Well, adding more colors to the palette really isn't that bad. You just don't want to make it look un-pixelly. I personally think you could use a lot more, mostly for shading purposes and smoothing out your outlines.

But anyways! I think you should round the top of the head out a bit more, it looks pretty flat at the moment. The top of the hair might be a bit too low.

And again, you should add some more shading and lighting to it but it looks like the shading on your shirt is too lightly colored. Try darkening it a bit and make it less gray. And for the pants, it seems like the shading is almost a bit too harsh.

Just as a start.

Edited by Oriena - 20 August 2013 at 7:51pm

I tried taking your guy's advice, and I tried shading the shirt a little better, added one more shade and changed the hue of the shades for it a bit. Also lifted the hair a little and more or less fixed some of the jaggies (I think)

Ahh yes, I tried that but at first it looked weird, I will try again though.

The arms are looking better.

It still looks messy.The outlines are jagged. You should pay attention to where your pixels make the lines look jagged and try to fix that. Try to fix the outline.Also it's weird how the boots don't have an outline on the bottom. The legs are too short also, legs should be about the same size us the entire upper body, including the head.

I took a closer look at your pixel and...you shouldn't have the outline of the shirt just stop midway. Either have it or don't. The shirt is...uneven. Both sides should reach the neck at the same point and the shirt should end at the same point.

The arm seems to be going through the shirt into the characters upper back. The pixels of outline by the shirt sleeves should line up with the shirt, not go under it.

Where is your light source? The shirt seems to be going in a pillow shading way that I don't like.
See pillow shading here:here
Here is an example:


You need to choose a lightsource when you begin shading your piece and stick with it for each part. The shading for the pants is too dark and looks like a separate object.

In order to fix the 'jaggies' I would delete the outline and create a new outline that is smoother, and then fill in the colors where you expanded the outline.

You might want to consider raising the crotch line of the pants. The legs are looking stumpy at the moment because of the way they're so small in comparison to the arms and torso, which have good proportions. If you don't want to increase the sprite size to give the legs more room, I suggest raising the line of the pants to make the legs look longer (and to help make it seem like the shirt is just long instead making it look like the entire torso is big in comparison to the legs).

The first thing you should take care of is the perspective, as of now it looks like you're looking at him directly from the front, whilst what I assume you wanted to achieve is a 3/4 perspective.

As for the lighting source, you've still got a problem, well, not necessarily a problem, but it could hurt the overall aesthetics of the graphics, or just make your work harder

The problem being is that the light source is coming from a diagonal angle, from the side, the problem with that is if you made a profile image of the character (let's say even the walking animation from the side) the light source would move to the other end of the spectrum if you flipped it, which, would require you too make another sprite just so that the light source would fit with everything.

Fixing this would be very easy though, simply by making the light source from the top.


On a lesser note, the what I am going to assume is a pauldron (or whatever its called), needs to be attached to something, currently it looks as if it's just laying on his shoulder and could fall in any second.
Furthermore, the scabbard on his back should be attached to a sword belt; it looks like it's either flying, or attached to his shirt right now.

Edited by Night - 25 August 2013 at 3:30pm

By "profile" I meant side view.
And sure, no problem. :)

I think that the belt would work better if it were to go from the shoulder to the waist, sort of like a seat belt (considering that the scabbard is on his back and not on the side of his waist).

You should also make his legs more straight, they look jagged right now and thus unnatural.

At this level, "pixel level" if you will, you don't have much room to focus on every muscle and give it its own individual pixel, the same goes for all those finer details on the cloth, hair, etc.; so you have to make it the best of your space.

I would suggest to lower the belt down to around the hips.

I will work on lowering the belt, any other tips? I think he's just about finished so I want to hear any other ideas or tips people might have before I finish him off.

Thank you :) I adjusted the belt so it hands lower, and changed the black detail lines and mouth into more agreeable colors. I think it looks good. I'm going to say he is done, unless anyone has any ideas on how to add more to him, or improve him just a little.

Good choice of edits! He's looking rather confident now. 

I changed the color of the eyes slightly, so the white is a little bit darker, but not too much where it doesn't look white. Also lowered them but I don't know if I like it or not, and now I'm wanting to make a 3/4 perspective version of him, but I'm not sure how to start it.

Yeah I'm stuck from here. I just don't know how to make it look better while keeping it from being a front view of him.

You're definitely heading in the right direction! The arms seem wrong, they stick out too much. They should be a lot straighter to look more natural. The hands are also off, if you look at someone's hands when they're stood straight they're more of a side view than the front view that you have now. The legs seem bent as if he's squatting, although I think the shading is to blame for this. Try and make the lighter shade not stretch so far down his legs. Good luck!

Hmm the shoulders look too broad.

I see you're working hard! The new shadows do look nice, in my opinion. Here are some suggestions, though they might not work out. It's up to you if you want to use them.

Maybe move the head a few pixels down and also add more shading to the bottom of the arms, like how you did the legs. That will give more of a sense that you're looking down at him from above (which is what I think you're trying to do?).

Also, make the hair more voluminous by adding tufts of hair sticking out at the sides and at the top, like the hair in the front sprite. It will add more character than his current hairstyle, which sticks to the head base.

Those are all the suggestions I have for now. Good work! You're improving very well.

Thank you for the tip, but I actually do not plan to pose him, as he is hopefully going to be a character in a game and I need an idle standing pose. Thank you for the advice though. I will make a pose for the characters I make after I do everything else involved with making them.



I will definitely try those and see what happens, I was definitely going to mess with the hair, was trying to get the perspective right first. I think I have done so now I can go into finer details. Thank you very much.

I think even if this is a standing pose it needs to be stronger. At the moment the arms pushed forward at the shoulders, which looks a bit odd. You need to push them back and push his chest forward. Try and break the asymetry too, that's a real no-no when drawing a character pose :)

I made a very (VERY) sloppy edit to show how you could possibly tweak the design.



So far I thought everything looked "forced" and unnatural. I tried to remedy this a bit

Finally got around to doing more work on it. I'm liking how it's coming, only unhappy with the hair, not really sure how to detail it without making it look bad. Moved the legs a bit to make it look more natural, will also make it easier to animate when I get to it. Does anyone have any other ideas on what I could add to it (besides how I can improve the hair, I really am stuck there) before I move on to animating it.