Help with three character sprites

[pslim]

Here are three character sprites I've been working on for my current project. There are some things I really like about them, but there are a lot of things I've been struggling with.





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I really like the palettes of the two male characters, but I hate the palette of the female character. If anyone has any suggestions in that direction I would love to have them.

How can I make their stances more natural-looking? How can I shade them better?

I would really like to make the two male characters appear less buff, though i can't figure out how to do it at this scale.

I'd also love to hear how I could fix their right arms.

Lastly, I tried to get some contrapposto going with the guy on the left, but it didn't turn out so well. If possible, I'd like to preserve or improve it because it fits his personality.

Any advice is appreciated.


EDIT: Here's an update of my progress so far on the main character sprite.




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Original/ProgZ's edit/Revision

I liked ProgZ's boot heel, so I kept that, and generally tried to make the shape freer and more natural like the stance of ProgZ's edit. Once I was feeling really free, I decided to elongate him by a couple of pixels and exaggerate his trimness.

I also experimented some with adding blue to the darker skin tones and yellowing the lighter ones a little bit. Lastly, I added some yellow to the lightest shirt shade.

[radiowaves]

Here, I did an edit for you:



I only borrowed the colours from other characters. All it needed was some contrast in highlights. You may still want to make the face overall highlights shading a bit warmer.

[pslim]

That's a sweet color/shading edit, radiowaves.

Unfortunately I think it's a step beyond me at the moment. I'm still struggling somewhat with the overall shape of things. Any advice there?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I spent some time on this edit because your sprites have a lot of potential.  The shading is very good, generally, and the color choices are interesting.

1.  Redesigned female shape to be more feminine.  This included thinning the arms, reducing character and torso height, giving a pleasing curve to her shape and pose.

2.  Altered skin tones for female to be more brown and darkened her hair.

3.  Altered skin tones for males to be more in the orange-red range rather than silly putty color.

4.  Made poses of characters more interesting and altered faces to make them more unique.

5.  Darkened darkest shirt shade for 2nd and 3rd characters slightly to increase contrast.





I made the first guy look more confident and muscular since the size of his arms and clothing seemed like a good fit.  Likewise I made the second guy's stance more loose and awkward and made his forehead larger to give him more of a preppy/smart guy look as his clothes would suggest.  You can make the faces look however you want, this was just to show you that taking the time to make the faces look different will improve the characters considerably. 

It seems to me from the feet/legs that you may have used the Indiana Jones FoA sprite as a visual reference, which is fine.  The main issue you're having with the poses is in the upper torso and arms, and if you look at what I did you can see I tilted the torso's up one pixel on the left to help give the impression that the character is turned slightly.  Also, try not to bunch the arms next to the torso so closely unless the character is really nervous or angry; loosen up the arms and give them some bend.  I tried not to deviate much from your style so you should be able to replicate what I did here fairly easily.

Edit:  Did another version with different skin tones

[pslim]

Those paintovers are really great, Prog. Right now I'm looking at them closely and trying to figure out what use I can make of them.

I think I'm going to redraw the sprites from scratch and try to be freer with the forms. It's hard for me because I tend to approach pixel pushing more like building with legos than drawing, but we'll see how I do. 

[pslim]

Update in the first post. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

With the longer neck you should probably alter the shoulder shape, bringing it up more.  Right now the angle from the neck to the edge of the shoulder is pretty steep.  Since you've made his torso smaller it might be better to make his arms smaller as well.  Aside from that everything looks good.

[Afflict]

The sprites are awesome, and now even more awesome. Well done.

[pslim]

Had a go at incorporating ProgZ's suggestions, and tried redoing the other male character in the same vein.



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I've gotten to the point where I can't even really tell the difference between changes I make anymore, so I'm posting them here for further suggestions/criticism.

I'm quite happy with the character on the left, aside from the terrible trouble I had with shading after I made his arms smaller. I shortened his neck rather than altering his shoulders, since I liked them.

The character on the right is getting there, but he's not quite what I want. I really don't want to exaggerate their traits too much because I don't want them to become caricatures, but I still feel like the right character lacks something. He's meant to be fairly uptight, and quite academic, but not overtly nerdy.

I also wanted to post a reference pic I used for the right character's outfit. The sweater is supposed to be light and form fitting, not baggy, but I'm having trouble shading it to look that way.



Any suggestions are welcome.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

My advice is to use your reference there.  The pose is so close to the character's that you can pretty much just copy it.

1.  Brought torso of left guy out a little on the left.  His arm looked too disconnected from his body before.

2.  Bent right arm of right guy a bit to copy the reference.  Also bent his left hand in a bit and reduced the size slightly.

3.  Made the right guy's shoulders less bulky.

4. Shaved a bit of the left guy's forehead.

5.  Smoothed the right guy's shirt out and made the hem tilt as it does in the reference.





You could work on these for weeks and still find small ways to improve them, but I think you have reached a point where your sprites are at a quality level that at least matches your backgrounds.

[pslim]

Thanks for all your help, Prog. I'm going to try to use these as style guides to make the rest of the sprites for my project.

I'm much happier with these sprites than I ever would have been without your instruction.