Hey All,

This is my first post on the forum. I had been meaning to join for a long time but well now I have. Hello all!

I started a sprite about 8 years ago for a game that never got past the concept stage. The plan was to make a fluidly animated platform shooter similar to metal slug!

Well I only managed the sprite concept and then a line based animation before I moved onto something else and it sat gathering dust. 2 weeks ago I needed some sprite content to be used as a "model" for a texture atlas packer tool I am writting. So I thought Id go back and finish the sprite.

(here is a screen shot of the texture atlas tool: http://www.skn3.com/junk/delistack/objecty/objecty-screenshot20.png)

So here is a sprite that took 8 years to finish :)

Comments welcome.

  




Edited by skn3 - 23 September 2011 at 8:09am

I believe 'unity' is the world you're looking for. And I completely agree. As of now, the palette looks a little bland, so mixing it up for more saturation and contrast and re-using colors throughout to bring your color count down will really help.

Your color ramps are very boring.  Dark blue, medium dark blue, medium blue, semi medium blue, medium light blue, light blue, very light blue etc.You follow this pattern with every color.  This is why the coloring of you sprite is so boring.  Your color ramps are very LINEAR.

With some experimentation, you will find that you don't have to use your colors in such a linear fashion.  Instead of having 7 shades of brown for instance, you could have like 3 browns, one normal, one that is more red and one that is more blue.  Then, because you have browns with reddish and blueish hues, you can eliminate more of your gold, navy, and even black colors.  This is referred to as HUE SHIFTING.   

Take a look at this sprite by redshrike:




 

You can see how his colors can't be organized in a straight line.  This is partially what makes the sprite so much more appealing to the eyes. 

I'd recommend studying more on hue shifting and the works of others. 

As for the design and animation you have so far, I think this dude has a lot of potential


Adarias is a very gifted pixel artist who is one of the best with colors.  http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/new_icons.asp?owner=3171&ob=search&dosearch=1


Edited by Frost Butt - 25 September 2011 at 1:03pm

Well I blocked out some colors (might change to some less "boring" colors) .. but I ran out of time.. will keep playing later :)




Edited by skn3 - 26 September 2011 at 8:10am

starting to look so much cooler :D I can see this becomming really sick!

More progress, thats all for today. Not sure about the hands! Any crits welcome, what am I doing wrong.. I need to practice :D

You skin ramp and blue ramp are on the right track.
Brown ramp is too much on the same hue. Try purple instead of dark brown, Maybe even shared color for blue and brown ramps.
Try to saturate your grays, there's no pure gray in nature and always looks boring except grayscale palettes.

Try to break the banding on the shoes and the backpack.

You animation is quite cool.

I like it a lot. The hands look good, except for his left hand (the hand supporting the hand holding the pistol)

One thing that stands out to me is the shape of the head. It looks a bit flat and long to me. A style thing, or genetic defect? :)