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i think for character sprites it's better for the light to come from above, that way you can flip them if needed. You wouldn't need to flip this front pose, but for a sideways view it would look really weird if the lightsource would change when the character changes direction.

You're right, and I usually make two different side walk animations (like here) to avoid the weird effect you described. Though it can be called a time-wasting method, I guess.

SpacePaw: It is better now, even if a bit messy.

I see that you made the light come more from our left  Any reason to that? 

Well, no, no reason at all. I just, you know, pick some random spot for a light source and let it go wild. Next time I think I'll make it go from under his feet. Or from the tip of his tail, maybe.

...and seriously speaking, it's just a shadowing style which places the main light source in the upper left side of the image. I use it because as far as I can observe, the main light rarely comes directly from above so I find it more natural to always use some side shading. But as I said it's just a style, so you can ignore all my edits and your sprite will surely look very nice My main point was the tail.

I made a few minor edits to your last (pre-desaturation) version, nothing really important since you already did a very good job I applied more detailed shading to the head and the tail, increased contrast in a few spots (particularly his shirt) and added some highlights.

More importantly though, how about making his tail yellow instead of blue? Blue tail blends with his pants, so the tail is sorta hard to make out when looking at the picture.

Less jagged? You mean, something like this?
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/3981/v5ee5tp.png

[Idea]

Idea - Ghost Black humor! Brilliant =)

Atmosphere - jerakeen loominous was also close to winning this in my rating, though I find this warm and soothing family movies style somehow overused. The mood invoked by jerakeen's entry is far more unique.

Design - jerakeen That's what I would call 'a variety of individually designed elements'.

Composition - jerakeen Again a tough choice between jerakeen and loominous. loominous followed a composition pattern commonly found in contemporary productions, which gives his work a real professional look. But I love the way how jerakeen arranged all the messy elements into one clever composition.

Functionality - Wyz For all the obvious exits and player-friendly intuitive navigation style.

Technique - jerakeen Clever detailing and an amazing play of light and shadows.

I wanna play this game!

Agreed, it looks awesome, Kastchey. I'd love to see this game built up further - the setting is really unique as adventure games go, and I could definitely see it being very well received.

Wow, thanks. Now I'm closer to freezing my latest idea in making and focusing back on this one.. especially that the latest one would require some more advanced scripting, and scripting is really not my forte.

So to help you reach three pages, here's my 'get started with AGS' game attempt, never to be finished. I wanted to make a short game based on a story by a certain American author, but never got past the first room

Unfinished sprite sheet of a XVIIIth century ex-soldier, who was intended to be one of the two playable characters:


The only background I made for the game, XVIIIth and early XXth century versions:


Unfinished sketch for an old colonial style house, the main location for the game:


Opening screen:


And a lineart for the other playable character, the XXth century one blended into opening screen
Link - I don't want to stretch this post any more

rather than 'light pixel, dark pixel, light pixel, dark pixel'.

Isn't that what dithering is?

It is, but dithering works better when applied to larger areas. Or if you want to use it as a texture effect. Low res character sprites don't use dithering too much.. see these examples: Dithering styles

It's meant to be a tie, and thanks for the info on hte legs / arms.. I just couldnt get it right...

Maybe that made me think that this guy is more badly hurt than he really is, in this case your pose (and the pose in the paintovers) is perfectly fine. Forget my point 3.

And since you made a distinction between the right and the left side view (the right side view shows his wounded knee), how about changing the light and shadows accordingly? If you have your light source on the right side, then you could make his back lightened in the left view.

Also if you plan on using the 'clean' shading style, like in both SpacePirateCaine's and Andail's paintovers, you could try to get rid of the single dots flying around everywhere. Pixels come in packs you know... say dark blue area, then light blue area, then dark blue area again, rather than 'light pixel, dark pixel, light pixel, dark pixel'.

x2
It's a bacteriophage. And yeah I know, with the variety of happy colors I used it could as well be a christmas tree...

It's very nice for a first attempt, low-res sprites are often tricky. I made a few corrections, but nothing major.




