CAP1 - Part 14.5 - (Pre-Evo Sprite Submissions)

[Steampowered]

hey everyone!

wow did the sprite poll ever calm down! Anyways...

@wekhter looks good so far.
Even thought Ice will prob get mad at me for it, I have a few ideas to make it better. Firstly make the arms a little longer, they look kind of stubby. Next, even tough it makes Scratchet look super cute, the cheeks are a tad big, it makes th sprite look weird and cute at the same time. Finally place the ears lower on the head. When we first see it we want to see lion and this is going to be hard because lions traditionally don't have big ears. Right now the first animal that comes to mind is bear because of the ears, position of the body and cheeks.

other than that it looks great!

@Ruwisc only one piece of advice for you (and this is super important) make sure that you get the proportions perfect or else it will make the sprite look really weird

 

[Ruwisc]

I think I can salvage the all-fours pose... I'm 1000% more satisfied with this effort. I think I redid everything but the eyes, nose and hands. Again, all feedback appreciated.

 

[Ice-cold Claws]

Oh...Hi Wekhter! Um...why would a girl put Eldritch Golbat as her avatar 0_o sorry anyways :)
I'd say the second, it looks the most polished.
As for specific crits...Steampowered covers all I have to say. Steampowered is really good at crits. All I have to say...including the "Ice will get mad" part. Just kidding :p
Wait - one thing, the forehead's pretty flat, yeah.

Ruwisc: Hello! Your sprite is good stuff, right now all I can say is that the chest is pretty broad (make it rounder/fatter) and the face is thin...kinda skull-shaped in fact o_o oh, and for some reason the eye on the right looks chopped off while the other is whole and round.

Oh yeah, because apparently all this spriting has pulled down my grades though I'm still top of the year ^_^
I'm leaving all this for a while, maybe returning just to vote or even see the results only.
And...I might not even drop by for a glance at CAP2. ;_;

 

[Wyverii]

Came in a bit late for crits but ah well there's still some people around that haven't finalised their work yet. Wekter is up.

Suggested edits are in red on the third sprite. 4th sprite illustrates arm length. These are to suppliment the crits to follow.

First off I like the arm raised pose, it brings in some interest to the sprite without making it too action based. I disagree with Steampowered on the arms being too stubby. As you can see with the arms outlined above they're roughly proportional to the arms in the concept art with the reaching arm foreshortened. Apart from that I feel the ears may be easier to handle if moved down as suggested, if left as they are of course you'll have to fix some lines with shading.

As for my own observations:

It looks like the face is tilted quite a bit away from the viewer judging from the eye position. The nose is too straight on for this. A single pixel adjustment helps a lot and shows the bump as a snout rather than a cheek.

The eyebrows being so far up gives an expression of surprise. Lowering them a bit makes the sprite's gase more focused and determined. Of course if the higher browed cuter look is your intention feel free to disregard.

I'm not sure if the pixels below the mouth signify a tooth or a mouth. It should be widened if it's a mouth and if it's a tooth it appears too near the center of the mouth causing it to seem bucktoothed. Shifting it two pixels to the right fixes that problem and makes it the more cheeky tooth grin.

The fluff on the chest is pretty flat, not sure if you were leaving this for later or not but make sure to have the head framed with this. It's one of the most unique features of this design in my opinion.

Finally you have plenty room to make the main body rounder and fluff up the back of the neck, body and under the arms (depending on how much detail you're going for).

So far it looks potentially like the most balanced and professional sprite of the bunch. I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[wekhter]

Thanks for suggestions, guys. I tried to take all the suggestions into consideration as I made changes. The only thing I didn't do was make the arms longer, because I think they're proportionate as they are.

->

A lot of changes in the face. I made the head a little shorter, and altered a lot of the features. The ears are farther down and the left side of the head is a bit rounder. The eyebrows are also lower and the nose changed a bit. The mouth was originally an open mouth (Wyverii was asking) but i made it wider and added in a tooth (wasn't there originally because I was still in b/w stage and it would have just looked like a hole in the outline). I also changed the eyes quite a bit and got the feet to where I wanted them.

As Wyverii guessed, I was leaving the chest fluff 'till later, and still am. Shading fluff tends to alter the outlines a lot, so I didn't put much work into them at the lineart stage. Now that it's mostly colored, I'm going to go back in and do the fluff and also the arms. I didn't want to do the fluff until most everything was colored in, so that I could try to keep it balanced. :> But I want to post the sprite at this point, so that you guys can gauge how successful the changes to the face are.

 

[Attract]

Hey wyverii, just because we've posted our final sub doesn't mean we can't change it. I'd still like to hear input on mine if you have any.

Well, wekhter certainly added some more legitimacy to this contest, considering this is most of our first sprites. I really do like the shading and pose. The legs are also well done. I don't know if you're willing to change the size of the foot claws, but they seem bigger in the art. In fact, most of the digits are quite small. Other than that it's already amazing. Funny how you went for the red eyes.

 

[paintseagull]

*many swear words*

backsprite making me want to die

help appreciated!

 

[kingdra22]

Ice-cold Claws seems to have the best concept going. I say he has my vote.

