Darkchis' Sprite Shack

[Darkchis]

Since I recently started messing around with sprites, and may end up making some more to try and see how they go, I decided I'd make a thread to get some criticism and store them all around.

Here's the very first one, with some help from Arborinus regarding shading, and then some details added by me but it's still very basic and probably blegh.

Scarecrow:

[Mageziya]

Since you asked for help, I decided to fiddle around with the scarecrow sprite. This is more of a quick mock-up, with there being a lot more that could be potentially done with the sprite, but it should still help.



In real size, so you can copy and paste the image into paint to look at in closer detail.

The first thing to work on is color. This is by far the most difficult part of designing sprites. Use colors that are too faded, and the sprite can appear dull or fail to properly contrast. Use colors that are too saturated and the sprite can appear garish and fake. I tried changing the scare-crow's skin to be less bright of a yellow to be closer to straw, but then found that the result color looked closer to an actual skin-tone instead of straw/burlap. Texturing, using careful experimentation with dithering could help, though the extremely limited sprite space might mean that it all just blends together. (Note: That image is actually an example of when not to use dithering, the checkerboard blending method, but provides a good example of what it actually is.) It also doesn't help that denim is a very difficult material to find a correct color for. I still haven't figured it out, as my own sprite thread has a very recent example of garish bad-denim.

The next thing is shading, which is also difficult. One notable problem with SS13 is that there is no consistent light source at all. The general approximation that seems to be agreed upon is that light comes from the top down, and front. Large patches of flat color don't really work with sprites, even with perfectly flat surfaces like machinery. The body is a dynamic, rounded shape, meaning that shading is expressed throughout the entire body. Using a combination of various different tones, and intermediate tones, this can be expressed. The hat and main body were two places in the scarecrow sprite that had rather flat coloration that I shaded. Be careful though, if the transition between different colors is too smooth, you can end up with everything having a silken appearance! This works for some things (Wizardy robes, pretty dresses, ect.), but not for all things. Texturing, combined with shading and coloration can be key to expressing an intended material, though the limited space available means that texturing often isn't an option.

Contrast is also a finicky thing to work with. If the contrast is too weak between colors, then its the equivalent of having just used one color, or can lead to a faded, washed-out look. If the contrast is too strong, then it can just look bad. At the same time, very strong contrast can also look good. It all comes down to experimentation. The neck area between the two overall straps at the moment has a very strong contrast in both sprites that almost hurts to look at, and I'm not fully sure on how to resolve this.

This is all that I really have to say for now. I'm personally still figuring stuff out all the time with spriting, and I still have problems with things. It's best to look at things from the perspective of "what am I trying to express, what is this sprite a metaphor for?", since you work with extremely limited spaces while making sprites.

In all, I'd say that you're off to a good start!

[Darkchis]

First of all, thank you for the wonderful advice, I'll try to keep it in mind and stick to it. Shading and contrast have both been very complicated to me, but I'm trying to get the hang of things! Hopefully it starts looking better. I'll play more with the colors around too until I find a nice way to show the material and that it doesn't look awful either.

Regarding the scarecrow itself, I figured that maybe working over the human sprite, mostly regarding the position of the arms, wasn't going to be too good in the end since scarecrows are known for their posture, so I tried to move around that and - hopefully - didn't fuck up too much, I tried to apply some shading to the arms I did, but I'm not entirely convinced about the final look. Here we go.



Once again, thank you very much for taking your time to give some help and advice, it's very much appreciated.

[Grifflez]

Seeing the human sprite with it's arms anywhere but bolted to it's side is uncanny valley levels of unnerving.

[Darkchis]

After messing around with the sprites some more, I tried to do the coloring and shading for what - should - be all the directions. I'm not entirely convinced about how it came out, but I thought I'd still share the results so I can get some feedback on them, here we go!

 




  scare.dmi (Size: 1.27 KB / Downloads: 412)

[Darkchis]

I've decided to mess with something I'm a bit more familiar with now, which happens to be food.

Here's a dumb baguette and a sandwich I made, hooray.




Forgot another version of the sandwich, oopsies, if anyone wants the dmi for this one let me know and I'll send it your way!



  baguette.dmi (Size: 376 bytes / Downloads: 430)

[Darkchis]

I made a very weird wedding cake. I had to switch it from white to pink since otherwise nothing showed through and yeah hopefully it's not too too bad, had to go from three floors to two too.



I'll keep working on some small stuff until I get the hang of everything, wooo.

[Mageziya]

White's a funky color because of relative brightness. The human eye is better at distinguishing darker colors than it is lighter colors. The numeric difference in brightness for shading lighter tones needs to be much greater in order to appear visible than it does for darker tones.

[Frank_Stein]

You know, a wedding cake would be a great thing to stick all those little action figures you get from the gashapon machines on

[Darkchis]

Wow it's been a while since I updated this thing at all!

Here's a small ukulele I made.



Still working on it, and on finding soundclips. Alternate version with a SHOCKING effect may also be cool.

[Mageziya]

Ukulele looks good!