Originally Posted by Dusty @ Graalians

Well like I said it's not quite text-book pillowshading(though some of it is) but just a lot of banding. I'm not very familiar with banding but I can tell that something is off and I'm gonna chalk it up to that. Banding is very similar to pillowshading in that you let your lineart define your shading. For example on almost every instance of muscle you've drawing you have your shadows outline the lineart of the muscles.

An example of pillowshading on one of your pieces would be the shading on the minotaur's head when it's facing up:
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...ddytrinity.png

The shading nearly follows the outline of the head perfectly. Now this can either be poor shading or simply poor lightsource choice. If you choose a lightsource that's directly in front of the sprite even if your shading is correct it's going to look boring and "wrong" like it does here. For lightsources I typically choose top-left, or if I'm feeling lazy and want to copy/paste horizontally I pick above the sprite.

I'd also say your method of shading doesn't help, where everything gradually goes from dark to light. That tends to exaggerate the banding/pillowshading issues tenfold. It might be better to have the midtones be much less prominent(especially on metals where contrast is sorely needed, this shading methods make metals look more like dull plastic). Other things you can do to help is break black outlines within brighter areas of color.

One more thing, while I love a lot of the lineart, especially things like the dragon's head and such, the muscles tend to be sorely lacking. Most of the muscles are very square/straight and really kill any sort of organic feeling. However I'm kind of pulling straws at the advice I can give and if you really want to improve I may suggest grabbing some books from your local library that focuses on drawing anatomy/volume/lighting/shading as all of these things translate to pixel art. You'd be amazed at how well your pixel art will improve after studying traditionally for a while. You may even want to head over to pixelation(wayofthepixel.net) and post your stuff. There are a lot of people over there that will completely draw over and explain a lot of the anatomy/volume knowledge of the changes they make.

Try to also avoid "bad lines" or lines that don't step with a ratio. For example a diagonal line is a 1:1 step, for every step up or down, you also move to the left or right. Isometric lines have a 2:1 step, or for every step up, you draw two pixels to the left or right. This is to avoid a lot of trouble later on(they're VERY difficult to AA, and without AA can look pretty bad). You can read about it a little more here: http://www.spriteland.com/tutorials/...s-tutorial.htm or http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/foru....asp?TID=11299

Now, these pieces are fairly large so they're not the easiest things in the world to edit, but I tried my best to do a bit of an edit and to explain some things I did:

http://i.imgur.com/Kzx43.png

http://i.imgur.com/uPp49.png

http://i.imgur.com/7IhVQ.gif

Originally Posted by Elk (Post 1703564)

When making sprites, you don't think of countours... you think of a volume and body, something of consistence, the outline comes when you put it into reality

Originally Posted by maximus_asinus (Post 1703567)

@Crono

10/10 for free handing those lines instead of using the straight line tool (novice approach).

Originally Posted by Crono (Post 1703565)

like this?

Originally Posted by Zerith (Post 1703671)

Alright, heres another. Bear with me here, thanks. I understand the harsh black outline. I will fix it up once I practice AA more.

Originally Posted by kia345 (Post 1704237)

It's not a proper Gundam without the white, red, and blue color scheme. More like a Mobile Suit. Or just general Mobile Armor since it doesn't have legs. Zeong, maybe.

Originally Posted by xXziroXx (Post 1704240)

Now that's cool. The middle section seems unfinished though :(

Originally Posted by Zerith (Post 1704236)

Straight from the default Microsoft Paint and nothing else, I present to you my fun creation, purely original concept, my own gundam! the Z Storm.http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps7f74f070.png

Originally Posted by Zerith (Post 1705946)

From the first pixel dot to the very last, Default Microsoft Paint program all the way!

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...ose/zsnipe.png

Originally Posted by Zerith (Post 1705946)

From the first pixel dot to the very last, Default Microsoft Paint program all the way!

http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/b...ose/zsnipe.png

Originally Posted by Elk (Post 1706157)

nice improvements! sorry i didnt get to answer your pm yet, will do when i have time, but ive read it, so you know ^^

Originally Posted by Draenin (Post 1713809)

Looks pretty nice. Could use some more cannons or missiles in the shoulder pods, though. Right now they look a lot like empty slots.

Originally Posted by Zerith (Post 1725895)

But the true purpose of this thread bump is because I just wanted to say Goodbye Graal! After the release of Delteria iPhone, I felt like the last thing keeping me to Graal has come to a peaceful closure. Anyway, it has been a very memorable journey since my childhood and so I just wanted to thank you all for everything!! My best wishes to each and every one of you.

Regards,

Zerith aka Tom