Trying This Spriting Thing...

[Crazy Li]

As I lay down the groundwork for an eventual FE project where I take a bunch of original characters me and friends of mine have made and adapt them to FE versions... I've been trying to make mugshots for them... so far focusing on ones that would be appearing earlier in the game first for obvious reasons. Aside from ones that are straight lazy recolors with no other editing, I'll show a few examples of how they've been coming out. I've been told that all of them look rough and need tweaking, but I'm not sure how to improve them. I was hoping I could get some advice from those more experienced/skilled at this sorta thing.

[Toa]

These are pretty basic, I'd suggest branching out and doing more than 1 or 2 little edits to an existing mug, so your characters look more unique. There's some good tutorials in the pinned spriter's resource. I'd suggest that you figure out how to do pretty proficient splices before adding your own custom additions.

[Crazy Li]

It's not that I don't understand the concept behind splicing, more that I don't have the slightest idea what to even use as parts for anything. I don't think a tutorial can really tell you that sort of thing. That's why I'm asking actual people for advice.

Another thing to consider is that all of these characters have pre-existing designs so how "unique" they look is partially dependent upon that. I just usually look for the base that's the closest to how they're supposed to look and then edit it as needed. Of course the original designs don't necessarily fit in with FE, so for stuff like outfits, I usually use whatever might be reasonable for the class they are.

Would it be helpful if I posted references for the characters I'm trying to re-create?

Edited December 6, 2014 by Crazy Li

[Kon]

That would definitely help, methinks.

[Crazy Li]

Let's start with the top-left character. This is all of the references I have for her at the moment, though I've seen more sprites of her in the past, I just dun have them:

I figured Fir's hair would be good for the ponytail, but I grabbed Lyn's face since Fir looks a bit too young. The character's supposed to be thiefy so I just grabbed some garb that kinda felt like it would pass for that vibe.

I'll hafta skip top-right for now because I don't have any imagery on my computer for him, I was just going off memory. I'll hafta ask the creator for something later but I know the key was orange spiky hair hothead. I could probably do with changing the face and/or body on that one but I don't really have any ideas. The character's gonna be a merc but isn't super manly as he's slightly on the younger side.

I don't have a whole lot to work with for the bottom-left character since she's a newer concept of my friend and this was all I was given:

And then the last character is one of my own that's a bit newer and doesn't have a super-solid design. This is my tentative concept:

I basically just grabbed someone with close enough hair and tried to finagle a bow on there. I know it's horribly done but I wasn't sure where to get an actual bow from. I also slapped on a shoulder pad since the character is an archer and that's a semi-common thing for them to have. I definitely should have taken from another body entirely for the clothing under that though. I just didn't have any ideas at the time.

I guess what I need most is some sort of direction on what characters to steal parts from so I can make better splices.

[Crazy Li]

I was also told to make this catgirl character (ref) but with a bandana to cover her ears...

As you can see, it's a total disaster xp

[Toa]

The bandana is pretty high up, making her head look really tall, you should lower it to eyebrowish level. The arm closest to us doesn't look like its connected, I'd lower it a few pixels and get rid of the tear(?) in her clothing so it goes around the arm better. The eyes are pretty strange too.

[Crazy Li]

Yay, specific advice~ this is more of what I was seeking, thanks.

Trying to implement some of the suggestions, but it still looks wrong, I know. How's the bandana height?

I lowered the arm, but it still feels disconnected... it must be my shading.

And yeah, the eyes look weird because I was trying to make feline eyes but have no idea how xP

Also don't think her face markings were well done either.

I don't suppose anyone's made something like a GBA adaptation of Lethe or something (even a generic cat laguz would do) for me to use as a reference for cat features?

[Toa]

Maybe try a different bandanna? I think the bandana alone is pretty tall.

For the arm, move it to our right a pixel or two and maybe down another. The shoulder should be one smooth arc.

For the eyes, I think you should just take some normal eyes and if those aren't what you want make some small edits to those.

