Yuli's Sprites.

[Agro]

Much better than your other ones, to say the least. Arms are still pillow-shaded, and I think her mouth is too wide for a female. That, or it's just too flat. I'll also add that her jawline isn't round enough, and her head "thins out" towards the chin too soon.

[Yuli]

I've noticed the face shape is a bit awkward, but everytime I change it, I get chubby cheeks. XD

I'll try to make the other changes though and edit it in. :3

Edit:

A shorten the mouth and tried to fix the wrong shading. I took out some of the second shade. Is that right?

Edited December 4, 2008 by Yuli

[Sage Knight]

The arm and neck are still a little pillow shaded. MOreso on the neck. And the face proportion bugs me a little... But nice work.

[Yuli]

How do I fix it? Where should the shading be remove/add?

[Miss Tama]

Well, pillow shading usually occurs when there's the same amount of shading on all edges of the sprite, making it look... well, pillowed x_X To fix it, you'd take some of the shading away towards the light source (upper left, for reference) and add more away from it (bottom right). Necks are difficult to shade (at least for me), but my advice would be to fill in that section above the collar with the second lightest shade of skin tone and add a tiny bit of shading under the chin and where the hair touches the neck. It's also extremely dark where her armpit is, though I'm not sure whether that was intentional or not.

[Yuli]

It was like that on the Marisa sprite. I stoled the arm off that. :x

I'll try to fix and edit it in. :3

Edit;

There we go. :3

Edited December 6, 2008 by Yuli

[Yuli]

Hair and head is from Fiora while face is from L'rachel.

Armor is custom. Other sprites didn't have what I was looking for so I had to make it myself.

[Yuli]

New one. :3

[Deity]

Very nice.

[The Blind Archer]

... the eye placement just doesn't work. Look at other FE mugs; the eyes rarely, if ever, go all the way to the other side of a person's face. Move the far eye closer to the middle of her face.

You also have a common trend of pillow shading the far side of the faces on your portraits. That is, you add all three dark shades of skin tone on top of one another throughout, giving it a cushion (or pillow). It makes the shading look messy and uneven. Look at the far side of ANY FE7 character's face; they don't have that, and for good reason. By getting rid of this, it's possible to make the shape of any character's head look like a slightly curving V more than a sharp check-mark, which is what you have going on. (No, I don't have any idea if I said that right). Again, your best references for shading are existing FE7 mugs (since that's the shading style you seem to prefer)

Edited December 13, 2008 by The Blind Archer

[Yuli]

Hehe, I'm more of a FE8 person. ;D

I can understand why the eye looks wrong, but I don't know where else to put it. Moving it makes the eyes look to close, but leaving it at the same place doesn't work either. I've tried lowering the eye and doing the same thing, but it still looks weird. I'm at lost at where to place the eye. D:

Edited December 13, 2008 by Yuli

[The Blind Archer]

In which case, take note of how the eyes and facial features of FE mugs facing similar angles look when you make a mug. There's a minimal amount of detail around the edges of the eyes, and usually mugs allude to eyelashes or the curves of the face somehow. Fixing the cheek shading I pointed out may also do something to help with the eyes compared to the rest of the head.

Again, the best references are existing mugs, so study them often.

Edited December 13, 2008 by The Blind Archer

[Yuli]

Is the shading on the head fix now? :x

[The Blind Archer]

Not quite. Let me to provide an example.

I've circled the area in question on both your portrait and an existing one, in this case Lyn. The shading you have going on makes the far side of her face look very straight, much like a \ symbol. Heads aren't naturally shaped like that; they usually have some curve to them. Look at Lyn's cheek. The outline is in a straight line, yes, but it's easier to see the shape of her face due to the shading not being so dense and in a uniform fashion. Different segments of her face just have one pixel of a dark tone, and others just have one pixel of a lighter tone, for instance.

You may have to zoom in on it to properly compare; I don't know how to size stuff up/down without it getting blurry. :/

Edited December 13, 2008 by The Blind Archer

[Yuli]

Oh! You were talking about that part of the head. I was totally fixing the wrong thing.

Edit:

How's it now? :3

Edited December 13, 2008 by Yuli

[Agro]

I took some liberties of getting your sprite to physically show you what's wrong.

