Barbarian

[2ma2]

Yeah, I havn't been pixelpushing in ages, and frankly, I lost most of TEH SKILLZ0r so basically, would those inclined please slaughter this piece thoroughly. It was inspired by the nice homoerotic ComfortQuest thread, and contitutes of about 5 colors. But I just have problems pixeling. Huge problems. And let us not discuss animation.. egh..

Also, don't bother about the sword, because I didn'tÃ, 

[The Faction]

First of all I would give him a manlier stance, at first glance I thought this was a female. Spread the legs apart a tad so we can actually tell there are two of them.  Another thing that makes him look like a woman is his chest, it looks more like  female breasts than the muscley torso of a barbarian. I appreciate that using fewer colors makes sprites easier to animate but surely you can spare a few more to make his vest or shirt (not sure exactly what it is) look different than his skin. And unless the small size is absolutely necessary I would make the whole sprite just a bit bigger so more detail could be used.

Nicholas

[Tiki]

Did a 15 minute paintover.  Well, no, scratch that.  It's not a paintover, but.. it's a Barbarian.  It's very rough, apologies.  This room is way too hot to be in very long 

1x
2x 

Um.. I have absolutely no knowledge of the human anatomy aside from common sense, so that part probably won't help you too much.  Regardless, I decided to go for a more manlier, musclier Barbarian, because that was more interesting to me.  Perhaps he's a bit too much like a Caveman than a Barbarian, but I couldn't resist the club.

Muscles like that might be awful to animate, but I tried to tone down the detail and the colors.

It's roughly the same size as your original, I suppose.  10 colors.  Hope it helped somehow.

Edit: In case it looks like he spilled coffee on himself, that's hair 
Also fixed the legs, the wrong one was in front... I think.

[2ma2]

Faction: "inspired by the nice homoerotic ComfortQuest thread", yeah, that might explain the girly stance But I guess I fudged it up thoroughly since he has no shirt, nor vest. That'd be hair on his "manly" chest mind you. And the size stays. It's 50 pixels high. That's the classic height. But the legs bothered me aswell, so yea, a manlier stance it'll be.

Tiki: Perhaps I expressed myself poorly, I was interested in getting input on shading techniques rather than character design. Although, your piece is a nice view of lowcolor shading so that's quite usable.





Allright, take 2 and 3. Still unhappy with the shading. I try to make use of only 3 shades per hue (albeit in the third I wen't more for strict color theory).

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Maybe this will help.  I re-shaded the whole thing without using more than 3 colors per object (bandanna, sword, body, hair).  Most colors were reused from the existing palette.  I also extended the face a bit and altered the hair and general proportions of the upper body.




I used a back shot of a bodybuilder as a general reference.  The only suggestion I have is that you should move the head up a pixel to show some neck definition.  I didn't really see anything wrong with your version, it's quite good, but you said you needed shading advice.  Nice work.

He reminds me of Rastan: http://www.marcianitos.org/revisiones/rastansaga/archivos/rast0016.png

[2ma2]

Nice work on the legs there. Neck definition? It's a barbarian!! ;p

Allright, now a faux CHIBI-BARBARIAN!
2x

It's getting there but it lacks something..

[big brother]

"Chibi" refers to a character drawn with hyper cephalic proportions to make it look cuter. The last sprite looks like it's foreshortened.

In other crits, I think your darkest shade needs to have a lower value and the middle shade (and possibly the highlight) need to be more saturated. The sword could stand a highlight along its edge. If you really want,Ã,  I could post a paintover (but tell me which sprite to do it to).

[Kinoko]

*ahem* He did say "faux chibi" ^_^

I personally love your Barbarian! I thought it was a girl at first too, but damn if it isn't sexy! Make it a sexy gay barbarian, that's an awesome idea. I'd play that game ANYDAY.

[2ma2]

bigbrother: What kinoko said.. about 'faux' I mean.. ;p

With value, do you mean simply darker or? What I strife is simply making shadows bluer for withdrawal and highlights redder for opposite reasons. To (de-)saturate gives about the same results, but I found it creating more conflict and the sprite got hard to view. Perhaps adding another shade to soften it up even more?

You're welcome to paint over any one of them

[big brother]

Here's a pseudo-quickie edit. Indexed it and tweaked the colors, then worked on the AA. I also brought the color count down to 8 (including the background color). For the future, it might be helpful to use a desaturated color as your background instead of white or transparent, since as a sprite, your character will probably never be seen against a pure white background.

[2ma2]

That's some great tweaking there. Some sort of semioutlined with one hard shade. I havn't even thought in those lines of AA work. A really good face aswell. It looks gloriously oldschool.

I actually used a low saturation background on the faux chibi one, but made the gif transparent.