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WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?



After attempts to accelerate the evolution process were altered by a junior scientist accidentally spilling mustard in the test area, the following creature has evolved over a period of 3 months.

Your job is to give the creature character... you may alter the lines so long as we can recognise it as the original sprite. Will it be a herbivore or a carnivore? Will it have skin, fur, scales or feathers or slime? Will it be brown, or turquoise? These, daring colorists, are the questions you must ask.

Max colours = 25

As usual, bonus points for any extra creativity (whether color or concept wise).

Get coloring!

Hey all,

Just tried my hand at my first character speech portraits - hoping to get some feedback on them. I've put the intended sprites next to them for comparisons sake.





I get the feeling that the fella might be a bit feminine, and I couldn't get his hair looking very good, but I'm fairly happy with them as first efforts.

Tried to keep the colour count under 10 for the portraits to make animating easier - and didn't want to do dithering.

Hey all,

Sorry for cluttering up the board with crit threads, but your help would be greatly appreciated.

After a couple of hours mucking around with layers and the like in my new downloaded version of GIMP (and wondering why I hadn't tried this layer thing sooner!), I managed to create the following GUI template:



Unfortunately I'm not sure how to do the writing on the buttons so that it looks good. I've tried a number of different things, and it always looks very blocky and unappealling. Obviously I have a fair bit of work left to do on it before it begins to look good, but I'd like to get this lettering done now if I can.

Thanks for your time - any suggestions are very appreciated as ever.

Hi all.

Have just downloaded the Gimp and have decided to start trying out brushes, layers, and other fancy stuff rather than just plain hand pixels.

Have looked at a couple of examples and the like, then gave it a shot. Realised that I suck :p.

Here's a quick corridor I did in GraphicsGale:



And here's my Gimp edit:



I basically used the airbrush to smooth out the lines, with a little bit of the burn tool, used the dodge/burn tool to give the light a bit of brightness, and put a bluish layer over the top, then played around with the colour mix. I'm still not very happy with this - I was hoping to add atmosphere, but it isn't very atmospheric to me. Any help would be appreciated.

Hey everybody,

I'm trying to find a game I played a long time ago but remember really enjoying. Here is what I can remember about it:

-I think the title started with "X" - maybe "Q" or "Z" or some other uncommon letter, but I'm sure it was X.
-It had two different gameplay types - half the time you'd be top down 2d, and then there were also parts where you'd walk around in a 3d environment.
-Loads of inventory items. I seem to remember picking up loads of cups and bowls and stuff and wondering whether I could sell it.
-Weird alien creatures, I think, so presumably some sort of science fiction game.

I'm sorry but that's all I can remember about it. Any help you could give would be great. I already searched through all the games starting with X on the Home Of The Underdogs and could not find it on there.

Cheers all.

I've been trying to figure out how to shade the legs on this statue and am not getting anywhere.



Every time I try I keep pillow shading the damn things. Any tips?

That left arm also looks a bit off to me, but I'm not 100% sure what the problem is. Could it be too long?

Cheers guys.

Hey again everyone.

Been working on this background for a while now, keep changing things, but am kinda happy with the shape it is taking.

However, I think it looks lame because it doesn't look like it is in a city, when it is supposed to look like it is in a city. The big dark orange rectangle - that's meant to be a building. I kinda have no idea how the background of the background should look. A lot of it is still just a sketch, but I would like to get an idea of how the whole composition should look.



I'm sorry I keep filling up this joint with requests for advice but things stay lame if you guys don't help me.

And nobody likes lame.

Oh, and also any other suggestions you have would be appreciated.

EDIT: Have done a bit more work, so I thought I'd put it up:

Hi guys,

Due to my wish to create a gui, I've created the following:



I've tried to make it sort of spaceship like. The colour scheme was inspired by a wing commander one. Because I haven't played that game for so many years, I highly doubt it actually resembles any wing commander colour schemes. But I kept it so far. Two different versions for comparison's sake.

Your comments and suggestions are very welcome, as they always are.

Thanks dudes!