1. You can make his glasses less heavy-looking if you shade them like I did. Another way is to avoid drawing frames of the glasses, but that wouldn't work best in this case.
2. I made his legs and arms a bit longer. Legs should be around twice the length of the torso, and arms reach somewhere above the knees.
3. I also tried to make him look more like a wounded person, rather bent than standing straight.
4. Fixed the shading here or there. I assumed you imagined the light source somewhere on the right side of your character (his left), jusging from his hair and shirt.

By the way, is the red on his chest blood stains, or something else?

How about this for a tilted version?

I didn't do any outline shading to fit the text style.
EDIT: Now that I look at it, maybe I should have made it a bit sharper than that.

And I totally agree with Ghost, this is a charming design. Go pixels!
(then again, what answer could you expect if you ask in a retro games community =)

Ghost: I've had a pretty similar thing in mind, a venture into human body. Your idea beats mine though, it's hilarious =)

And here's my entry. My idea is pretty much overused if not plain boring: the white fella is a miniature explorer, a medic maybe, sent into human circulatory system to investigate the cause of a mysterious illness.

SpacePirateCaine - And why didn't you mention japanese-english :3 It's like another language lol :3

And that might just work as a hint that having a native speaker as a teacher might not be enough for efficient learning (unless they are bilingual and/or well taught in linguistics, then maybe).

As a non-Indo-European language, Japanese is way far from English, much further than say, French or Russian is. Literally everything is different (hence the famous Engrish), from the most basic grammar to the general semantics, to the point that it beats all the classic European ontology with a stick.

In an addition to what SpacePirateCaine and Andail have said:
An average native speaker, having no clue about the differences between their own language and the native language of their students, has no chance to fully understand all the language problems the students are having. This might result in a total inability to clearly explain grammar and style of their own language to foreign students.

While native speakers remain more reliable in pronounciation and word choice part, they are not always the best pick for the whole language course, especially for those students who are not much capable of intuitive learning.

I know I've already made an entry, but this just got into my head and won't leave until I post it..
It's an old pokemon nobody wants to catch anymore, doing card tricks to make a living.

And mind you, this thing between its legs is actually its TAIL.

Perhaps something like this could work for you?

I'm not exactly sure what kind of hairstyle you wanted to give him so it was a blind shot, actually.

Highlights look fine to me, there's definitely not too much of them and they seem to be in the correct spots.

It's Howard Phillips Lovecraft playing with one of his little alien friends while morphing into Cthulhu.

Well I didn't take part in the previous discussion, but I'd say that 'Jakerpot Games' sounds best. And Layabout is right, if you want people to find your name through google search, 'Jack in the Pot' is not the best option, hyphens or no hyphens.

*raises hand*

Edit: (BTW, I don't know how to put it in it's real size, so I anyone can give me the code I'll apreciate it Wink)

Remove the '_thumb' part from your link.
http://chrislohr.net/uploader/files/85/pixel-art.png

And as for your sprite, I did a small paintover to show you how it could be improved. I focused on the face shadowing and body proportions.
By the way, you did a pretty good face outline, especially for a first attempt at spriting.

A close-up picture for the face:

1. You don't need to outline every single edge pixel of your sprite. Breaking the outline here or there will make your sprite feel softer.
2. Imagine the light source in the upper left corner of your image, slightly in front of your sprite. Think how it would affect your cybertoad guy, since he'd have bones and muscles under his skin if he was real. Smoothly shade the areas that face away from the sunlight, and highlight those that are directly exposed.
3. Desaturate your colors a little. Especially the red and white you use for the hair and eyes.
4. To make his facial hair look more natural, do not outline the shape of the beard.
5. I suppose these two white dots over his mouth are a pair of fangs. I repainted them to make them look less like rabbit's teeth and more menacing. It made this guy look a bit orcish though, I'm not sure if this is right since he's supposed to be a toad?
6. Try not to use a single colored outline. Outline can use some shading too!

And finally the whole piece:

I fixed the body proportions a little and tried to give the hammer a more 'solid' look. The paintover isn't really finished, eg. it could use more highlights and maybe some more contrast, also the left arm and pants parts still need a lot of love. Perhaps you could finish this picture on your own (unless you don't like the way I did it).

Anyway, good luck with your sprite, it's a pretty nice start.

(..omg my very first post after ages of lurking O.O)