My first animated character

[Mancomb Seepgood]

Hello.

That's my first (animated) character. So I hope you can give me some feedback. The story takes place around 1900 in Hamburg and this guy is a physics professor (the main character).



Markus

[Wicked]

I say hes great I cant see any problems with him.  fromt he animations they look pretty good, great work

[Mancomb Seepgood]

Thanks a lot for a first feedback.

[Wicked]

your welcome and ill be animating my character soon I hope it goes as well as yours has

[Babar]

For the minimalist lo-res style, I have to say as well that it is pretty good, and it is hard to find fault with it.
If I really really had to, maybe the front view of the face is a bit hard to read? I don't really have any suggestions to help you, though. At such a small resolution (5 pixels across for the face?), it is probably pretty hard anyhow.

[Mancomb Seepgood]

Thanks to both of you!

If I really really had to, maybe the front view of the face is a bit hard to read?

I think you are right about the face. I tried to add some more colours now. Thereby the face doesn't become more expressive but it looks a little more "shaped".

[Babar]

I'm not sure you need to add more colours to be able to read his face (or that it helps).
An example edit that is probably much more boring and simple than yours, but easier to read (in my opinion):


Mucking about with the sprite, it came to my mind that a purple top hat and tailcoat with a red waistcoat wouldn't really be the preferred clothing of a physics professor in turn-of-the-century Hamburg, would it? This is the closest I could find:

And while I could totally imagine a university professor wearing upper-class clothing from 70 years ago...I dunno .

[Mancomb Seepgood]

Now he finally received a nose.. the problem is that I don't want his eyes to be above the forehead. Maybe I will try to stretch his head a little.
Yeah, I realise I chose a very low resolution.

Here are two pictures of popular physicists from this time (Arrhenius, 1909 and Planck, 1879):


Oh.. Maybe I caused confusion a bit. The story takes place in Hamburg but he is from Darmstadt. That doesn't make a very huge difference of course but just to clarify.
I think the tophat is pretty much fashionable at this time but probably you're right about the tailcoat. A suit coat would likely do it. I'll try to heed your advices and apply some changes to the character tomorrow.

[Babar]

Now he finally received a nose.. the problem is that I don't want his eyes to be above the forehead. Maybe I will try to stretch his head a little.

I understand the desire for that for expressiveness and such. Another reason I linked the guy with the top hat was to show that you don't see a lot of forehead between the brim and the eyes (and definitely not any hair other than eyebrows).

Yeah, I realise I chose a very low resolution.

Nothing wrong with that! Horrorfiend and I weren't kidding when we said it is great!

[abstauber]

I did a quick paintover to help you with the face
[imgzoom]http://shatten.sonores.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/paintover.gif[/imgzoom]

A few hints from my side:
- Use less colors and make sure that the color you use, actually differ in contrast and tone. I reduced your 24 colors down to 13 and there are still room for improvement
- use top-light for shading. That way you don't need to adjust the lighting after flipping frames. Also it usually blends in better with existing backgrounds.
- don't use red lips for men

Apart from that, it's a nice sprite

[Mancomb Seepgood]

I modified the character a bit, but I'm still not satisfied. I think I'll delay it for a while, so that I can focus on it again at a later time. I composed the theme song for the intro now and I'll do some other stuff during the next few days. The main character is accompanying the player through the whole game so it should be quite perfect..

Thanks for the good advices abstauber. That are some things I really didn't think of (red lips, top-light..)

That's how he looks like right now (using your paintover):
[imgzoom]http://s12.postimg.org/fcvst5gp5/image.gif[/imgzoom]

[Julius Dangerous]

Awesome sprite Congrats!