My somewhat-okay (I hope) Spritework

[blazheirio889]

You can't pass everything off as 'your style'. I've been following this thread and a lot of people have commented on the lack of contrast (that is, I remember a lot of posts saying that; not sure on the number of people). I wholeheartedly agree with them. Kam basically summed up what I had to say: too many unnecessary shades.

Seriously, though, real life has a lot of contrast. Are you saying everything in the real world looks awkward? tbh I can't think of anything that has as little contrast as your pixel-overs.

And since you're not likely to take the above seriously, anyway: you basically shaded Munna like it was a giant ball - even at the snout, which should not be happening. At least add more shadow to the right side (its left).

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

That's meant to cast a shadow? It looks to me like just a darker patch on the skin. Huh.

I'm looking at things right now with gradual shading, so. It just looks better to me than if I had like three shades with massive contrast. Sorry if it's not what you like, though.

EDIT: Although, now that I look at it some more, I agree its right needs more shading. Added to my to-do queue.

 

[blazheirio889]

No, that darker purple spot is a marking. What I was talking about was the snout itself - that is, the part below the purple dot.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Oh, its mouth. I get it. Added to the queue.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Oddly, being back at school somehow increases my productivity. Whut. Don't get your hopes up though; just more of these. Hopefully, I'll have a pixel-over up later tonight.

EDIT: I recolored Kecleon to each of the different types. Color Change yay.

EDIT: And more.

EDIT: La la lalala lalalala la la.

EDIT: Bluuuuurgle

EDIT: Whuuuuuurrrrrghhhhhhh there's less today because I figured out the answer to an annoying JavaScript error that's been stalking me! Yay!

EDIT: The pretty colors...

EDIT: And more~

EDIT: I think that with Hippowdon I almost bit off an eye bigger than my stomach could chew. Today's topic: the mixing of metaphors.

 

[Enkoe]

Your recolors are rather nice, unfortunately can't see your splices because at least 1/3 of these images are broken. Refreshing doesn't help. D:<

Your pixel-overs have hardly any shading at all. I can also barely tell the difference between the shades. They're just not dark enough - if you make your shading dark enough, it will probably make your pixel-overs look much better. This pixel-over by me has rather dark shading.

Also, there's a lot of "pillow-shading". Looks weird.

 

[Skylark]

Hope my comments make sense XD

a) I like your revamps. They look great
b) I can't see anything wrong with your recolors except for some of the color choices. The monitor I use is slightly busted and everything is a bit darker - I can't see what's going on in some youtube videos because of this. Even with this monitor, some of the sprites were eye-glaring.
c) In my opinion, the fusions/splices/whatever you call them could be more creative in terms of parts
d) I like the pixel-overs, but I can't relate much with the comments of others about your pixel-overs since I haven't tried to do them yet.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Points taken on board. Now, responses.

All the images are working for me... not sure what's going on there.
You know, people keep pointing this out to me. I personally prefer to do lots of gradual shades, it looks better to me. I do try to avoid pillow-shading, though. The light source is imagined to be in the front-top-left, if that helps.
The recolors are just using the colors that already exist on the sprite and swapping them, so. Still, they don't seem too bright to me, but eh, I guess some people's opinions will be different.
The splices... eh, I don't think they're that great either, honestly.

Thanks for both the comments and the criticism.

 

[Karkat Vantas]

It's not the fact that the colors are taken from the official sprites, it's that the colors don't look good together.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Eh, that's mostly a matter of opinion. I think they look okay, but you're entitled to disagree.

EDIT: Oh look

EDIT: To all you who say that a Pokémon can't have a grey mouth, look at Grimer.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Something other than palatte-shifts, you say? BLASPHEMY.

Tsuki line's menu sprites. Hoping Moon-Panther likes them.

EDIT:

 

[Lucas₇₅₅]

The colors don't seem to fit on most of your recolors. Try to keep level of contrast consistent, both between the change in shade of the two major colors, and the wayy the colors fit together themselves.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Eh, the colors look okay(ish) to me, some slightly bright, but not really excessively so. The shades themselves tend to have too much contrast to my eye, so I reduce it, if that's what you meant.

