Help with sprite anatomy and coloring

[ThreeOhFour]

Hey guys. In order to improve my understanding of anatomy and coloring for sprites, I came up with the following sprites:









Ok, I'm not happy with the feet in the first one, the colouring in the second one, and the leg on the left in the third one. I tried to make a little point of keeping the colour variety to a minimum, to see what I could achieve.

Just to give you an idea of concept - I am entirely guilty of lacking creativity for this sprite - I was going for the tightly clad superhero babe with impossible proportions, and impossible skill. Any comments would be appreciated.

[Penguinx]

The first anatomy goof I see is the size of her forehead. The distance from eye level to chin should be equal to the distance from eye level to top of head. This problem is most noticeable in the last sprite.

[ThreeOhFour]

Ok, so if I move the eyes down, and extend the top of the head, like so:



Then it should be a bit more fixed, right???

[Penguinx]

That's a lot better! Next, I'd say her legs are rather long, but that has almost a stylistic/anime type thing going on and could be overlooked.

[ThreeOhFour]

I sorta had trouble with legs - they were always way too short and made my characters look sorta goofy, so this time I thought perhaps I should draw them ridiculously long, and was quite pleased with the way they turned out. I think long legs make her look tougher.

[Penguinx]

Like I said, that's more of a stylistic choice than a specific gripe. 

[ThreeOhFour]

Alright, cool. Any other things that I could fix? What do you guys think of the coloring? I was quite pleased with it, but can I possibly use less colors? Or should I go crazy and throw in more colours? And did I do the right things on the sides that there are meant to be shadows?

[MashPotato]

Overall, I think the colouring is quite nice.  The colours are a bit desaturated for me, but that's just my personal preference ^_^

I'm not an anatomy expert, but here are my two cents for the same straight-on shot:
-the shoulders slope too much, if you're going for a superhero look I think she should stronger-looking shoulders
-her breasts (especially the one on our left) appear to be emerging from her shoulder, rather than her chest
-this one may be just me, but I find her arms too curvy, as if there are no bones or joints.  They also might be a little too short
-considering that her body is fairly detailed, I think the face could do with a tad more detail as well.  It can still be simple, but the colouring on the face seems relatively flat

For the others, I'll just just mention that in the gun-shooting profile shot, her thigh should convex rather than concave (I hope I used the right terms there ^_^)

Anyway, these are good starts.  Keep up the practice and good work! ^_^

[ThreeOhFour]

Thankyou for your suggestion. I've had a shot at fixing arm, breast, shoulder, face:



How did I do? Did I actually fix it? Or does it need more work?

[MashPotato]

I think it's definitely improved, and the subtle changes you made to the face add a lot.  Good job ^_^

[TheSaint]

- breasts are still way to high and way to the sides (or just reduce size)
- her left arm still lacks bones its over-curved

[n3tgraph]

I love this sprite!

Simplicity and sexy
I like that pose on the knees 
She reminds me of those HalfLife chicks which are so damn hard to shoot

The one where she holds the gun is a bit odd though, I think it's because of the leg positioning and the arm that's in the back

[ThreeOhFour]

Ok:



I tried to fix the other breast, make her expression more confident, make that damn arm straighter, changed the wrong shading on the left boot, added highlight on left shoulder. Fixed?

And yes, n3tgraph, I liked the pose on the knees too. But the gun one was good when I did it as an outline. I just think I got the shading wrong.

[TheSaint]

ive tried to put her in that position properly but i couldnt - it is too unnatural in my opinion, so i changed it and i was really trying to finish it fully (marked the joints: elbow, knee, added some shadows to help out with certain areas) but i grew bored and didnt finish her boots etc.



basically she is more curly than your girl (you can carefully shave pixels if u insist on her being thin) and she has other type of boots, and her hands are open in half-grab manner. and that head gave me some problems since i wanted other position and was lazy to make it so i rotated it a bit hence the blur etc.

hope it helps.

cheers
O:)