Final Fantasy Hacktics

I love you Jimmy, that's it. I cannot for the life of me make portraits from scratch. I feel like such a jerk for making you do your portrait and sprite, but I'm here to help (though I may fail again). My only suggestion about the portrait thus far is to be careful with the shading on the chin and neckline.

Great work, Jimmy. I'm blown away.

Wow, that portrait creation is heading towards Smash territory of creativeness, very nice Jimmy! Though yes, something to make the scryer stand out a little more... it's not possible to make his robes more adorn is it?

Hmm, I was gonna suggest giving him a hood (which I wouldn't like, since this guy's hair is extremely unique), but maybe a design on the back or on the sleeves will help decorate the Scryer?

Perhaps it could, fancy clothes are relatively difficult to make (due to major limitations), but it might work.

Scholar Portrait ~ Haha. Thanks a lot mav ^^ And why not? With such skill which is far better than me, you could easily whip off any portraits from scratch!!! ^^
Anyway, don't worry about the portrait too much. I just want to help out a little bit. You can take it from here ^^
And yes, I have to be careful with the chin and neckline, not to get the ugly blur again xD

@Sir LD ~ Wow, thanks a lot, Sir LD ^^ Glad you like it.

Scryer Sprite ~ Ah yes, making Scryer unique is great. Sleeves design...Hmm...Only two colours for design..

Also, I'm having major problems with the scarf for the portrait. ><
I think its better for you to take it from here mav.

The scarf looks great right now i think. My only concern with where the tassle is now is that it more than likely wont show up in the final portrait. The glasses will need a bit of work eventually, but so far just stick with it.

The scarf/ascot looks fine to me, but I think Cheetah raised a very valid point about the tassel: if you can somehow move it, we'll get to see it in the final version. Also, you may want to shrink the head size by one pixel (move everything to the right of his left eye one pixel to our right). I think you should be the one to continue to work on this portrait; you have a great handle on it. If necessary, I'll polish it up at the end, but you're a very gifted spriter and this is worthwhile practice for ya.

Keep up the good work.

@Sir Cheetah ~ Thanks. Ah, okay. I'll move the tassel. As for the glasses, yeah, still need to work on it.

@Mav ~ Thanks too. Alright, I'll move his face. Anyway, this portrait definitely need your help to polish ^^

Update*
Scholar Mug Test ~ Moved the tassel and moved the face.

So far, so good. How many colors do you have left? Will you be able to fit in the hair colors and the hat colors?

14 colours. 3 hair colours, with the use of the skin tone, roughly around 4 to 5. As for the hat, well only one black. Can fit in one more black.

I think you can get away with sharing the whites on the eye with the whites on the clothes, if you haven't already. That could open up another shade or two. You could go ahead and go over the the color limit too and reduce it later, but that's completely up to you. Great work man, I'm really proud of you.

Yeah, I shared the whites for clothes and eyes, 3 shades. Haha. Thanks. Don't proud of me just yet ^^ Problem arised.
Here, I post with palettes. Its 15 now and I tried on the hat but unfortunately, it sucks with only 2 shades of blacks ><
So I use some browns and try to make it a little bit rusty and old kinda look of hat but.....I failed.
HELP!!!

EDIT: Update* ~ Add hair.
Does it look too much like Male Priest hair? Hmm...

I kind of like the hat like that, actually.  Not sure what you're going to be able to do with the hair with those limitations though.

Thanks Silvas ^^
Alright, I'd roughly browsed through the existing sprites and these are the designs that I've selected.
Take a look and tell me what you think ^^

Scryer Coat Designs

The portrait is look awesome, just needs some minor adjustments. Shading under the hat on the hair is much needed. It looks good on the back of his head but definitely needs work on the front, there are also some odd light highlights on his hair under the hat in the middle that don't fit. His duck tail is odd as well. Maybe a few skin tones needed darker shading near the hair line too. The tassle needs a bit of work, you could make it a tad longer and bigger with more detail. Move the tassle more towards the right too I think.

As far as color limiting is concerned are you using the background color to replace one of the white shades on his collar? Maybe you could give him a darker shade of blonde for his hair so that you could share more skin tones? The blonde right now is a little bright and clashing anyways. Hopefully you are sharing the darkest hair/skin tone with the hat somehow? Overall awesome work!

Scryer: I like the stripe on the bottom one's jacket the best, though I would like to see it from the rear to make sure. I like the arms from the second one down, but I think the gloves should be skin toned or gold like the hair and pants. Too much white with those arms when the hands are white too. Have you done any experiments with the collar yet?

Scholar Portrait ~ Alright. Thanks so much, Sir Cheetah. I'll get to all of that ^^
For the colour limits, yeah, I use the background colour for one of the white shades. Yeah, the blonde is bright but I wonder why Male Priest don't have this problem. Hmm...Also, yes, I'm sharing the darkest skin tone with the hat and hair.

Scryer Collar and Coat Design ~ Ah, I see. Alright, I'll get to the rear view. I like Barinten's design too but yes, kinda too much white. As for the collar, I kinda having trouble with Olan. I'll see what I can do about it. If it doesn't look right or too hard, I guess Balthier would be perfect then. ^^

For the portrait, I know what's causing the problem, Priest just does not wear a hat, and your port hat is, that's all

2 and 5 might go good together for the fanciness added to the outfit.

Heh.  Same ones Cheeta liked, it looks like.


The problem with the hair being too bright is the added contrast that Priest doesn't have.  Basically it is as Kagebunji said:  the hat.  It's a mass of dark on top of light hair.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing in my opinion, but it does make the brightness of the hair more noticeable.

Hmm, with the Scholar portrait, I think I may be able to help out on the hair and free up a couple shades. I'll post it in a bit.

As for the Scryer sprite, I'm thinking 5 is the best with 3 and 4 close behind.

EDIT: Okay, I made some quick edits to the portrait: the eye and tassel were the same white, but the shirt had a different white, so now they're all the same. I also shrunk the face a bit (after looking at some other portraits, I realized that the Scholar had a wider face), I touched up the collar (though I didn't do a good job), I replaced the smile (I didn't mean to save it, but now I'm too lazy to remove it), and I changed out the hair shades. You now have one more slot open for another shade...It's not much, but I think you can make it work. I also added a couple pixels here and there to blend stuff better. Hope ya don't mind.

A bad change is that you moved the part of the collar that is on our left tighter to his neck.  It looks too tight.  Loosen it up a pixel at least.