character sprite (shading and palette help)

[Anian]

So...yeah, I'm kind of satisfied with the design. I was going for Thief/Altair style and the feel, but still kind of remaining original for a steampunkish/fantasy thief type in a creepy dark fantasy game. There's actually a whole character desgin and the cloack is an overlay...but later on that. This is still a wip as you can see.

What I am having problems is shading and I think color palette kind of lacks contrast (at least I need another opinion to be sure). General criticism is welcomed as well.
 

[Khris]

Really quick edit:



-reduced colors (there were a lot of similar ones)
-increased contrast
-added shading
-pushed some pixels, mostly the hood's

[AnasAbdin]

adding to Khris' edit:

-increase the bottom folds of the cape
-darken the entire lining of the cape
-adding creases to the cape (highlight and shade)
-check the cape around the face (highlight/shade)

[Anian]

Nice.
@Khris: yeah, that is a godd palette reduction, but I was sort of going for materials with 3 hues each (like normal, shaded, highlighted), but I guess that doesn't always work, still I like the changes. And the hood did actually have that design in the begining, but I couldn't pull it off with pixels, but I might steal your edit for that. The shading on the bottom of the cape looks good as well.

@Anas: I like the sides of the cape bottom and I like the shading and the detail, I've tried the drapes on the cloack (the around the torso area), still am not satisfied but I guess I'll think of something, cause otherwise the detailing looks unbalanced between the clothes and the cloack. Also your edit presumes the light source from the left, which is fine and I'll use maybe, but I think the majority will be from above, still a very useful example.

Thanks.

[Khris]

3 hues for each material is fine, but nowhere does it say that each material needs its own three hues; lighter shades tend to be slightly more red and darker shades slightly more blue anyway, and reusing for instance the middle hue of a dark material as dark hue for a lighter material ties the sprite together optically.

(Btw, I didn't reduce the amount of colors by hand, I let ProMotion do it.)

The bottom of the cape is slightly problematic because cloth doesn't fall like that. AnasAbdin made the gravity-defying corners even bigger, but they shouldn't be there at all. Granted, even thin cloth has a certain rigidity, so it doesn't need to be absolutely vertical, but like this it looks unreal, like there were wires in there.

[AnasAbdin]

@Khris:

depends on what kinda material he's wearing and what planet anyway a few gravity-defying techniques won't harm if they add a little art or fantasy.. u know like how the princess hair catches the air... I loved your 3 hues input, I usually do the same! highlight with reddish-yellowish shade, and darken with blue-black..

@anian:

I agree with you, Khris' drawing is move convenient, I feel mine is cartoonish 

[SpacePirateCaine]

Khris did a great job with the palette stuff, so I didn't bother playing around with that much at all. Instead, I thought I'd give you another possible idea for shading:



The only larger issue I was seeing with your image is that it seems a bit pillow-shaded at the moment. Some of the picture, like the face and the doublet are shaded with a top-down light source, but your boots and pants seemed to be being lit more from the front. I understand that the cloak was helping in shading those particular points, but I thought that the pants in particular could use a little more solid shading.

I also went ahead and played around with the cloth folds a bit as well - particularly in the crotch area of the pants, and around the cloak. Where it's clasped together, the cloth will naturally want to pull away from that area, leading to cinched bits.

The design itself looks great. If anything, it might be just a tiny bit too parallel? The pose is very stiff, though perhaps that's what you were going for, in which case, no problem.

[Anian]

Ah, yes ProMotion the out of reach software.  
On the cape being affected by weird physics, yeah I know it's kind weird, but I kind of like the slight stylization of it, plus this is front standing up stance, what I'm planing is a lot more motion while moving and bending to pick up objects, so I think it'll more "normal" within the game.

@Caine: oh, man, awesome, perfect. I think take like 90% of that (just so it's a tad mine ). I really like "clean" shading and this what I was actually trying to achieve, you know I read tutorials and look at examples, but when I draw it kind of goes out the window.  
The pose stiffness I'll try to fix, I was just making it symmetrical cause it's easier to see while I'm modifying the sprite, so it's a basis for further modifications.
The palette still looks a tad weird to me, but because now everything has a graysih outline except gloves and boots, but I guess it takes a bit to get into the mindset, I'll probably find it normal after a while.

In any case, thank you.