Hi, Eyes of Argus. Welcome to PixelJoint!

First of all, there's no need to talk of being a waste of anyone's time--everyone's equal here, no matter skill level. Just be friendly and receptive to critique and all will be sunshine and flowers. :D

Secondly, please put your images in [img][/img] tags in the future. It saves us all from having to copy/paste a link in a new browser window to see your work. Plus, this forum has a clickzoom feature that lets us see images at 2x and above without taking them into an external editor.

Anyway, your shading fundamentals need a bit of work. Much of what you've posted so far is pillowshaded, meaning you have your highlights in the center with progressively darker rings moving out towards the edges. The only thing this actually works on is a sphere when the light source is directly in front of it, but it looks quite crummy in that case anyway. In short, it's never a good idea to shade like that, ever, even if you're not making something particularly realistic. Shading is based on how light works in real life, and light just doesn't work like that.

Other issues I felt could best be addressed with an edit, so I tackled your boss pod thing:



I was a little unsure of what certain shapes were supposed to be, so I started by nuking your shading and getting back to raw line art. Once there, I cleaned up the lines a bit and changed some shapes here and there. Largely a matter of opinion, yes, but a lot of your lines were pretty jagged. These should almost always be made into the smoothest curves possible. It just looks better.

Then I decided on a light source at top center, and slightly in front. For games, having a light source that's not centered is usually pain, because then you have to have differently-shaded sprites depending on whether they're facing left or or right. Anyway, I I shaded according to the light source, and while doing so, I made a point to increase contrast, because that's the best way to represent metal: it's shiny! Note the little details, like the sockets the far left and right pipes go into, and how the red eye is visibly inset into his (her?) body case.

As for your colors, you had all straight grays except for the eye. Grays tend to be very dull, so I injected a good deal of color into all the shades. Note how it still sort of reads as a roughly gray metal, but it has a lot more pop. And when you're coloring, remember to shift hue in addition to lightness. Things in real life tend to look sort of bluish in shadow, and things are usually lit by a yellowish light, so that's usually the best way to color things. Experiment, though. Color choice takes a while to get the hang of, and there's nothing wrong with settling on something that just looks right, even if there's no science behind it. The key thing to remember is that color ramps that only change in brightness are boring to look at, and sometimes downright ugly (try it with yellow).

I think I've covered most of the key points. Good luck! Feel free to ask if any of this is unclear.

Edited by Hatch - 29 July 2009 at 7:24pm

That's completely wrong, I'm afraid. At best it'll look like a photo taken with a bright flash in a dark room, and those photos look really bad. There's a lot of that going around spriting/ripping/editing communities, so don't be embarrassed.


As I said, many of my line art/shape changes were just personal preferences. No problem with what you've got. My talk of smooth curves doesn't apply to things that aren't supposed to be curvy; that was about "clean" lines.


Realistic shading. It looks three-dimensional because the shading mimics the way light behaves in real life. That's all there is to it. Don't mistake me for any kind of expert though; draw from life, not from my edit. Starkness and all those other emotions can a part of the piece, yes, but focus on just getting pixel things to look like things look in real life to start with, even if you're not making something that's supposed to be photorealistic.


Your original had 5 + trans and no black, mine has 7 + trans + black (my green BG is a trans placeholder). So yes, I added some colors, but it's still inside the limit. I suspected there were restrictions, so I didn't go crazy.



Allow me to backpedal. A sphere is the only object on which pillowshading can be applied and still obey the rules of how light behaves in real life. This does not make it a good idea. It still looks really flat and uninteresting, even though it's not completely illogical on a sphere.

Shading a sphere is one of the most basic things to do in the art world. Talk of "raising the center of the pillowcase a few pixels" is wrongheaded; ask, "how does it look in real life?" I can't tell you, step-by-step how to shade a sphere properly; it's just something you're going to have to try. The key is to look at photo references of your subject and draw your thing like them. But here's the thing: you must analyze references and understand why they're shaded the way they are. You can tell when someone's just blindly copying shading they saw in a photo without really understanding it. It makes a big difference.

So! For your spherical enemy, I'd suggest starting by shading a basic, untextured sphere, lit from the top if that is your desired light source direction. Once you've taken a crack at that, we'll take it from there. It's actually a fantastic place to start, since shading a sphere is one of the most basic things you can do.

Good luck!

[EDIT] I meant to mention, try to avoid working on a pure white or pure black canvas (or that horrible magenta). It really screws up your color perception. Work on something in mid to low brightness and very desaturated.

Edited by Hatch - 29 July 2009 at 9:14pm