The left is my edited version while the right is yours.Can you see what I've changed? I'll try to list them, going from the top of the sprite to the bottom:

I'll start with the headband. Some of the colours you used for the border of the headband were incorrect and thus prevented more detailed shading. As such, I gave part of it the standard outline colour. I think this makes it stand out better. Also played with the shading to make it look less pillowy.

Next in line is the eyebrows. The problem with all of your mugs is that when you draw the eyebrows, you make them one colour. Try to add more depth into it by using more than one colour.

The eyes. Oh dear, the eyes. First off, huge eyes are huge. I shortened them by one pixel, and moved her left eye to her left by a little. Then I changed some things in her right eye. It lacked the white (sclera?) of it, and made them look round and buggy (like, insect). I also moved it across by a pixel, thereby fixing your positioning problem. Personally, I think this (the eyes) was one of the major problems in your mug.

Next up is the face shape. What I realised was that your face shapes go on a gradient of 1 down the face. This means that it's one diagonal line. I made the line look more round, changing the face shape completely. I also changed some of the shading issues you had with the face.

Next is the shirt and arms. You had pillow shading everywhere, and the arm wasn't shaded correctly. The light comes from her left, as is indicated, so there shouldn't be much shadow around the back of her arm at all. Also, the way her arm was shaped indicated that she her arm was raised forward (or clasped together, like Neimi)

Edit: I also noticed the way you've done the line on the right edge of her clothes. The picture below should give an idea of what I'm talking about:

The left is how you did your line (sort of...); the right would be how I'd usually do it, which I feel is the better way.

Lastly, your choice of palette. You have but 4 skin colours (FE7 standard is 5). This limits your ability to shade by a lot, and greatly affects the mug, whether you realise it or not.

You could also add 4 more colours to what you have already. I counted 12 colours, four for skin, one for outline, three for hair and three for clothes. You might wish to change some thing to make it look less bland, like making her clothes a different colour to her headband, or changing her eye colour.

Again, I'm sorry for editing your mug. I did what I thought was necessary in showing you how to fix the issues you had. There's a lot of things I didn't point out because I was too lazy or didn't notice them until afterwards.

Edited December 13, 2008 by Wander

[Yuli]

Colors? Pweh. I never pay attention to those rules, but I do appreciate the tips.

Next time though, I would to try myself. I can't improve if people do stuff for me. ;-;

[The Blind Archer]

There's a definite sign of improvement. Remember that you can use different colors to allude to different facial features (cheek bones, for instance)

Edit: I'm also inclined to agree with Wander's suggestions this time around. And yes, the best way to learn this stuff is to do it yourself; much like any hobby or skill, spriting isn't perfected in one sitting.

Edited December 13, 2008 by The Blind Archer

[Agro]

Colors? Pweh. I never pay attention to those rules, but I do appreciate the tips.

Next time though, I would to try myself. I can't improve if people do stuff for me. ;-;

The problem with me telling you is that words can only go so far, and, especially on a forum, things are misinterpreted and misunderstood, and I can't go into minute details.

[Yuli]

I have never given a thought about that. I'll try to remember from now on. Thanks! ;D

Edit:

@Wander: You can take your time. I'm in no hurry to fix the sprites. >_>

Edited December 13, 2008 by Yuli

[Yuli]

;D

Edited December 17, 2008 by Yuli

[Agro]

Nose looks too square and not "curvy" enough. Eyebrows are once again the same colour. Eyes don't have enough whites.

You've toned down on the pillow shading a bit. Congrats.

[Yuli]

Because I stoled them off regular sprites. ;D

I'll fix and edit in.

Edit:

Now? :3

Edited December 17, 2008 by Yuli

[Agro]

When I mentioned the eyebrows being without colour, I mean that they don't have shading around them. Hate to use my own work as an example, but here:

Note that your eyebrows have only 1 shade of skin colour around them, and use only two colours for the eyebrow, whereas mine has a "fadeout" effect, making them thicker and more "smooth".

[Yuli]

lol

Why didn't you mention that earlier? XD

I'll fix and edit in again.

Edit:

Edited December 19, 2008 by Yuli