I think the markings suffer from a bit of bad color choice, your browns are all pretty close to each other and are pretty goopy. I'd reference some of the browns they use in official mugs. You also have an FE8 outline, I'm not sure if you want that. Back to the markings, you have the benefit of the skintones being close to browns, so you could use those to blend the markings into the face better, maybe reference how spiky hair that covers parts of the face is shaded in official mugs.

[Crazy Li]

Did I get a SS outline somehow? Yeah, that was an accident. All my colors do come from official mugs though. The browns are whack because I couldn't find a source with 4 shades of brown and the hair has 4 shades. I'm gonna do it the way it's supposed to be done and take the darkest skin colors, making that part of the hair shades. I was just lazy and didn't want to remap pixels. On the bright side, this would give me at least one more free color to use on her eyes.

On the subject of eyes, I did start with the base's eyes sorta, but drastically edited them.

I will play around with the arm more later today but maybe the bandanna should be tall if it's covering something?

Edit: Somehow I think the arm got worse this time after moving it...

Edited December 7, 2014 by Crazy Li

[Mew]

I don't think the hair needs that many colors in it, kind of makes it look too rounded and less like hair. Would also comment that the hair coming up on her cheek looks like face markings, but I don't see face markings on the reference. I think that hair needs to look more like part of her hair.

Edited it real quick since idk how to really describe how to fix the hair other than to reshape it. It's definitely nowhere near finished in this state but I think trying to shade the hair as if it was styled more like this might help you out. I also fixed some of the shading on her face and softened the outline on the eyes

[Crazy Li]

The hair has that many colors simply because the base did. i was afraid to mess with official shading because I'm bad at shading.

face markings are indeed face markings as I pointed out previously. I have yet to see a cat laguz without them.

i will definitely take a look at your changes when I get home and use them as a guide to fix things up. Thanks so much!

[Mew]

Oh woops, weird, I tried to go back and see if you mentioned it before but I completely missed that sentence about the markings :B

[Crazy Li]

I'm starting to burn out on this character x.x maybe I should take a break and try a different one. I'll leave her at this for now and fix up more later:

I think next I'm gonna make some modifications to the top-right character from my first post. Ross worked, but I might want to use some other characters to add to it. At the very least, I'll see if there's a better body to to use for a Mercenary. Did I do a good enough job on the hair though? I'm not sure editing out his headgear into hair was done that well.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Even before the tweaks made by Mew this latest splice is clearly much better than the bunch within the first post. You've got some good art ability, keep pushing your splices and creativity.

The Ross edit is pretty rough looking at the moment tbh, his hairline currently appears to start only a few pixels from his eyebrows and I'm assuming you probably weren't going for that.(insert joke about lowbrow here) A hair to reference for perhaps what you were going for would be Chad from FE6, FE6 mugs don't have the best shading but should give you a better idea how to make a spiky short hairstyle. Right now it just doesn't have the flow hair does, even though its short and spiky, hair should still flow/derive from some sort of origin point.

I would move the hair up a few pixels at least, also mixing some other mugs into the face would also make him less obviously recolored Ross. Maybe think about what aspect of the Ross mug you like, for example the eyes, or the head shape and keep that, but mix it up with other parts to make something your own.

For the body, there are some fun pieces for mercenary bodies among the villains from the games, I`d look there.

...anyways, you obviously have some decent art skills, as you already showed a marked improvement in one day. o_O

Keep it up!

[Crazy Li]

Thanks. These may be my first ever attempts at Fire Emblem mugs, but I have done sprite work before. Granted, this was always simple sprite editing for small stuff on the level of the battle sprites and never portrait splicing but eh

[Crazy Li]

So I was asked what I liked about Ross and just keep those parts... well, it turns out I didn't really like anything. He just had spiky hair that I thought I could sprite out the headgear to make it complete. There wasn't really much worth keeping on him though and I'm sure I didn't do the hair well anyway...

