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Yeah, it's definitely better than reducing a high res sketch or the like. This way, you get to selectively pixel and see if you're making the right decisions as you go thanks to the reference layer.

That's correct, Mikko. One more suggestion, though. My original, high resolution sketch is at 5"x5" @ 300dpi. I divided the width in pixels by 32 to get my pixel distance between spaces in the grid for the first step. Mikko's method of adjusting the gridline every 1 pixels is for the second step when you're actually working at your sprite size (which in my case was 32x32).

I love the human beatbox portions of the Katamari Damacay soundtrack. If/when I ever finish a damn game, I want to do something similar (if decidedly more sucky).

No problem; it seemed so obvious AFTER I started using the method. I just happened upon it as a happy accident.

That's correct, but given the sort of walk this character has, it needs to be really subtle.

Yup, that's bobble!

Hair is a little harder to explain. I'd be better able to illustrate it with a paint over. Anyone else have an appropriate way to explain it?

Send me a sheet if you think of it. If I can, I'll help.

The walk is smooth and the folds in the robe are convincing enough. I think what you need is bobble! Typically, when the legs are farthest apart in a walk cycle, your head dips down. When they're closest together, the head is at its highest.

My only other suggestion would be that when we walk, we actually are falling forward with each step. There doesn't seem to be a lot of weight being shifted around which makes for that gilding effect.

I really like it, however, and I think that it's totally useable as is. Were you to make the head bobble, I think it'd be even better.

Unless his hands are in his pockets, I'd say the arms a hand-length short. I'd also recommend outlining the hair and possibly dropping the outline on the interior of the arms (as you did on the legs) for consistency's sake.

While I agree with some of those sentiments, I'm not going to tell you to change your personal interpretation of a cat-as-cartoon.

I have to disagree that the style is 'overdrawn.' I like the rough edges and the flat, hand-done gradiented look.

I like the character sprite in an abstract way. If you made a whole game that stylized (or that convinced people it was all stylized), I could dig that muchly.

The smoothness of the deity is a little jarring when placed next to the other sprites (which I really dig, by the way). The short goat, especially, is great.

Well, I thought I'd post this here. I haven't been active for a long while (damnable real life getting in the way and all), but I thought I'd share a way of making sprites that has REALLY changed the way I work.

This method is a lot less reliant on hunting and pecking around and, for me, tends to create more fluid results.



I start by drawing a loose sketch of the subject in Painter. This could just as easily be done on traditional media. I then proceed to overlay a grid on the sketch with the same number of squares as the final piece of pixelart should have. In this case, I have guidelines creating 32 boxes across and 32 boxes down.

Next, I fill in black squares in the boxes which I think help convey the character the best. Sometimes, some major tweaks need to be made at this stage. I find it's really handy to be able to refer back to the original sketch by turning off my faux-pixel layer.

I like this way of working because it helps me to focus on the character first and the fact that it'll be rendered as pixels second. I get a lot more fluid results this way. If you don't feel like mucking around with all that, just buy some graph paper and do a loose pencil sketch there first, blocking in the squares later. That ought to work about the same.

Next, I tend to alt-tab from Painter to Graphics Gale. I zoom way in on a 32x32 image and transfer my black marks. Really, any graphics program with a good zoom and pixel by pixel grid feature ought to work fine.

After transfering my black marks, I lay down large, flat areas of color. From here on out, it's matter of adding shadows and highlights with as few colors as possible (because I'm a bit of a purist that way). Darker, cooler, desaturated hues tend to receed and brighter, warmer, saturated hues bring things forward. Anything you can do to bring form to the little bugger helps.



Often at 100% or 200% things look remarkably different than the 1600% view I work at. There's a lot of testing that goes into seeing what'll read well at such a small size. In the above example, I flip-flopped on the color of the band-aid, finally settling on the original choice with the addition of a highlight and some shadows.

That's about it!

Try drawing with a locked wrist with your movement coming from your shoulder. It helped me!

Ildu, I can't explain WHY. I think it may just be that Painter takes up less system resources than PS.

Do you have the networkable version? It'd be fun to collaborate!

Thanks! I've had mine for about six months, and it really has changed the way I work. For lineart, I'd recommend Open Canvas or Painter before Photoshop (even Painter 6 which can be found on the cheap). I get much, much cleaner, less-jittery lines out of Painter.

I am absolutely in love with my Wacom. Everything you see on my sketchblog was done with it.

DeBabilizer.

I own a print shop and can attest to the fact that the multi color designs are pricey to reproduce. I came up with a limited color (2 colors, halftoned) solution for you.



Illustrator file download.

Just something I whipped up in a few minutes. If you want me to expand on it, I can.

Edit: Sorry for the filesize. I posted the JPG at 300dpi in case his friends wanted to print it out at a later date.