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2D Art

Shading Human Sprite Tips

JustinAnyhowStep
Friday, June 7, 2013 - 08:11

So, I found a 2D character template I liked (I was asking about copyright issues with a different template before) and decided to get to making some sprites. I looked at some deviantART and youtube tutorials and came up with these:

The template in question is here: http://opengameart.org/content/24x32-rpg-character-template

They look decent to me but I don't want a game where an artist plays and suddenly goes, "Look at that ugly shading, anti-aliasing, dithering, w/e!" Getting to a professional level is surely impossible for me (seeing as I can't even draw) but I'd like to at least get to a passable level where an artist would go, "Meh, at least it doesn't look like total shit."

I followed some tutorials but can't seem to apply the theories that they teach right. It's not that their explanations are crap, I get what they're saying. But I find it really hard to use those theories. The only thing I really managed to apply was to try and make my lines 1px wide.

Also, how long should a single sprite, like the ones above, take to make? Because I spend about 30 minutes to an hour for each single sprite.. Also, when making sprites, I tend to make the light source shine from the left as I try to shade. Any tips or tutorials on specifically shading character pixel sprites?

Attachments: 
Preview
SpriteAttempt01.png SpriteAttempt01.png 4.3 Kb [3 download(s)]
Preview
SpriteAttempt02-KennethSoh.png SpriteAttempt02-KennethSoh.png 4 Kb [121 download(s)]
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Redshrike
joined 13 years 7 months ago
Friday, June 7, 2013 - 23:18
Redshrike's picture

The first issue you have here is mixed resolutions.  The base you're working with is at 2x (3x?) while the things you're drawing on are at 1x.  This leads to a mix of single and doubled pixels which you really want to avoid.  Always work with unresized sprites.  This is a pretty common issue with beginners (I had trouble with it myself when I first started).

Re: time, shading, overally look, etc: don't worry, these things come with experience.  You're already off to a decent start--if you keep practising they should come naturally.  Having light from the upper left is generally a good strategy as it keeps the shading from being too visually boring and lets it show off the sprites forms better than straight-on light would.

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JustinAnyhowStep
joined 10 years 3 weeks ago
Saturday, June 8, 2013 - 02:09

Thanks for the advice!

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