Hey everyone,

As some of you may have seen, I've been working on getting some sprites crankin (if you haven't, they can be seen here for  comparison. ) but my backrounding skills still suck. So I want to improve them.

Please help me out - the progress I've made with my sprites have given me confidence that you guys have the best suggestions out there, so here is what I've been doing style wise:



Rough draft



More contrast



Project Sphinxey

I'm not actually sure what the backrounds should look like. I want the characters to fit in well with them, but I don't know if any of these will do that. Any tips you have that could point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Please note I don't have Photoshop or Paintshop Pro or anything fancy, so I can't use filters or anything.

But I have patience  .

Thanks guys.

Hey everyone,

I've been mucking around with my new favourite program - GraphicsGale - and seeing if I could get some cool characters happening.

I've got two versions - shaded and unshaded - I would like to know how good these look and what I need to improve on.



Unshaded



Shaded

Any comments would be appreciated.

Cheers.

Hi again all,

Sorry to bother the critics lounge again, but I'm rather stuck with this walkcycle I've been working on:



I usually get the legs right, then move onto body and head and then arms, however I can't even seem to get these legs right! I've created the other two cycles (forwards and sideways) and am happy with them:




However if you can see a problem with those I would also appreciate some crits.

Thanks again for your help!

Hey everyone.

I've been trying my hand at some different backround styles, and came up with this one which I kinda like, but I think the rock collumns look kinda ugly.



Advice would be nice, because they're bugging me a little.

Thanks everyone!

I decided to give the old walkcycle another shot to try and improve my animating:



To be perfectly honest, I think the arms look crap. But I've fiddled with them, pushed, re-sized, re-drawn... I dunno what I need to do to fix them.

All suggestions welcome.

Hey guys.

I did this sprite trying to get a cartoon like feel, but I'm not sure about the coloring and the shading. I know I used black outline - I thought it fitted well, but I know many are against.

Any pointers would be appreciated.



EDIT: Had a go at doing a female sprite in the same style...

This woman in a dress I was drawing to try and have a go at showing features below fabric.





I think I placed too much focus on her chest... do I need to make lower body proportions larger, or is it fine?

And how did I go with the colouring?

As a bit of an experiment, I was drawing a quick sprite (practise, you know), and I thought I might have a bit of a go at coloring him in a high contrast style. Obviously the proportions of the sprite are a bit stretched and skewed, but I'm having a go at trying out this to see whether I can do this style of coloring any justice. Comments, crits, paintovers... all is welcome.



The pics are all in the order that I did them - I just went with ideas as they came to me so some of them might be a bit basic, but I at least think some of them are effective. My personal favourite of the moment is number 3.

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.

Hello. This is a backround I completed for a little project I am currently playing with.



A quick run down on the style - yes, its a little cartoony and a little minimalistic. 640x480 is my resolution of choice. I'm using 32 bit colour.

Now, the question. I do not like the shape of the tree. I'm not sure which part needs the most improving, the branches or the leaves, but I would appreciate any suggestions as to how to improve this tree.

Of course, any other parts of the backround which strike you as unworthy, please feel free to comment on those as well.

I have been working on creating a more cartoony feel to my drawing and have come up with the following character. Can I get some feedback on the posture?

Also, I feel that I have been spending too much time on the details while not focusing on the actual shape - what details would you recommend I include, and what one should I leave out? I have left out major details on purpose.



Just for a bit of backround info - I tried to make this look like the typical teenager - the hair is a stylised version of mine, the posture is an exaggerated one and I was hoping to use this fella in a game if I can get it right (with your help, of courseÃ,  )

Cheers,

Ben.

After creating this background, I am not sure where to go now. I've done it in as much detail as I thought necessary but it still feels rather cartoon-esque and I would like to give it more depth and perhaps better lighting or something. I am at a loss where to begin, I keep coming back to improve it but cannot find where to begin. The image is intended to be a small smithy:



If anyone could give me suggestions, advice or even a paintover, I would be most grateful. So far I have only used paint, however that isn't the only program I have access to.

Oh, and happy holidays .