Fein's Sprites

[Fein]

Hello ladies and gents, I'd thought I'd introduce myself as well as my first fft sprite. I love Final Fantasy Tactics, whether it be on DS or PSX. But I always loved the art/spritework in FFT. So, I recently found the site and discovered the great talent here, and thought that I may get better by hanging around, maybe pick up a few tips. So, heres my first sprite, Fein!



Let me explain here: Green sash, armored left arm, grieves on right leg.

[mav]

Welcome to the board.

Interesting sprite, but it's pretty messy. First off, you gotta make sure your brush is the right size for the portrait and the sprite: generally the resized sprites are just for viewing purposes. Likewise you gotta work on shading, especially for the portrait. It looks like the neck has been improperly modified and the hair lacks depth at times.

But don't be discouraged--everyone here gives and receives criticism like there's no tomorrow.

[Fein]

Ah, I'm well aware of criticism, haha. Thank you very much! I'm still not used to shading via pixels, so I'm working to practice that a little bit. I've never been very good with portraits, from when I do Fire Emblem sprites, but like I said, I need practice. Thanks once again.

[Zalge]

First, correction, It would be "newb" not "noob". =D Being a "newb" means you want to learn. A "noob" is... a person no one wants.

Secondly, I somewhat see what you're doing, but there are a lot of things that don't look right and things that just don't translate when you make a sprite. See, making side specific alterations such as armored arms and legs while the opposite side isn't doesnt work because, for example, when facing full left, that is reflected for the full right. Right facing parts of the sprite is just left reflected, just so you know. The armored arm and leg would be switching sides.

Work in the transition between the neck and the armor. Even if the armor is right up against his skin, there should still be some shading there. The back of the neck looks... strange. The Ear looks nicely done, but the earring... not so much. The pulled back hair doesn't really look good either, there is no gradient transition between the hair on the right (his left) and the face. The hair on the left (his right) has a LOT of random pixels. Fix that up. Even if its pillow shaded, its better than random pixels. Trust me, I'm still pillow shading a lot, and my stuff looks fine.

Also, a lot of it looks like you were working with the size several sizes bigger than the actual size thats used on a spritesheet. Work with the smallest size you can, it makes all marks more accurate.


I'm no expert though, follow Asmo, Mike, Mav, and everyone else's advice and you'll do just fine. Look at what it did for me =D Everyone was a newb at some point though, don't expect skill to just show up in you randomly.


EDIT: Oh, yeah, and welcome to the board!

[Fein]

Alright, I see what you mean about the translation/switching deal. Thanks for the positive criticism, and I definitely see what you mean about the random pixels, it does look terrible, as well as 99% of the portrait. I find it a bit difficult on the whole pixel shading/placement end.

[MiKeMiTchi]

Also remember to use only 16 colors for a sprite.

For the portrait, I suggest you work on the neck's outline and shading, The dark shades should
be along the outlines, not in the middle. (also avoid pillow shading)(shading like a gradient)
for portraits, follow a light source.

For the sprite, let's see more of it.

[Fein]

For the sprite, let's see more of it.

Minus the miss-matched armor? The whole  16 color thing was not in mind when making this, thanks for telling me.

[MiKeMiTchi]

Your call. It's your sprite.

[jimmyjw88]

Welcome aboard. ^^
The sprite looks good to start with but like Zalge and mav said. Need to be fix. Don't worry. With practises, advices, you will get your hands on it.

[Luiakyn]

For the sprite, let's see more of it.

Minus the miss-matched armor? The whole  16 color thing was not in mind when making this, thanks for telling me.

The miss-matched armor is fine. Look at the archer and Cloud. Yeah, it does switcheroos, but hell, it's already in the game. It won't be out of place.

But if you need to fix the armor for the 16 color limit, you've gotta do it.

[Fein]

Yeah, I'll keep the color limit in mind when re-doing it and doing other positions.

[Asmo X]

I'll just critique the sprite. Basically, you haven't unified all the different parts properly. The red side is shaded lightly, while you have basically just outlined the brown areas with something very dark. Outlining is to be strictly avoided. It looks horrible and doesn't fit in at all with the game's sprites. The hair needs a lot of work as well. It is very flat, and all of the shading has been pushed to the edges, creating an outline. It also needs to be reshaped since the part that hangs down is actually wider at the bottom than it is close to the scalp. What you really need to do is what every new spriter needs to do. Copy/paste heavily from existing sprites. This goes for both the parts and the palettes. The moment you try to do something like make your own hair, it's all going to go to shit since you don't know how to do it yet. And don't say that no sprite has the hairstyle you want. I bet you could copy/paste 2 hairstyles together to get what you want. Copying is even more important for palettes. If you want a series of browns, find an existing sprite with the shades you like and lift them all. Don't try to add or change colours within the palette.

[Fein]

Well, I scraped my first sprite/portrait, because I felt I could go no where with it. So, I took the whole copy paste idea, and came up with this knight type deal:

[mav]

I know what you're going for, but you've made a couple mistakes. The face looks squished in there and you're gonna need to shade the top and side of the head, in regards to the helmet.

[Fein]

Alright, how can I make the face look less squished? Also: Heres a sprite for said portrait. I only like the the two blown up views though, I cant quite get the helmet right on the other two.



Edit: Just noticed grieve was messed up on right leg, on backside view.

[Asmo X]

Your new sprite is a much better effort but I can't properly tell you whats going on because it looks like you havent resized the sprite properly or something. See how some pixels look really thin?

[jimmyjw88]

What happen to his right hand in the rearview?

[Fein]

What happen to his right hand in the rearview?

Holy Crow! I didn't touch it, it was all part of the Dragoon Sprite.

And, thank you Asmos. I resized it in paint because I was being lazy and didn't do it in another program, and for some reason paint does that to me.

[Asmo X]

you should resize it 200% or 400%. You could run into problems otherwise.

[jimmyjw88]

I get it. Its because of the cape. The dragoon's rearview hand was block by the cape and now that you remove it, the hand is incomplete.
Try look at its left hand (rearview) and copy/paste its shading.