I've never Sprited before

[Balcerzak]

[spoiler=How I made it:]First I took screenshots from my emulator to use as the bases. Next I took Clarine, cut off her ponytail, tilted her head a few degrees clockwise, and changed her eye color. Then I took Sue, played with color balance to make her blond, stole her hair and shoulders (also changing red to teal). I decided to butcher Priscilla's ear (because how would you know she was a troubadour without the little feather thing ). Finally, I stitched everything together to make Frankengirl. The denouement was my trying to go pixel-by-pixel to do cleanup where there were obvious problems, and reduce shades to only three major colors per group instead of the large proliferation that had happened in either the recolorizing or some other process.

Feedback I'm interested in:

Were the component parts dead obvious?

Is the outlining too bold?

I feel slightly unsatisfied with her hair still, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on whats wrong. Tips would be awesome.

Anything else I should really know about proper spriting, rather than just fooling around in GIMP, hoping it turns out decent.

[BEST TRYNDAMERE PLAYER]

It actually reminds me of Nanna.

It's not bad for a first.

[deleted35362]

Get the mugsheets. It'd be a lot easier than ripping mugs yourself.

[Ansem]

Yeah i learned the same way as you did

I fucked messed around with some mugs and made one

Pretty good for a first timer

[-Cynthia-]

Maybe the issue with the hair is that the light parts are wayy lighter than the shaded parts? I dunno, just seems like a lot of contrast to me.

The face being Clarine is pretty obvious, not that it's necessarily a bad thing. Pretty good overall.

[AstraLunaSol]

Feedback I'm interested in:

Were the component parts dead obvious?

Is the outlining too bold?

I feel slightly unsatisfied with her hair still, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on whats wrong. Tips would be awesome.

Anything else I should really know about proper spriting, rather than just fooling around in GIMP, hoping it turns out decent.

Pretty good for your first sprite.

Some were some weren't though you did use a good combination.

The outlining is fine, it's supposed to be bold.

Smoothing out the hair a bit might work, as there are random pixels that could be removed to give the hair an overall cleaner look.

The eyes are diluted colors giving a blurry look. >_>

[Phoenix]

Maybe the issue with the hair is that the light parts are wayy lighter than the shaded parts? I dunno, just seems like a lot of contrast to me.

The hair is pillow shaded, and blobbish... just to add to that. Use sharper detail and don't pillow shade it.

60% of the sprite is blurry and/or not well defined.

Never use dark outlines on the inside of the sprite unless the surrounding colors are dark. Case in point? The side strands of hair.

The neck and chin lines are fuzzy like furr and way too thick. soften the lines of the feather that are in contact with the hair. They're too dark against the light colors.

The left shoulder pad needs darker defining lines.

Etc... don't worry I'm barely past beginner myself, though I'm one of few screwing with FE9 and FE10 style sprites :)

[Loki Laufeyson]

Phoenix, he ripped the sprites from an emulator, of course its gonna be wonky looking.

Not bad for a first sprite considering how you obtained it. Yeah do what April suggested and get the mugsheets. ;)

[Parrhesia]

Great for a first attempt, 'specially given how mine turned out. And mine was a lot simpler than yours, too. (Who'd've thought that Zeiss+Oujay+Headband could turn into a trainwreck?)

Yeah, I like it a lot.

[Balcerzak]

Wow, way more responses than I was expecting, and all in quite a short while. Thanks for all the positive feedback, everyone who said they liked it, or that it was a good first attempt. I'll address a few of the things a little bit more here below.

It actually reminds me of Nanna.

I'm glad there seems to be some similarity shining through. I was actually thinking of using her kind of as a reference, but the whole style of FE5 sprites seemed different, and I wasn't used to it, so instead I just ended up going with the plan I did. If it looks somewhat like her in spirit, I guess mission accomplished. :)

Get the mugsheets. It'd be a lot easier than ripping mugs yourself.

Oh, thanks. These would probably have been helpful and avoided potential complications incurred by resizing, etc. I figured they were out there somewhere, but didn't invest any real effort searching for them, and wasn't sure how much a difference it would make in the end anyway. I may see if I can replicate the current effort using them and see what sort of effect that makes.

Maybe the issue with the hair is that the light parts are wayy lighter than the shaded parts? I dunno, just seems like a lot of contrast to me.

The face being Clarine is pretty obvious, not that it's necessarily a bad thing. Pretty good overall.

That... that could very well be part of the issue. I will have to try altering the hues slightly and see if I can't get something that seems to look a little better.

Good to know.

Some were some weren't though you did use a good combination.

The outlining is fine, it's supposed to be bold.

Smoothing out the hair a bit might work, as there are random pixels that could be removed to give the hair an overall cleaner look.

The eyes are diluted colors giving a blurry look. >_>

Good to know.

Good to know.

Yeah, I'm planning to go back in and tweak the areas where I had to combine Clarine's style with Sue's style, and maybe even chop off a bit on the left of the sprite. Some of the random pixels were probably just me not knowing what I was doing, or really how to work with hair at all, and trying random things until they almost worked.

Blurry, huh? I guess maybe. I was going for soft/gentle, rather than clear/piercing. Maybe it didn't quite work.

The hair is pillow shaded, and blobbish... just to add to that. Use sharper detail and don't pillow shade it.

60% of the sprite is blurry and/or not well defined.

Never use dark outlines on the inside of the sprite unless the surrounding colors are dark. Case in point? The side strands of hair.

The neck and chin lines are fuzzy like furr and way too thick. soften the lines of the feather that are in contact with the hair. They're too dark against the light colors.

The left shoulder pad needs darker defining lines.

