Need Help/Advice on Cassie (my Sprite)

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

So I'm doing the KoT Patch, a Shin-patch-style ROM hack for FE8, and I've decided to make a character with long brown hair and blue robes to address FE8's lack of an early shaman, to spice up C6, and to make use of a previously unused animation for Shaman(F) and Druid(F). The problem? The sprite. I've never spliced before, and I want her portrait to fit in beautifully with the other FE8 artwork. I've spent the last 2 days (like 8-10 hours total) trying to overcome my terrible, terrible lack of talent for art to make her, but so far, this is the best I can do:

I've got the nose and eyebrows down, and I'm kind of happy with the eyes and ears. Kind of. But the hair, a ripoff of Cecilia's, screams FE7-style (or maybe even FE6, with my shitty shading modifications) and I'm not sure on the robe's shading.

Looking at the work here, you guys are absolutely amazing at this stuff, and I'd like somebody with "1337 skeelz" to fix the sprite so that it looks professional and to give me advice on what I did right/wrong.

I'm obviously going to give credit to anybody who contributes on this effort, and I'd be immensely grateful. If I can get this done (and, sadly, the animations for speech and blinking), then I can finish up C5x and do C6 and FINALLY release v0.1 for people to enjoy (which I'm really looking forward to).

Edited April 29, 2012 by Kngt_Of_Titania

[Teapot]

To be honest, it may very well be in the request-taker's interest to make it from scratch. It's a pretty butchered sprite, sadly. There's a lack of shading basically everywhere but the trim, and even then, I dunno what's going on with the blingy stuff.

Edited April 29, 2012 by jellyFISH

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

To be honest, it may very well be in the request-taker's interest to make it from scratch. It's a pretty butchered sprite, sadly. There's a lack of shading basically everywhere but the trim, and even then, I dunno what's going on with the blingy stuff.

Is it really that bad? I know there are obviously issues with it, but I spent so long on it (tbh, I'd say that 8-9 hours is probably a conservative estimate) that it kind of sucks to hear that, as embarassing as that might be to admit. Like I said, no talent for art, but I would at least like to be decent enough from practice to make passable sprites.

Do you have any advice/tips on where I went wrong? It wouldn't be as bad if it was at least a learning experience in some way.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Kngt_Of_Titania

[Teapot]

To say the least, I think you'd be safer trying to splice something together rather than just customing right out of the gate. The face is decent, but everything else really just lacks form. It's like flat panels on flat panels on flat panels. Clothing has folds, and bodies have shape an contour; it's not 2D.

[Anouleth]

I'm no expert, but... aside from the face, I can't see any part of this sprite you might want to keep. The bangs are badly shaped and there's next to no shading on the hair.

My advice: Hunt through the Splicing Competition archives or sprite topics until you find a good sprite that doesn't look too much like an existing FE8 character. Ask the creator if you can use it, if they're not using it in another hack they'll probably say yes. It's far less effort for much superior results than figuring out how to make a good mug yourself. Especially when you say you've spent eight hours and you have little to show for it.

EDIT: now that I look again, the face isn't very good either.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Anouleth

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

To say the least, I think you'd be safer trying to splice something together rather than just customing right out of the gate. The face is decent, but everything else really just lacks form. It's like flat panels on flat panels on flat panels. Clothing has folds, and bodies have shape an contour; it's not 2D.

Well, it was originally a splice -- Cecilia's hair, Farina's face, and Brammimond's robe (which I extended a little). The hair, aside from the parts at the extreme left/right, the strand over the ear, and part of one bang, is essentially just a recolor. Farina's face was simply modified to have Vanessa's mouth/nose and I basically copied the FE8 style eyebrow and made it fit her eye.

Like I said, hearing this really sucks, but I would like to salvage this sprite, just for personal pride if nothing else. How would I convert the shading on the hair to FE8's style? And which portions of the robe would best benefit from folds?

Sorry if I'm asking too much.

EDIT: Alright, one LAST ditch effort, using Jelly's advice on shading. Have I largely improved the robe and marginally improved the bangs? I'm waiting for advice (or notification on whether I've improved it enough to make it worth the effort to continue) to fix the hair, and I'll address the pendant last.

vs.

EDIT2: I just realized the small error on the top-left hand part of the hair. I was rushing the bangs since I need to sleep now. >.>

Edited April 29, 2012 by Kngt_Of_Titania

[Teapot]

Good grief. I'm about to pour buckets on your parade, mate.

