Pirate lady! C&C

[ravenfusion]

Damn, I haven't pixelled in a very long time. I've been a bit rubbish since I started up again, so it's nice to have something to show!

Here's a piratey-type lady that uses 14 colours, i'm not exactly sure if that's too many because the tones are fairly similar.


I kinda feel that the shading is done poorly and it's just wasting pixels and making things hard to distinguish...anyone got any advice?

[Kaio]

Wow, looks very Monkey-Island 2-ish to me. Good job!

[bog]

i really like it as well. i think it all reads pretty good except maybe the gun

[ravenfusion]

Thanks,

kaioshin: That's a huge compliment, though Monkey Island had larger sprites and that probably works out much nicer for animating and they look less messy...I'm going to experiment with similar colours and see how that looks.

bog: I think you're right, I don't know how much I can do at that scale to make it more distinct...thought about adding a silver barrel or something.

Other than that, the face needs something too because she clearly doesn't have a nose. Probably gonna push that dark pixels on the sides towards her nose and then use the darkest shade at each end of the face.

edit:

[Kaio]

I liked the 1st version better. The skin-color of the new one is too much red for me. But maybe it's just my screen, messing with the colors. 

[bog]

i also like the skin color on the first on more, on the new one it's too close to the hair. i don't think you need to worry about the nose.

the gun looks good now.

[ravenfusion]

How about a compromise between the two with more natural black and white shades so there is less red?

Like so...

[Layabout]

I too agree with the others that it is f***ing nice, but I prefer the 1st versions skin tones. They seem more natural and a bit softer.

One irritant. The stray yellow pixel on her left ear? Earring? It's too small an object to worry about and just looks distracting.

[Andail]

It's good, but I don't get these piratey vibes, actually I get more YMCA-vibes, with her police cap and uniform and/or apron.
A pirate hat is usually a lot bigger, and I think you could remove or substitute some of the white stripes/dots on her outfit to make it less of a uniform.
Just my two cents.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think it looks good, but the details you've placed on the outfit confuse the shapes for me.  Also, her shoulders are simply too close to her head and as Andail pointed out, it really looks nothing like a conventional pirate outfit.  With these things in mind, here is my edit.

1.  Widened shoulders by one pixel.

2.  Reshaded everything for greater readability, making her coat easier to distinguish from her shirt and pants.

3.  Made the hat look more like a pirate hat and the boots look more like pirate boots to sell the idea.

4.  Brought her right leg in one pixel and angled her left leg more towards the viewer.

5.  Gave the gun a flintlock appearance with a wooden stock and a silver barrel.





The most important thing I did here was to clean up the image so the shapes are more or less clear and easy to distinguish, which is especially important on smaller sprites.  She reminds me a bit of Kate Capsize now, but I don't think that's a bad thing!  Keep at it!

[ravenfusion]

Thanks ProgZ, the silhouette looks so much better, gonna keep that in mind and see if I can come up with a new design for the clothes. Other than that, i'll probably draw a new character soon in the same style.

[Evil]

Progz has the right idea. The shapes of the clothes were hard to distinguish, but I think Progz's edit looses a lot of the character from the original. She has a really nice pose and swanky quality, except she looks like she's wearing a French Maid outfit with oversized cowboy boots.

Some sort of combo of the two might look nice. I think the original has such a nice contrapposto for such a small sprite, the main issue was distinguishing the torso. This isn't great, but I couldn't help making an edit.