 

[worcestershire]

Well, I suppose I'll toss in my two cents.
@wekhter: very nice sprite. But why does it have no fingers on the right paw? Might just be a perspective thing. Also the ears seem kinda...tall, I guess. Maybe try rounding them off or lowering them a bit. But that's a matter of opinion really.
@paintseagull: nitpicking here, but the right foot of the front sprite lookskind of wierd. Maybe try filling in that indentation in the top. Also, the face on the backsprite looks a little squished. Your head on the front sprite is more elongated. maybe try stretching it out a bit, or just showing the top of the head.

 

[Steampowered]

hi everyone

just like Attract I will accept crits even though I've already fot my final submission up

good job to all the other spriters, your sprites look really good
I look forward to facing you all in the polls

 

[Steampowered]

one quick update

I know that my final submission is already in but I want your guys' comments about this. I changes the front fluff on Scratchet's chest on the top left sprite

compare it to the bottom left sprite and tell me if you guys think the new one is better or not

C&C... kind of

 

[jas61292]

The top left definitely looks more... fluffy. I think it is better like that.

 

[Kyuzeth]

Steam, the new fluff looks better.

 

[paintseagull]

I'm keepin' at it

Gotta fix the colours on his left arm on the backsprite.. not sure what else to do though. His eggy shape and strange arms makes perspective very difficult in pixel space. Suggestions appreciated muchly.

 

[Griffen78]

The eyes look weird, but otherwise I like it.

 

[Exo329]

Hi guys - I know it's a bit late in the contest but I threw together a sprite for CAP 1 pre-evo:

I was going to make the mohawk larger for the male version (so long as Ice is okay with that - it's a pretty awesome idea :D)
C&C welcome (if there's still time for it :S)

 

[Hailblue]

Exo,
The arms look a little thick, and the feet a little skinny. Also for the face you can make the eye not as big and increase the cheek on the right side (the face looks a little crowded).
Hope it helps.

 

[zyrefredric]

i'm liking Attract's and painseagull's submissions as of now. ^^

Quick Question: (which I posted in simple questions thread, but didn't get a reply I was satisfied with, might as well ask here)

When you make sprites (like for submissions in CAP), do you use MS Paint? exclusively? or another program entirely (like photoshop)?

 

[Steampowered]

When you make sprites (like for submissions in CAP), do you use MS Paint? exclusively? or another program entirely (like photoshop)?

I personally use Corel Photo Paint (don't know why)

 

[Attract]

paint.NET is the program I use. It has auto-transparency and layers if you need. For spriting its probably as good or better than Photoshop just because its free.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Alright guys. I'm giving you a 24 hour warning before I close this and put it to poll! You've had a lot of time to get this all ready, and the movepool stage of the pre-evo process just finished. That means you have roughly 24 hours from this post to finalize everything. Good luck!

 

[paintseagull]

Another update! Almost done, I changed his right arm, before it was sitting too far back on his body. And some other stuff. I might fiddle with his spots again when I make the shiny backsprite. Right now my plan is to use the teal one.

 

[wekhter]

Woop woop last minute spriting again! Ah well, I guess that's how I like it.

Backsprite outta nowhere! Still got some tweaking to do, mostly on the hands. As worcestershire noted, it didn't have fingers before (that's what I meant about going back to do the arms) so... there they are! Not the best, and there's some kinda awful optical illusion going on with them, but I suppose I still have a little more time to think about it. :x

@Attract: I made his footclaws that size because I was thinking of him at about the scale of Charmander, who's got about the same size claws.

@paintseagull: I really like it! The only one thing is that I think the left back leg in the backsprite has a very sharp corner. That's all. Lookin' forward to your shiny!

@zyrefredric: I used MSPaint for this sprite, aside from the original sketch (done in Flash) and resizing the original sketch (in Photoshop). Paint's my favorite program for spriting. Layers are for sissies! Haha ok, that's a lie, I love layers, but I've been using Paint for so long that I don't really care for layers when I'm doing pixel art. It... actually tends to mess me up when I try using them.

Anyway, I think there's something rotting in my sink, so I'm going to go take care of that before finishing up these sprites, and hopefully if anyone has something to say about them they'll say it before I get back.

 

[paintseagull]

Final Submission

Final Submission

Woo! Here are my scratchet sprites. In this pose he's trying to be as big and mean as he can by spreading his arms out wide, showing he's ready for a fight. I also like how this shows off his eggy roundness. His shiny colours are teal and light orange, because that teal goes so nicely with the purple (slightly different purple than the normal version) of his spots!

The male/female difference is in the spots on his back, since those are supposed to foreshadow the eye spots on Tomohawk's faux-hawk :) So the female's are a bit smaller and there are less of them. This difference is only slightly visible in the front sprite - the male has a hint of a spot near his tail, while the female doesn't.

Thanks everyone for the help and I hope you like these! And good luck other spriters it is awesome to see my design all spritified in so many ways and styles!

edit: oh yeah, zyrefredric: I used Photoshop, because it's what I use for everything, but it's kind of bloated for spriting I think.

 

[zyrefredric]

@wekhter
Thanks for the reply. I'm happy that it is possible (and valid) to use MSPaint to make the sprites. I've been practicing with it and hopefully sometime in the future I'd be able to make submissions of my own. A question though: How do you make the background transparent? Is it possible with MSPaint? That's the only thing I can't seem to figure out.