First sprite, what do you think?

[evilguy12]

I am trying out making sprites. I find it lot harder then actually drawing and there always seems to be something different from them than from my own drawings on paper. Anyway I just tried doing a robot, probably won't be used for anything, I haven't done much shading yet because I wanted to see what you might think.




The buttons are intentionally irregular in sizes.

EDIT: accidently saved as JPEG. Now a Bitmap.

[Candall]

Well, the blocky flatness doesn't lend itself too well to animation, but it's okay for a static background prop or somesuch.

However, I'd suggest losing most of those lines along the arms and legs.  They don't add a lot to the design and they're very distracting from the rest of the body, which isn't very busy.

[Rincew1nd]

hello! first post

Anyway to the post at hand, your robot is okay for your first attempt (mine look much worse  : ) but i were to change it i would study what robots look like when there animated such as Bender from Futurama. Its all about making it easy for yourself.

[Khris]

This robot is as flat as a cardboard cutout. You haven't done *any* shading if one doesn't count a dark line at the bottom and to the right of every rectangular shape, and I don't.
The robot seems to be supposed to be built of cuboids and tubes, so try to convey that before focusing on details like buttons. Forget about details for now and shade it properly.

Here's a picture of a random robot similar to yours:
http://www.toyzine.com/auctions/christies-robots-2005-11/SankeiTelevisionRobot.jpg

Redraw yours viewed from slightly above and add depth to its parts. Make protruding things protrude.

[evilguy12]

Ok, I made it a bit more 3D (and started from stratch) and here is what i have done with it so far.




I haven't coloured it yet just in case there is any thing wrong with it. For some some reason I can't make the right foot look disconnected from the leg so that it will look like the left foot but from a different view.

[OneDollar]

You've got the top half of the body following something like an isometric look, and the right foot with some form of perspective. The two don't fit together. Just as a quick paintover:

This robot is drawn continuing the more isometric look you've got going, with the right leg and foot following the same angle into the page that the left ones do


This version has more of a perspective on it using a vanishing point somewhere above and directly behind the robot. The problem with using something like this with objects made up of blocks is that if he moves around a screen at some points he's going to look strange compared to the perspective of the background

[Candall]

Hah!  I was making mine while OneDollar posted, but I edited the neck too, so here it is.



Mine's just straight-up iso.  Now, do keep in mind that this robot still doesn't look like a fully formed robot... all of the parts have depth now, but it's all still the same depth.  Normally, the torso would be deeper than the arms.

If you're going for fully fleshed designs, this needs to be changed.  If you want sprites that look like they were pressed out with cookie cutters, don't let anyone tell you it's wrong.  It's a legitimate style choice as long as you keep it consistent.

[evilguy12]

To be honest it hasn't really turned how I wanted it. I didn't want to be isometric but I don't want it to be flat either (I am now trying to make the character sprites more LucasArts style).

[Renal Shutdown]

..I find it lot harder then actually drawing and there always seems to be something different from them than from my own drawings on paper..

If you can get your hands on a scanner, then I'd suggest checking this tutorial by MrColossal:
http://kafkaskoffee.tripod.com/tutorials/chartut.htm

If you can't get a scanner, but have a digital camera, then with some fiddling, you can photograph your drawings, then try the tutorial.

Failing that, use something like Flash or whatnot, a vector based thing, to do the "sketches" part, and then pixellate from those images.

You might not like doing it that way, and it's not always the best way, but it doesn't hurt to have the option open.