Teapot

there are a lot of things to be addressed before the glasses, tbh. i'd recommend you take the hair off and put it on a separate layer, then work on the empty face by itself so you can see everything. essentially speaking, glasses are done by muting the colors behind them. you're kind of close, but not really. what you want to do is keep the dark parts obvious, but then mute out the rest with lighter parts of the palette. instead, what you've ended up doing is just filling in the eyes entirely with that dark grey/purple. imo, best thing to do is use either skin tone or "white", then shade everything else out with one color lighter than what it used to be. ex: if the darkest is border color, use darkest skin tone, and ramp up from there. the lighter it looks, the better the effect without losing the detail. it's also more difficult because you picked rimless lenses, which you need to differentiate from the cheek using some second skin tone. you'll also need to blend out your actual glasses frames so it's not as stark. here's an old as shit tut, as well

IIRC the images are just in PNG format. You can edit PNGs with just about any image editor, including MS Paint. Unless you mean loading. Then just click Load Image, and you can load the image from the provided default image sets.

Let me clarify - it makes it near impossible to critique pixel art when it's that badly compressed.

First off, don't save as a JPG. It ruins the integrity of the image file by compressing it, which creates artifacts. With stuff like spriting, where color counts matter, you really don't want artifacts scrambling your color count to hell. Save as a GIF or PNG - preferably the latter.

You can use the same topic as your previous one rather than making a new one every time. TBH, it'd probably be easier to keep track of your shit that way. All of these splices are pretty basic, though, which makes obvious errors all the more glaring. You have a lot of trouble with blending your spliced pieces together without overshading the hell out of the lines - or, alternatively, leaving them unshaded altogether.

try posting your images as GIF/PNG files rather than .piskel files using tags

tbh it's actually probably easier to crit your mug if you post a normal 1x/100% zoom and let the rest of us zoom in on it it's particularly annoying that you picked 3x zoom, since there's really no good way of us shrinking it back down to 1x without fucking up the pixels would do a full explanation but i gotta go to work so here's just a visual ref instead

idefk

The head looks like it's one of Astra's mugs. Regardless, generally speaking, it's considered sprite theft to splice from others' custom portraits without their explicit consent.

I don't need to know who you've shown it to - the final results alone speak volumes. There's nothing wrong with being proud of what you've done; it's the fact you're being defensive about your work that inhibits your ability to improve. You've done nothing to address your actual work in the past couple of posts. All you've done is go on and on about how we're getting on your case. I'll state it simply: going back to your "artist friends" and hiding in your little clique isn't going to make you improve, if this is the level of quality your private chats produce. As I said earlier, pick one or two mugs you want the most help on and we'll provide the rest.

They're just giving you adequate warning because we're not the sort of people who sugarcoat our critique. Most people you've shown your work to are probably not artists nor spriters in the least, or they're friends who don't want to hurt your feelings; i.e. people who can't really be counted on to give you objective feedback to improve your work. As far as I can tell, you're pretty much just sitting on your laurels because you can do some simple splicing. I will say that the initial text wall was perhaps a bit much (mostly because I don't really care if a hack project goes through or not here in the sprite board), but I will agree with the first paragraph: they're mostly very novice splices with poor proportions and little regard for actual technique. Shading is poorly applied, if at all in some places, the palettes are all over the place and borrow from both FE6/7 and FE8, and, really, there's just such a massive slew of proportional issues that unless someone were kind enough to sit through each and every mug with you, we'd really never get through this entire cast. IMO, pick a few you think need the most work and ask for critique on those. The forum will provide the rest. Whether or not you want to listen depends on you, but I'll most certainly state that I am absolutely not amazed by any of these.

Simply put, it's poorly aliased and barely has any significant shading. The spliced parts are acceptable enough, but the customed parts could use a lot of work. Lines you've made aren't backed up by shading to smooth them out or give definition, and what shading has been applied is really just a lot of gentle banding in most cases - that is, it's just more pixels of the next color bunched up against the lines, giving things an embossed look rather than accentuating the shape. Additionally, no shading was applied where the eyes were edited, leaving a very stark line of lightest skintone going over the top of the eyes and a very jagged and uneven top eyelid. The eye color is too dark to be identifiable from the 6? pixels that exist of that weird murky maybe-green and brown, and it really just sort of looks like the same eye c/p'd over to the other side. Also hate the shit out of FE6 armor because it's poorly shaded af and uses unnecessary colors, but that's less your fault and more IS's. The star, on the other hand, lacks a light source and just kind of flatly sits there. The trim above it is poorly edited and doesn't remove all of the indication of the original V shape. Palette-wise, there's a lot of contrast between some of the lighter and darker shades - so much so that it makes it very difficult to smooth out the shapes with the current palette. I'd suggest tweaking the values more or picking colors that transition a little more gently.

Not really what we're looking for, unfortunately, especially because it's pretty much just an edit of Rath. But, thank you for your interest. We'll contact you if we need you.

the noodle is real

I think they literally just erased around Gale to isolate him from the rest of the image.

