He still feels somewhat flat, particularly his head. This may be a shading issue, or it may be the general shape. Also, I can't tell from here whether his arm is facing up or whether it's supposed to be reaching toward the viewer. In the latter case, you'd probably want to shade the entire arm.
First, I'll answer your color question: Generally, when you're doing pixel art, you'll want to pick out your colors first. It's exceedingly rare to ever have 256 colors in a single sprite. Generally you'll have far less than that -- somewhere between 4 and 32 colors is fairly normal. If you're making multiple sprites, I wouldn't necessarily worry about limiting yourself to 256 colors among all of them. The vast majority of computers out there don't need to worry about that anymore, and that holds true even if you're making software for mobile phones.
Now on to the critique. He looks cool thus far, but you're right about the shading being off. I'll see if I can help you out with that.
The first thing you'll want to consider is color. In natural lighting conditions, your highlights and shadows aren't the same hue as your midtones. Highlights will be more yellow (due to sunlight) and shadows will be more blue (due to things not lit by the sun being lit mainly by the sky). The effect is subtle, so don't overdo it, but a little bit of color variation can make your colors look a lot more vibrant. You might also consider making your highlights slightly brighter and your shadows slightly darker.
Now, on to the shading. When I look at your image, I get a general feeling that your light source is somewhere above and to our right, but I can't place precisely where it is. There are some places where it almost looks like the light is coming from below (take the bottom of his hand, for instance). When you shade, what you want to do is imagine your subject as a 3 dimensional object, and then picture where the light source is relative to it. The areas of the surface which are facing *directly toward* your light source are going to be bright, and the areas that are facing away from it are going to be shaded. Be analytical about it.
One other thing I'm seeing is that you have some bare 1-pixel lines. In my experience, those never work very well, as they don't convey any sense of volume.
If you haven't seen it already, we actually have a great pixel art tutorial right here on OGA:
I recommend reading the whole thing if you haven't already, but pay particular attention to the chapters on color and shading, as I think they'll help you here. And of course, feel free to ask questions. I'll keep an eye on this thread. :)
spamcity.spam showd up a lot ion the identity field, which is why I removed it. Unfortunaetly, the choice I have is either to allow "contact information", which includes a link, or nothing. I can see if there are any Drupal plugins out there that will tell it to ask for a name only (and no link), but honestly it's pretty low on my priority list, unless you can point out any actual problems (other than link spam) that have occurred due to anoymous comments.
...but mostly it was used by spammers, so I made it completely anonymous.
My reason for allowing anonymous comments is that I'd like to include casual people as well. Not everyone is going to want to sign up to participate in OGA, but some people who don't sign up may have something interesting to say. Also, any time there's an anonymous comment that's not legit, we delete it. There was a site called spamcity.spam (name changed so as not to promote the guilty), that was actually hiring people to leave comments with links back to their site. Now that we've disallowed links in anonymous comments, they've pretty much given up.
Anyway, if, as an admin, you see a comment that's not legit, just delete it. And if you think someone is deliberatly trolling, let me know. Apart from that, I'd prefer to continue allowing people to comment anonymously.
I've split the forum topics block into two, one of which only administrators can see. People shouldn't be able to get into the private forums anymore.
Bart
O_o
He still feels somewhat flat, particularly his head. This may be a shading issue, or it may be the general shape. Also, I can't tell from here whether his arm is facing up or whether it's supposed to be reaching toward the viewer. In the latter case, you'd probably want to shade the entire arm.
For the record, I'm not an expert, but I know enough about theory to give critiques. For anyone else here, feel free to add or contradict me. :)
Bart
First, I'll answer your color question: Generally, when you're doing pixel art, you'll want to pick out your colors first. It's exceedingly rare to ever have 256 colors in a single sprite. Generally you'll have far less than that -- somewhere between 4 and 32 colors is fairly normal. If you're making multiple sprites, I wouldn't necessarily worry about limiting yourself to 256 colors among all of them. The vast majority of computers out there don't need to worry about that anymore, and that holds true even if you're making software for mobile phones.
Now on to the critique. He looks cool thus far, but you're right about the shading being off. I'll see if I can help you out with that.
The first thing you'll want to consider is color. In natural lighting conditions, your highlights and shadows aren't the same hue as your midtones. Highlights will be more yellow (due to sunlight) and shadows will be more blue (due to things not lit by the sun being lit mainly by the sky). The effect is subtle, so don't overdo it, but a little bit of color variation can make your colors look a lot more vibrant. You might also consider making your highlights slightly brighter and your shadows slightly darker.
Now, on to the shading. When I look at your image, I get a general feeling that your light source is somewhere above and to our right, but I can't place precisely where it is. There are some places where it almost looks like the light is coming from below (take the bottom of his hand, for instance). When you shade, what you want to do is imagine your subject as a 3 dimensional object, and then picture where the light source is relative to it. The areas of the surface which are facing *directly toward* your light source are going to be bright, and the areas that are facing away from it are going to be shaded. Be analytical about it.
One other thing I'm seeing is that you have some bare 1-pixel lines. In my experience, those never work very well, as they don't convey any sense of volume.
If you haven't seen it already, we actually have a great pixel art tutorial right here on OGA:
http://opengameart.org/content/les-forges-pixel-art-course
I recommend reading the whole thing if you haven't already, but pay particular attention to the chapters on color and shading, as I think they'll help you here. And of course, feel free to ask questions. I'll keep an eye on this thread. :)
Bart
spamcity.spam showd up a lot ion the identity field, which is why I removed it. Unfortunaetly, the choice I have is either to allow "contact information", which includes a link, or nothing. I can see if there are any Drupal plugins out there that will tell it to ask for a name only (and no link), but honestly it's pretty low on my priority list, unless you can point out any actual problems (other than link spam) that have occurred due to anoymous comments.
Bart
"Mark as reviewed" simply removes the art from the review queue, essentially declining to publish it. Maybe I should word the button differently?
Nice work, by the way! :)
There's a plugin for it, although it looks like it hasn't been updated since 2007.
http://colladablender.illusoft.com/cms/content/blogcategory/25/29/
...but mostly it was used by spammers, so I made it completely anonymous.
My reason for allowing anonymous comments is that I'd like to include casual people as well. Not everyone is going to want to sign up to participate in OGA, but some people who don't sign up may have something interesting to say. Also, any time there's an anonymous comment that's not legit, we delete it. There was a site called spamcity.spam (name changed so as not to promote the guilty), that was actually hiring people to leave comments with links back to their site. Now that we've disallowed links in anonymous comments, they've pretty much given up.
Anyway, if, as an admin, you see a comment that's not legit, just delete it. And if you think someone is deliberatly trolling, let me know. Apart from that, I'd prefer to continue allowing people to comment anonymously.
Bart
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