025 at 1:03pm
Topic: Trying to make portraits from low rez sprites
Posted By: mkd
Subject: Trying to make portraits from low rez sprites
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 3:24am
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Hi! I'm trying to add portraits in the game I'm making, for the dialogues. Here is a pic showing the sprite for reference, and the portrait (you can also see how the game looks http://mkdgames.blogspot.fr/ - here ). My idea is to use the same colors than the sprite, but it's not an ultra important thing.  What do you think of it? Do you know how to make it better? Thanks! |
Replies:
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 6:20am
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Smaller sprites need more contrast in their colours to give the same impression as a large-sprite. So, while the colours are okay-ish on the big portrait, they're too pale and low-contrast on the full-figure sprite. That said, I'd add more contrast and hue-shifting to the colours even on the portrait. It all feels a little anemic - you're using a lot of colours but they're not really adding anything because they're barely distinct from other colours. You could get the same impression at 1x using half the colours, just because a lot of them are so low-contrast. Your shadows feel a bit randomly placed. Where is your light source? Determine where and what your hypothetical light source is, and place shadows according to that. The shadows are weird on both the portrait and the character sprite. |
Posted By: mkd
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 7:10am
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Thank you for your comment. I was working on other portraits on the same style, after reading your comment, I tried to boost contrast.  Do you think it's a move in the right direction? (I think you're true about shadows and drawing problem, I'll work on that too) |
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 7:38am
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Definitely a step in the right direction! But only that - a step. You can go much further. I would focus on making the colours on the full-figure sprites the best they can be first (for example, the character wearing a green shirt and red shorts has nice contrast on the shorts (and some weird stray pixels on them), but the shirt is very low-contrast. Would you mind if I did a draw-over of one or two of the characters? |
Posted By: mkd
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 7:45am
| It would be very nice! Thank you! |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 8:56am
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In my opinion, you're restricting yourself for no good reason. The sprites are ultra-low-resolution, so they are symbolized, simplified. The characters that you want to put in the game are characteristic ("enthusiastic kid", "shy florist", "grumpy neighbor"), so the portraits should be a simplified (ex: cartoony) representation of this, instead of a scaled-up representation of a 6x6 head.
Using the same color scheme is a good start, but you have much room to tweak colors and make them lighter/darker, or saturated/unsaturated, as you need : the viewers will still match easily with the relevant sprite. 
See how the yellows are extremely different colors ? Yet there is no question that both images represent the same thing. |
Posted By: mkd
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 9:04am
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I agree I should maybe simplify (and go for real face expressions), but I want to keep a style really close to the sprites. In your example, the two Iron Men seem to come from different universes... |
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 9:05am
I ended up playing around with them all. I focused on the first and third sprites, since those were already the most readable. With the second and fourth, I couldn't figure out what you were trying to depict ): So, those just got some colour tweaks and very minor adjustments. I started by cleaning up the full-figure sprites and improving the colours on them. I got rid of colours that weren't clearly visible at 1x, and changed the remaining colours to make the forms read clearly. I moved the first sprite's arm because it was fading into his trousers, that wouldn't be necessary if the trouser colour was different. I didn't want to change your designs too much, so I just moved the arm. I made only very minor changes to the second and fourth sprites, because I wasn't sure what you were going for with their designs and worried that if I painted over them, I'd end up with something very different from what you wanted. I only repixelled the hair on the red-shorts character because it was simple. The other characters' hair is so noisy that I can't tell what you're going for. The hair I did change might also be wrong, but at least it's something. Notice that I placed the highlights in a way that helps show the form of the whole head, it makes the character feel less flat. Notice how everywhere where I did pixel edits rather than just colour edits, I got rid of dithering. These are too small for dithering to be needed. You should be much better off using that limited space to clarify your forms and suggest details. That is what I attempted to do. For example, on the red-shorts character, I tried to suggest locks of hair, which makes it look much more like hair than your "smoother" dithering did. Suggesting forms and details instead of focusing on smoothless will also help you conserve colours, because detail is often best suggested by playing with the boundaries between light and dark. Extra/transition colours would actually hurt your ability to add detail a lot of the time. Edit: Looking at them again, the portraits could have more contrast in the skin tones still, but I guess I can leave it up to you to experiment with that :] Edit 2: I also think some of your anatomy issues in the portraits come from trying to stick to the original sprites too closely. I had to move some facial features around on the two portraits I focused on. You would be better off redrawing portraits from scratch rather than trying to trace your sprites. It would also allow you to choose angles that suit the character's personality more! |
Posted By: mkd
Date Posted: 19 May 2016 at 9:56am
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Thank you so much for this. Very impressive. The first thing your version make obvious about mine is the lack of red in my skin colors. The hair of the kid weren't meant to be this way (I tried to make very short, very dark hair), but your drawing is much better!  Ten times more interesting to watch.The only thing that bother me is the fact that your version of the hero is more realistic and more readable, so now it shows more clearly how kind of dumb are the hero's clothes... Thank you again. I'll study all this very closely. Edit : I post the two versions side by side for comparison: |
Posted By: mkd
Date Posted: 21 May 2016 at 10:36am
What do you think of these? (still some work to be done, I want to redo hair on 1, 2, 4, and 5 and 11 are not very good yet) |
Posted By: GameBoy
Date Posted: 21 May 2016 at 1:56pm
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I really like these portraits and characters. But I think you should be consistent when it comes to eyes. Either have them on all sprites or don't draw them at all. The girl with cap have head that is very wide, it looks kinda weird. |
Posted By: mkd
Date Posted: 22 May 2016 at 1:36am
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Thank you for your comment. Are you talking only about eyes on sprites (not portraits)? Because I see how just a few of my sprites have eyes (and that could be solved easily) ; but I also had an issue with eyes on portraits: I was bothered because they all look weirdly to the right, so I made some of them (7 and 10) with a different shape. I hope it doesn't look bad or too much different from the other. |
Posted By: GameBoy
Date Posted: 22 May 2016 at 6:53am
| Portraits eyes are ok, they really add personality to each character. |
Posted By: StoneStephenT
Date Posted: 23 May 2016 at 4:58am
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Originally posted by eishiya Smaller sprites need more contrast in their colours to give the same impression as a large-sprite. This is one of the most useful pieces of advice I’ve read in a while. Totally changed how I look at smaller sprites and color. Thanks, eishiya!  |