Literally so many colors they don't all fit in the palette box. Slightly better. Turn off anti-aliasing on your brushes or use the pencil tool. IIRC global fill also has a tendency to go between gaps and stuff in PS. IMO, stick with something that's more intended for pixel art, like MSPaint, GraphicsGale, etc.

gdi aug you ninja'd me Okay, first off, you're waaaaaaaaay over the color count. Those mugs are entirely uninsertable, regardless of the fact that they're formatted. GBA mugs have a 16 color palette - that is, 15 colors for the mug + 1 background color that shouldn't be used in the mug at all. Your mugs have been painted in PS or something without using an indexed palette that would constrain the colors, which results in smooth blending, but way too many damn colors. While this would be fine for later FE games (GC, DS, 3DS), this doesn't work for GBAFE. Also, if you look here, you share colors with your BG in the sprite itself. These magenta pixels would show up as transparent in-game. Spritework is deliberate and time-consuming. You have to put down every pixel down for a reason. Anti-aliasing is purposely done with specific pixels to create the illusion of blending, since we're only given a very limited palette.

somewhere in the middle of this i decided i'd done too much, so i quit but here's just kinda what i mean cases in point: hair - your hair really tends to stick strictly against the darkest bits instead of letting each color just do its thing body - it's like straight up a lot of darkest to lightest gradiating skin tones when you can honestly do whatever permutations of light and dark tones as long as they look decent armor - tones are allowed to touch without using border color like, honestly, i usually think of spriting more like trying to infer shape with colors, rather than trying to fill in lineart with shading

Yo, might help if you sized it back down to normal zoom.

There's a lot of really heavy banding/pillowing going on, which makes the shading feel super clumpy, as well as excessive use of borders. The minimug is also kind of unidentifiable, since it looks like you just tried to downsize the entire thing into a 32x32 box. The easiest way to do minis is to shrink normal mug by 50%, then crop and clean to fit a 32x32 square.

FE6/7 have roughly the same palettes, as they share outline and darkest skin tones; it's the FE8 that's the issue. The cloth under the armor is pmuch like a tabard. Her actual kimono ends around crotch-length, so the rest of it just hangs under the armor and covers her lady bits. ps - i hate the ever loving shit out of the new forums

Have you looked at the open source animation topic? I'm pretty darn sure there are some genderswap versions of classes in there, amongst other things.

It'd probably be best to follow the old walk-before-run adage. Your spriting isn't bad, but there are a lot of more technical fundamentals you're a kinda weak in. Immediately, there's just not a lot of shading going on, and what is shaded is pretty much just flat expanses that don't really show any sense of shape or depth. While FE shading does follow a more cel-shaded sort or anime style, there's still a lot of anti-aliasing that goes into it to smooth out lines and give the perception of shape and depth. I can tell that you tried spriting much like you probably try to draw - that is, you make lines and then color them. It really doesn't work as well with spriting. Pixels work more like an optical illusion. You have a small canvas and a limited amount of colors - as such, each and every pixel counts toward the illusion. To start off with, let's go with the hair: There's some decent shape and flow going on, but the overall appearance is pretty blobby and simple. Additionally, the lines are banded, and the shading offers little depth aside from a slightly pillowed look. It's natural to want to band/pillow things, but note that the lightest shade doesn't always have to touch the middle shade; you're entirely allowed to put lightest with darkest. Another thing that a lot of people are afraid to do is to shade with the darkest color. Not everything has to be midtone shaded. If you want dynamic shading, get used to being generous with your darkest and lightest tones. Those pack more punch than midtone. Additionally, not everything needs to be outlined with the darkest shade. Rough example: Face: He's cross-eyed. I'd honestly probably recommend just stealing eyes off existing mugs to begin with, as eyes are kind of a tricky area for most people. Like your hair, you're really not AAing enough with the dark tones you're given; instead, you tend to just draw features in and try to blend them into the rest of the face. I don't really have a lot of advice aside from reffing vanilla mugs as much as possible and making sure you actually make use of the darkest skin tone. Your current darkest skin tone is actually too dark for the rest of your skin, so it isn't as optimal for shading. It probably doesn't help that you tried to mix FE6/7 and FE8 colors. Rough edits: Body: Right off the bat I can tell you that his far shoulder is up too high and is probably too small. I'm not sure about the pose you tried to go for, but possible foreshortening isn't reading well here. A good way to catch weirdness and wonk is by doing periodic horizontal flipping of the image. This tricks your brain into thinking of it as a completely different image, thus allowing you to find mistakes you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Also, Hinata and Hana are pretty much just wearing kimono/yukata under their armor. I don't really see any resemblance to the shirt/scarf combo in your sprite. That being said, though, let's try and fix the body. This is approximately your body as it stands: There's massive asymmetry in the shoulders, and his neck is probably too long, too. The best way to go about this is to block in the shape of the body, first, then add rough shading where needed to show depth/where shading should go. Rough blocking: Here, I've evened out the shoulders and brought his head down and back a pixel. Also tweaked the neck and evened out the midline for the collar a bit, but that's trivial. Then you can toss the scarf/cape on over it and throw on some shading. After that, it's just polish, honestly. Best thing to do is try reffing vanilla as much as possible. I would really recommend getting used to doing more intense splices first and learning how to custom the bits you need heavily doctored. also, here's the thing i messed with, idefk

It's a pretty basic Alan/Raven splice. Big issues: > gap at the back of the neck where it meets the ear/hair > palette is all over the place; GBAFE sprites are 15 colors + 1 bg. > iffy shading where chin meets the rest of the body I'd probably take the head and shove it up and to the right about a px, then go over and recolor the entire thing with a set 15 color palette. If you don't know how to quantize your palettes, I'd recommend looking up Usenti and have that do it for you.

I sincerely think you should probably work on more basic fundamentals before making more fullbodies. The shading is inconsistent, and the anatomy is all over the place.