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The dragon(cat)'s shiny pixels: 4/2/2015 Extreme Makeover: OC edition


Dragoncat
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eloin_by_rubydragoncat-d8f79e6.png

No proper bio for this one yet. But her name is Eloin, and Leo ends up with her. Her pegasus is a stallion and his name is Chestnut ^_^ Had to do some scratch shading on the base sprite's wings for easier recoloring, I hope it looks okay.

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eloin_by_rubydragoncat-d8f79e6.png

No proper bio for this one yet. But her name is Eloin, and Leo ends up with her. Her pegasus is a stallion and his name is Chestnut ^_^ Had to do some scratch shading on the base sprite's wings for easier recoloring, I hope it looks okay.

Nice, Dragonkitty. I like it, and I also like the sprite a lot, it looks pretty awesome. Just wondering...when did you sprite her?

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The wings looks like they've lost a lot of detail from the vanilla sprites. I think the head might look a bit better with a little ear like the peg knight pegasus has.

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Is it a bad thing that it's been simplified? Just curious. Sometimes simpler is better, like in this case, where I didn't want a white pegasus. There were two kinds of white that were so close to each other in shade that they looked like just one. The wings were a nightmare to recolor until I simplified them. And, the feather detail on the vanilla sprites actually looks a bit like fish scales to me, at least on the non promoted pegasus.

I didn't know the base sprite had an ear.

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Well, what I do in recoloring is use the eraser method in Paint. You know how there are two color options on the menu? One for the foreground and one for the color you see when you use the eraser tool? Well, the eraser method is when you make the foreground color the color that you currently have and then make the eraser color the color you want to change it to. Then take the eraser tool, right click, and watch all the pixels change to your new color. Only the pixels that are of the foreground color will change. It's MUCH faster than just using the paint bucket.

Thing is though, versions of Paint that came before Windows 8 are bugged and don't let the eraser method work except in new, unsaved images. Windows 8 Paint fixes this (about time), but yeah.

Still, I really like that mug and sprite. :)

Edited by Anacybele
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Yeah I was aware of the eraser method. I use it.

Really? I have Windows 7 and it works fine. But then again I haven't tried it with anything previously saved.

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Sometimes simplifying can be good... Sometimes neither good or bad, in the case of these wings though it kinda changes the way the wing reads... Like the original with the feathers makes me think of angel wings and stuff... Whereas the simplified version just doesn't look as nice. Like it looks like a kinda mangy bird wing?(not quite the right term, but can't think of a better example at the moment)

...also kinda pillow shaded areas instead of the light sourced coming from a distinct direction. Non-pillow shading wouldn't have the lightest shade only in the middle of the wing, take a look at where the lightest shade starts in the original wing.

...anyways, keep working at it! Part of the hardest thing with art is knowing what to simplify, what to detail sometimes.

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The light source isnt in the middle of the wing, it's kinda toward the top. I had it going down further but that looked even more like pillow shading. And, if they look like bird wings, that's good. Mangy though...idk. But pegasi arent angels despite both having feathered wings. Fa's wings are kinda shaded that way, I was aiming more like that.

The ears could just be hidden by the mane. But if it bugs you people that much I'll add them in...

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The wings look heavily pillowshaded and look more like painted cardboard than anything to be honest. Battle sprites are fairly small, and simplifying what detail they have makes it look nearly unrecognizable.

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Little details like that make or break a sprite, especially at this size.

Ear is on the original Pegasus Knight sprite, should be easy to just splice it in.

Here's a tutorial I found on pillow shading for a refresher for you... Sometimes hard to tell what is meant by the term if not overly confident/practiced in shading.

http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html

...ultimately though, our criticism and critiques here aren't meant to be any kind of attack DragonCat, we like art and care about spriting and want to help others get better at it. Something to keep in mind no matter if the feedback could have been worded more positively.

Also we have many levels of maturity and ages here, so sometimes comments don't translate across groups as well as they could.

You'll get what you put in, so don't let yourself be satisfied with less than you are capable of. The easy route never leads to much growth, in Fire Emblem, and in life. ;)

Anyways, keep working at it, you've got some potential Cat.

Edited by TheErrantShepherd
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I think I've seen that thing before. It's somewhat helpful, but...it still doesn't help with feathered wings.

Oh, and you guys aren't throwing f bombs at me every sentence. Yes, that happened before. Yes, here. So I'm not taking what you're saying as attacking. I took the f bombs every sentence as attacking. I asked the mods to lock that topic.

I guess I'm just not happy because I tried something and failed. And I actually like how that wing looks. I still don't see it as pillow shading.

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pillow shading is really hard to pick up, people just have a knack for knowing where it is and others don't. I can't really pick up pillow shading much either. Its stuff like that where you just need to take our word for it because the fact is that it is there, whether you can't see it or not.

Its fine that you like how the wing is now but don't let that hinder you from taking more cracks at it until its shaded properly, otherwise you're just hurting yourself in the long run,

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Yeah, I used to have trouble seeing pillow-shading too, Dragoncat. I just needed to learn more about exactly what it is and then I could definitely see where I was doing it. It helped me improve my shading skills by miles.

And I know that feeling, having tried really hard on something and spent a lot of time on it just to learn that it doesn't actually look that great. It IS pretty frustrating, I've had it happen to me too. I don't think your sprites look bad though, they're still pretty good.

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If it makes you feel better, the sprite in my avatar is something I've worked on for literally 3-4 years. Every time I thought I had a good sprite that looked great it turned out to be pretty cruddy. Even now there are things that still need work on it.

So just keep trying to improve yourself. For now it would help to just replace the wings with the originals and recolor appropriately. You can always go back and try to reshade it once you get a better handle on shading and wing anatomy in general.

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Okay guys, I tried again, this time I reffed the wing on an articuno sprite. Also added the ear.

eloin_by_rubydragoncat-d8fmgcf.png

Any better? I could probably work on it more, but I want to know if I'm on the right track first.

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...well, its a step in the right direction. Wing shading is a bit better at least.

*happy dance* YAY!

Do you think I should add more though, or will it just make it look like pillow shading again?

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