• Do not use Works in Progress as a way of avoiding the releases system! Works in Progress can be used for sharing early betas and for getting suggestions for improvement. Releases of finished content are not allowed in this forum! If you would like to submit a finished addon, click here for instructions on how to do so.

My first wad

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
The spikes don't seem to be consistent, and it is still pixelated. Out of all of them I say either the 2nd or 4th frame are the best of the bunch that you posted.
 
Those sprites still need shading, like it or not. Otherwise they'll be all dull and boring. You need to bring life into your sprites by giving them shading. Here's an article on shading:

http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html

Basically, you establish a light source (which in SRB2 is somewhat north), then you draw strips of color for each shade, taking into account the shape of the object.

Pillow shading is bad. That's when you draw a dark gradient border around all edges of your sprite. And as we know, that's not how lighting works in real life. Equidistant looks almost as bad, because they don't conform to the proper shape of the object.

Perhaps you can experiment with shading and see how to best apply it to your sprites. You should probably use the original Sonic sprites as a reference.
 
Like anything else, it takes practice. You should start by shading simple primitives such as spheres, so you can get a grasp on how shading works. It's actually a complicated process, but don't lose heart. In the end you'll get a very good result. Here's some shots of a Yoshi sprite I was making at one point in time:

YOSHA5.png
I've started with the outline. I've made dotted lines to indicate where the cheek area starts (white).

YOSHA5v2.png
I color in the sprite, then I start working on shades. I would have posted a picture of the sprite without any shading, just color, but I never really posted one like that during development.

YOSHA5v3.png
I fix the shading to make the shape come out more.

YOSHA5v5.png
I make the outlines lighter by matching the inside colors with slightly darker hues.

YOSHA5v5a.png
And here, I go, "Ah, **** it, the shading sucks. I'm redoing it." Now the light source is coming from the north, and creates a much more realistic effect on the image.
 
Blitzz, pillow shading works pretty damned well when trying to apply a cartoon-ish appearance.
 
No, it still looks bad. You don't see real cartoons using pillow shading, do you? They define light sources too. I've gotten away from pillow shading ever since I was 12.
 
Those gloves do _not_ use pillow shading, I can tell you that. The head seems to have variable shading on different areas, so that isn't exactly considered pillow shading either. But the shading isn't dark enough. You kind of have to squint to see it.
 
But sometimes the SRB2 shades are overly restrictive. This looks fine here, but in SRB2, it looks like he rolled in mud.
saknuxpillow2.PNG
 
That's why you should use a graphics program that natively supports 256-color palettes. If you restrict yourself to the confined colors while you are actually making your sprites, you won't have that problem.
 
...That IS the SRB2 pallette. I used color remap in XWE to add just one shade to it. So what you saw before and what you see here are what you can do.
 
IF you can't fit a red character like knuckles into a palette with 24 reds without losing the shading, then you're doing something wrong.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top