1) Palette. This is to hoping you know that hack-insertable sprites have a 15-color palette (1 border + 5 skin + 3 hair + 6 anything else colors) + bg color (cannot be part of the image). You have fifty million shades of skin tone - most of which are FE7. You also have pure white in your image. If you were to use white as your background, anything with white in it would become transparent.

2) References. There's a huge mug sheet you can reference for "FE8-style shading." IMO, though, really, there's no real difference in shading as much as it is just paletting. FE8 is much more vibrant. The only real difference in "shading" is that the facial shadows are a bit darker and more dynamic - that is, there's more use of the middle skin tone. If anything, you really ought to reference how to shade, in general.

Clothing bunches and pulls, stretches, and folds against thing. It follows movement and is affected by gravity, like most things. For example, even if the shirt you're presumably wearing appears "flat" along your shoulder, you can still note that small lumps appear along the seams, or along the collar where it meets your neck, and around the sleeve and armpit, where your arms are currently reaching out to type on the keyboard. On the mug, the only real areas with any shading is next to the near collar and along the far sleeve, and even that's a bit of a stretch. Shadows appear when things block them from the light, or as the light diffuses from the distance difference. As such, darker colors and shading should appear on the far side of the mug (away from the light source), whereas highlights appear on the near side of the mug (facing the light source).

The same goes for hair, which is lighter and more flowing. You've probably never had long hair before, but if you take some strings and flop them around on things, that's basically what goes on. It's anchored at the root (where your fingers hold the ends of the string), and tends to tighten and stretch out along that anchor point; however, the opposite, free ends are loose, and are free to do basically whatever. They'll lie limp on a flat surface, dance with a puff of air, curl around things, and drape over edges. The hair you have here just looks like a huge mass of mousse or something. It's ridiculously full and plump, and seems to fall over the flat surface of her body like a cardboard cutout.

I don't know what kind of posing is going on, either. It's just a big mass of flat cloth. Is her body supposed to be facing the viewer? There's no direct light source that indicates anything.

As for the mug, itself, it would help if you'd at least provide some details about the character. How old is she? What is her build like? How tall is she? What sort of facial features does she have? What kind of personality does she have? FE8 has this hideously notorious "blank" face look that tells you virtually nothing about the character. It's boring and makes everybody look like a vapid vegetable.

Her forehead is enormous, and she lacks the shadow beneath her lower lip. All of her features could be pushed up at least two pixels. She's also incredibly short, and her neck is a rigid pole. She has the biggest, roundest shoulders I've ever seen, her ear is being eaten alive by hair, and her eyes look mismatched. The palette is also rather hard on the eyes - the blue is all very high in saturation, and the two lightest colors not only have hues that are too close together, but also have too little contrast. The hair, on the other hand, has too much contrast, and appears blocky and gross.

I really, really think it would be in your best interests to make a new, completely-spliced mug for your hack, then come back to this one when you're better at shading. Honestly, it's not a matter of pride; it's simply the fact that, as it stands, I don't think it's within the realm of your current abilities for you to fix this mug. You've spent over a third of a day on this thing. That's almost too much effort to be putting into something like this and only getting this much out of it. Really, your best interests in mind, I'd highly advise you to start from the beginning and not skip steps with the basics. There is a reason why we need to learn to walk before running, and unless you were born to run (incredibly talented, or if you've incredible previous knowledge of spriting or art), you'll really just have to crawl along with the rest of us until you get to that point.

This isn't a fix as much as it is just an example for reference. There face has been rearranged somewhat, and I've cleaned up a section of trim and clothing.

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

Good grief. I'm about to pour buckets on your parade, mate.

1) Palette. This is to hoping you know that hack-insertable sprites have a 15-color palette (1 border + 5 skin + 3 hair + 6 anything else colors) + bg color (cannot be part of the image). You have fifty million shades of skin tone - most of which are FE7. You also have pure white in your image. If you were to use white as your background, anything with white in it would become transparent.

2) References. There's a huge mug sheet you can reference for "FE8-style shading." IMO, though, really, there's no real difference in shading as much as it is just paletting. FE8 is much more vibrant. The only real difference in "shading" is that the facial shadows are a bit darker and more dynamic - that is, there's more use of the middle skin tone. If anything, you really ought to reference how to shade, in general.