Etc... don't worry I'm barely past beginner myself, though I'm one of few screwing with FE9 and FE10 style sprites :)

I guess I don't really know what 'pillow shading' is then. All I saw given as a definition was 'shading using four or more variant colors', and I went in and expressly made sure I was only ever using three grades in any given area, Can you provide a more descriptive definition of it, or how to avoid it? Or maybe knowing which parts exactly are pillow shaded would help?

Not sure what to say about that.

Regarding internal outlines: I just copied exactly what was done with the outlines on Sue's hair. Did that only work on Sue because of the original shade of her hair, or...?

Hopefully I'll fix the neck and chin issues when redoing with mugs from the sheet. I probably screwed up on the splice. I needed to make Sue's chin slightly wider to match the rest of Clarine's face, and change her skin tone, and some errors were probably introduced in the process. Or maybe it was problems introduced by resizing.

Left shoulder doesn't really have a pad, it's just part of the cloth fabric of her shirt. I might take a closer look at it though, I did chop off a fair chunk from Sue, so maybe I mussed it up a bit.

[Balcerzak]

I come bearing great improvements, as well as pinning down the probable explanation for the cause of the great blur disaster (the rotate tool is to blame).

Behold, the evolution of Tessa:

(Rotate 4.9^o clockwise.)

(Oh Newton, everything is so blurry. Pull up original as reference, and clean it up pixel-by-pixel.)

(Post cleaning, everything is sharp again.)

(Now with added Sue! [if only the original base was Mary, she'd be a Mary Sue... *rimshot*])

>>

(Final product >> First attempt. Notice how it is leagues better.)

Special thanks:

April, for link to mugsheets

-Cynthia- for advising on darkening the light color in the hair (this did wonders for the overall image)

Anyway, you may notice I did some surgery on the right shoulder. Sue seems to be a lot buffer than I wanted, so I had to slim that down considerably. This also involved adding more hair. I followed the law of conservation of hair length^*, and chopped a bit off left. I also did a bit more tweaking with hair shading in general, and I think the pixels are now mostly where I want them. I still am not sure I quite understand where the pillows were, or if they disappeared though.

^*(Not an actual physical law.)

Edited April 14, 2010 by Balcerzak

[Ansem]

I like how the eyes changed

It seems much better then before

[Phoenix]

I come bearing great improvements, as well as pinning down the probable explanation for the cause of the great blur disaster (the rotate tool is to blame).

Behold, the evolution of Tessa:

(Rotate 4.9^o clockwise.)

(Oh Newton, everything is so blurry. Pull up original as reference, and clean it up pixel-by-pixel.)

(Post cleaning, everything is sharp again.)

(Now with added Sue! [if only the original base was Mary, she'd be a Mary Sue... *rimshot*])

>>

(Final product >> First attempt. Notice how it is leagues better.)

Special thanks:

April, for link to mugsheets

-Cynthia- for advising on darkening the light color in the hair (this did wonders for the overall image)

Anyway, you may notice I did some surgery on the right shoulder. Sue seems to be a lot buffer than I wanted, so I had to slim that down considerably. This also involved adding more hair. I followed the law of conservation of hair length^*, and chopped a bit off left. I also did a bit more tweaking with hair shading in general, and I think the pixels are now mostly where I want them. I still am not sure I quite understand where the pillows were, or if they disappeared though.

^*(Not an actual physical law.)

Looks much better overall :)

BTW Pillow shading is the act of shading an object as if the light source is directly between the viewer and the object. The sprite will have shadows all around the outlines and that usually comes out looking very weird for the most part. To properly shade a sprite, simply determine where the light is coming from and brighten areas facing the light while darkening areas facing away from the light.

When I said LEFT shoulder pad, I meant HER LEFT which would be your right. Looks much better by the way :)

[deleted35362]

BTW Pillow shading is the act of shading an object as if the light source is directly between the viewer and the object.

Not exactly. If someone actually did that correctly(Which I've seen before), it wouldn't look pillowed.

More specifically, pillow shading is when you neatly arrange the shade and they and up looking like

stair steps zoomed in. It's just not right. At some point, you'll be able to just look at something and

know that it's pillowed immediately.

Try to fix up the hair more. FE6 isn't a good reference, btw.

Edited April 15, 2010 by April

[shadowofchaos]

More specifically, pillow shading is when you neatly arrange the shade and they and up looking like

stair steps zoomed in. It's just not right. At some point, you'll be able to just look at something and

know that it's pillowed immediately.

This helped me understand it more... I think:

And this:

Mark's Pixel Art Tutorial

[Balcerzak]

Thank you everyone for clearing up the confusion on pillow shading. I think it's starting to make some sense now. As for other issues:

When I said LEFT shoulder pad, I meant HER LEFT which would be your right. Looks much better by the way :)

Oh... wow. I feel foolish now.

Try to fix up the hair more. FE6 isn't a good reference, btw.

Which areas of the hair still look bad to you? Side-strands, back, top, ahoge? I was actually feeling relatively pleased with it, but like I said, I don't really know what I'm doing. Sorry for being a bother.

For ease of laziness, I am including a zoomed in version, which lets you see the individual pixels without having to open it in an image editor yourself.

Once again, everyone, thanks for being so supportive.

[Loki Laufeyson]

SHe looks loads better Balzy! On the left side of the sprite's head there should be some outline. Right by the left eye (OUR left)

[Balcerzak]

Several weeks ago, I made another sprite, as a request, but mostly for practice. Others also sprited the same character, and a different choice was ultimately accepted, but I realized I should probably put up my attempt here for comments, criticisms, and the like.

The request was Pent's Hair, Uther's face, and Forde's armor, with some recoloring.

[Phoenix]

Heheheh. Damian. I should take back what I said about Irina.

It's a pretty good splice, though the Uther head is a bit too big, or at least it seems too big at first blush.