So I decided to start over using Chad's hair and placing it on someone... except it didn't really work out either

The slightest angle variance really messes with me. The hair's off-center, but moving it over any caused it to not really frame the head. I guess what I was supposed to do is splice pieces of the hair and attach it around the head as far as the area that contained Raven's hair originally?

Also, the body wasn't finished because after realizing how off the hair was, I stopped editing >.>

Edited December 10, 2014 by Crazy Li

[Mew]

It's good that you realize there's an angle issue. The way I'd fix that is by taking the entire top of the hair, without touching the bangs which -are- angled correctly, and moving it a pixel to the left, then smoothing out all of the lines that get messed up. Then mostly just continue to fix it that way, by moving pieces around that aren't right and fixing the hair as I go so it doesn't lose the shape. I don't think it's really really off angle-wise.

[Crazy Li]

You mean like this?

Also while I wait for someone to tell me if I did it right, I'll post this attempt to be more creative on a previously-posted character (and be closer to the original design)

No, that shading is NOT final, I'm just laying the groundwork pixels for the outfit. But now with the outfit change, I'm wondering if the shoulder pad should be ditched. It feels very out of place now, but I thought it would be a good touch for an archer character. Maybe I should just have the shirt/vest combo and leave it at that with no semblance of actual armor? Or should I try to get a new shoulder pad that fits right? or do I just need to play with how I'm blending stuff to work it? Opinions/other input is very much welcome here

Edited December 10, 2014 by Crazy Li

[Crazy Li]

Here's another one of the 4 from my original post with more editing done to it. I hope these aren't so basic now.

[ghast]

right OPV eye seems too far from the bridge of the nose. try bringing it closer

[Crazy Li]

How far? I moved it over 1 pixel does it need more?

Also, anyone have feedback on the images posted prior to this? Wanted to know if the hair was adjusted right on the merc and help on the archer.

[Toa]

I think her eye needs to go down a pixel, but the real problem there is that her eyes don't match. One is long and flat topped and the other looks a lot more circular. Did you splice those eyes a pair or try and draw your own? She also has a 1 pixel hole in her face to the south east of the eye you're moving.

The green haired girl is ok, the body needs work to say the least, it looks pretty pillowy and the lines seem jagged and they don't flow well. I think you should stick to splicing for now.

The orange hair guy looks pretty good, but it looks like the trim on his shoulder pad somehow lost its shading. I might also go for a different set of whites, try for a bit more contrast.

[Crazy Li]

I spliced the eye on the camera right from Sue but when I tried to take Sue's other eye, it looked terrible on that face due to its angle. Nothing I could do got it to look like anything but an abomination. Thus I edited the original eye based off Sue's to try and match the style but at the angle of the base. I didn't realize it was THAT much more circular but with such few pixels to work with in that space, it's kind of difficult. I guess the other thing I could do is put the original right-side eye back and try to make the same sort of edits I did to the left-side one so they might match more? Splicing doesn't seem like it's going to be the answer (or if it is, it's not going to be accomplished by me).

As for green hair, could you give suggestions on where to find parts for the splice? The reason why I don't splice is because I have no direction. I'm trying to ask for some sort of help on how to create these designs. What Is sprited there was a rough concept (and I did note that wouldn't be the final shading, so that's why it's pillowy right now). My question to the community is basically how I can re-create an outfit similar to that through splicing. Advice on what characters to pull parts from would be a great start and a huge help.

I never touched the trim's shading so I have no idea how it was lost, but I'll look into that for sure. But I'm not certain what you mean by the different set of whites. Do you mean the shoulder pad shouldn't be silver, but instead be lighter like white? Or are you saying to not use skin tones for the trim? The latter might be difficult given I don't really have shades of white in the palette to pull from. I can only replace what's there color-wise, not add new ones. I'm insistent on limiting these to 15 colors as official sprites would be.

[Crazy Li]

No answers to my last post :( I guess I'll post some more bad edits then...