Clothing bunches and pulls, stretches, and folds against thing. It follows movement and is affected by gravity, like most things. For example, even if the shirt you're presumably wearing appears "flat" along your shoulder, you can still note that small lumps appear along the seams, or along the collar where it meets your neck, and around the sleeve and armpit, where your arms are currently reaching out to type on the keyboard. On the mug, the only real areas with any shading is next to the near collar and along the far sleeve, and even that's a bit of a stretch. Shadows appear when things block them from the light, or as the light diffuses from the distance difference. As such, darker colors and shading should appear on the far side of the mug (away from the light source), whereas highlights appear on the near side of the mug (facing the light source).

The same goes for hair, which is lighter and more flowing. You've probably never had long hair before, but if you take some strings and flop them around on things, that's basically what goes on. It's anchored at the root (where your fingers hold the ends of the string), and tends to tighten and stretch out along that anchor point; however, the opposite, free ends are loose, and are free to do basically whatever. They'll lie limp on a flat surface, dance with a puff of air, curl around things, and drape over edges. The hair you have here just looks like a huge mass of mousse or something. It's ridiculously full and plump, and seems to fall over the flat surface of her body like a cardboard cutout.

I don't know what kind of posing is going on, either. It's just a big mass of flat cloth. Is her body supposed to be facing the viewer? There's no direct light source that indicates anything.

As for the mug, itself, it would help if you'd at least provide some details about the character. How old is she? What is her build like? How tall is she? What sort of facial features does she have? What kind of personality does she have? FE8 has this hideously notorious "blank" face look that tells you virtually nothing about the character. It's boring and makes everybody look like a vapid vegetable.

Her forehead is enormous, and she lacks the shadow beneath her lower lip. All of her features could be pushed up at least two pixels. She's also incredibly short, and her neck is a rigid pole. She has the biggest, roundest shoulders I've ever seen, her ear is being eaten alive by hair, and her eyes look mismatched. The palette is also rather hard on the eyes - the blue is all very high in saturation, and the two lightest colors not only have hues that are too close together, but also have too little contrast. The hair, on the other hand, has too much contrast, and appears blocky and gross.

I really, really think it would be in your best interests to make a new, completely-spliced mug for your hack, then come back to this one when you're better at shading. Honestly, it's not a matter of pride; it's simply the fact that, as it stands, I don't think it's within the realm of your current abilities for you to fix this mug. You've spent over a third of a day on this thing. That's almost too much effort to be putting into something like this and only getting this much out of it. Really, your best interests in mind, I'd highly advise you to start from the beginning and not skip steps with the basics. There is a reason why we need to learn to walk before running, and unless you were born to run (incredibly talented, or if you've incredible previous knowledge of spriting or art), you'll really just have to crawl along with the rest of us until you get to that point.

This isn't a fix as much as it is just an example for reference. There face has been rearranged somewhat, and I've cleaned up a section of trim and clothing.

Thanks for the feedback. I doubt I'll ever be able to do it, frankly; I just can't really envision things well enough to pull that stuff off.

Worth a shot, though, I guess. I learned quite a bit about spriting, for sure.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Kngt_Of_Titania

[Nanami Touko]

Theeeeeeeeeen make a splice and don't custom until you've actually learned how to

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

Theeeeeeeeeen make a splice and don't custom until you've actually learned how to

It was actually a full splice that somehow creeped into mostly custom, a little at a time.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Kngt_Of_Titania

[Nanami Touko]

It was actually a full splice that somehow creeped into mostly custom, a little at a time.

Which is bad, because it's obvious that you don't know how to sprite that well.

Take a head, take a body, stick 'em together, and then work in bits from other sprites. Do NOT attempt to do your own shading, or else you'll end up with this again. Take Anou's advice and scour the splicing comps, but not to ask for someone else's sprite. Scour to see how they put stuff together and how they sprited them. Not the ridiculous ones, mind you, but the more simple yet still clean splices.

And take it slooooooooooow. Nothing will be gained from jumping into doing your own shading right off the bat. N.O.T.H.I.N.G.

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

Which is bad, because it's obvious that you don't know how to sprite that well.

I know. It wasn't intentional.

[CrashGordon94]

Well, it seems to be a moot point now that someone's given the character a new sprite.

[Nanami Touko]

Well, it seems to be a moot point now that someone's given the character a new sprite.

Yeah, just saw that in the hack topic though Kon still needs to fix the head so it doesn't look like it's snapped off the neck whilst turning