And more.

 

[Wargle]

The empoleon and Electrode just look ... bad.

The bright colors, I can't stand it. Same with furret a post up.

Furret especially looks like you just used Standard Paint colors.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Eh, that's just because you're used to seeing them darker, Empoleon especially. As an example, see Drapion below. It's quite clearly darker than the norm, but looks brighter.

 

[Equinoxe]

I do not much care for recolours myself because I consider them a waste of time, but let me say something:
The problem is not us being 'not used to seeing these like this' but the fact that darker colours require different shading from brighter colours. If you wanted to make these colours fit together well, you'd have to edit the shading instead of just.. well, recolouring them.

example:

it looks awkward because the shading does not fit such a bright colour; it's designed for a dark colour and should only be recoloured with a relatively dark colour. Unless you change the shading, that is. (light colours on Pokémon sprites usually have a third, lighter shade whereas the dark ones don't)

You should also work with the outlining, in some sprites the outline is awfully dark in some parts and awfully bright in others. Edit the colours, don't just dropper-tool them straight. :I

examples:

The outline on the pink parts is too dark and the dark purple is too dark compared to the bright pink and lacks contrast.

THE RED. IT BURNS. The light body versus DARK HEAVY RED looks very awkward and makes it look very unbalanced and unnatural.
again: outlines on red too dark, the red is generally too bright and saturated

head and arms: CONTRAST? WHERE?
The outline is too dark once again and the two shades desperately need more contrast/hue shifting (try a yellower shade for the light shade?)

dunno why I'm typing this because you'll probably ignore this like all the other comments
I'd appreciate if you actually read these and tried to learn something.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

I -do- read the comments. I -do- pay attention to them, and I don't appreciate your saying that I don't.
I actually generally do my best to fix up the shading and outlining, you know. I'm not very good, but I still try. I edit the colors when it looks odd to me with the amount of contrast, so.
I'm really not fond of people saying that I ignore things when I don't, by the way.

 

[Equinoxe]

I apologize, it's just that the way you comment back gives the sort of 'I don't care' vibe even if that's not what you intended.

A good way to learn better could be taking, let's say, some of those example sprites in my post and try to fix the things mentioned.
It might really help with truly identifying and understanding the problems with the sprites, which in turn makes it easier to prevent them in future works.

 

[Squornshellous Beta]

Ah, sorry.

Yeah, I'll get to it eventually.

EDIT: Well, no fixed ones, but some new ones.

EDIT: no-one can accuse me of being lazy with Darkrai

EDIT: Running out of things to say here

EDIT Hlbllghblg

EDIT: blurgh

EDIT: bluuuuuuurgh

 

[Tarinflame]

Palette-swapping... nice concept there, but maybe you can edit the shading and such to fit with the new colors? Most of the sprites have shades meant for the color(s) they have only, and changing the colors makes them look rather awkward. I know you're doing a lot of palette-swapping, but a fair amount of tweaking should make these sprites much better looking. Not to mention that some of the colors you swapped have absolutely bad results - Furret, Bidoof and Giratina, to name a couple. Maybe very slightly darken the colors, or try a different color-swap on them.

Also, your pixel-overs. Very nice, you've done them very nicely - however, the shading is a big problem. There is very little contrast, and very little difference between your shades - I know you're attempting to use gradual shading, but you could try making the shades darker, to help make the pixel-overs look better. Also, I can see the same problem with shine - in some pixel-overs, a Pokemon has a rather dark eye, and this makes the whole Pokemon look very devoid of life. Just a white spot in the eyes will help brighten up and make your pixel-overs lively. Also, the outlines. You need to put some black where there are shadows - this will give off a much better look than a one-color shade, which makes the sprite very tedious.

A fair amount you need to work on in my opinion, however you are doing very well. If you tweak your spriting to how I explained, then it will make the sprites look much better. Of course it will take a while to get used to.