Topic: Hairstyling Sprites?

[Scavenger]

I'm continuing to work on my game, but I've run into a snag - the hairstyle I intend for a character just isn't working on his sprite, and I'm not sure how to go about doing it. I tried it before, but it just looks like a wig or a Bart Simpson-style unnatural spikes. He is supposed to have short, spikey (perhaps gelled up) hair, but I'm at a loss as to how to make it look -good-, especially on the front and side views. The sprites I got for him have his old hairstyle, which just isn't animatable. So, any advice on how I can apply the hairstyle on the picture to the sprites? And if you find anything totally wrong in the sprites themselves beside that, I'd be glad to hear it, I'm pretty open to fixing things.



Thankyou!

[Frito Master]

I'm a bit confused, The sprite below show what looks like short hair then the player sprite look like long hair.

Are them the unedited versions? Besides the talk view one?

Edit: I'm newer to pixel art so idk mine looks meh.

[Scavenger]

Um, I kind of meant the face picture's hairstyle on the small sprites - not the other way around. x3 Replacing the long blue hair on the walkabout sprites with the short purple hair of the picture. I couldn't get it to look right at a small size, so I asked for help with that.

[Frito Master]

My bad I missed that whole last sentence.

Btw is that your gator animation? Nice job

[Scavenger]

Attempted it again, tried to make this guy's facial structure more accurately fit his picture.

[Frito Master]

Looks nice, The hair doesn't look to shabby.
Ever thought about him being bald, Maybe its the fact that a overweight raccoon? has purple spiky hair?

[Chicky]

That overweight raccoon is also wearing braces! Outrage!

I like the purple hair, the new facial features looks great, i would suggest making the eyes and mouth a little bigger. The hairline on the portrait looks a bit too sharp to me, you could try adding a little quiff?

[Frito Master]

Yeah the facial features look great!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think the main problem you're stumbling into is that, when you anthropomorphize the sprite, you're not exactly following how human hair 'works' so when you apply it it doesn't look right.  It's clear that you want short hair, but even people with short hair have hair all the way around the back to the base of their skull, and while your portrait image would indicate this is true, a few of the other angles do not reflect this at all, giving the hair a wig-like appearance.  To correct this, I made an edit that tries to approach the style and spirit of the portrait while adhering to 'humanistic' traits such as providing for a forehead and having the hair curve around to the base of the skull, like so:

1.  Redesigned the hair to look spiky like the reference image.
2.  Made the hair curve around to the base of the skull (neckline) in each frame.
3.  Cleared the hair upwards to reveal the forehead and give the eyes some distance and clarity from the hairline.
4.  Corrected posture issues in frames 3 and 4 where the legs were just too misaligned to maintain balance.



The posture issues I corrected are mainly because his leg was simply too far back on his body in frame 4 for him to have any hope of balance.  In frame 6, the positioning of the right leg just didn't match the angle of his torso.  Moving his left leg back a pixel or two (or making it larger) would further help with giving him a better sense of balance.

Hopefully this helps.

[Frito Master]

I think the main problem you're stumbling into is that, when you anthropomorphize the sprite, you're not exactly following how human hair 'works' so when you apply it it doesn't look right.  It's clear that you want short hair, but even people with short hair have hair all the way around the back to the base of their skull, and while your portrait image would indicate this is true, a few of the other angles do not reflect this at all, giving the hair a wig-like appearance.  To correct this, I made an edit that tries to approach the style and spirit of the portrait while adhering to 'humanistic' traits such as providing for a forehead and having the hair curve around to the base of the skull, like so:

1.  Redesigned the hair to look spiky like the reference image.
2.  Made the hair curve around to the base of the skull (neckline) in each frame.
3.  Cleared the hair upwards to reveal the forehead and give the eyes some distance and clarity from the hairline.
4.  Corrected posture issues in frames 3 and 4 where the legs were just too misaligned to maintain balance.



The posture issues I corrected are mainly because his leg was simply too far back on his body in frame 4 for him to have any hope of balance.  In frame 6, the positioning of the right leg just didn't match the angle of his torso.  Moving his left leg back a pixel or two (or making it larger) would further help with giving him a better sense of balance.

Hopefully this helps.

Wow looks great dude, Also nice call on the side view.
I'm sure the other guy will be super happy.

[Scavenger]

The posture issues I corrected are mainly because his leg was simply too far back on his body in frame 4 for him to have any hope of balance.  In frame 6, the positioning of the right leg just didn't match the angle of his torso.  Moving his left leg back a pixel or two (or making it larger) would further help with giving him a better sense of balance.

Ah, looks great. This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you! I'll tweak it further and then I'll be able to start animating. Thankyou for the posture correction, too, I'll keep an eye on that in future.

[Frito Master]

Good luck.