[Theme Thread] CVS Sprite thread

[Dominic Maraschiello]

My retry of Troy

His head looks tall. I make that distinction because while the head seems to be too tall, it is actually just as tall as Ryu's is. Nonetheless, it looks too tall. Consider shrinking it down anyway.

A good way to practice cvs style is to copy palettes. In your case, I would copy the skin palette from another cvs character that has similar muscle definition to the character you are making. The reason you should pick someone with similar muscle definition is because muscles themselves create shadow on the limbs they are connected to. More muscular characters have more skin shades to imply the pits and falls of various muscle groups. Another reason is that you'll be able to get a general idea of how to shade certain muscle groups by looking at the sprite you got the palette from. Take my incomplete Feng sprite, for instance. That skin palette is infact, Ryu's. And from looking at how Ryu's sprite uses these colors to highlight and define his muscle groups, I was able to make good judgements and highlight and define Feng's muscle groups. As a side note, Feng and Ryu differ the most in their deltoid muscles. Feng has some weird shoulders!

Now, onto the torso. He's got a bit of a pot belly there! Part of the reason it looks that way is because of bad anatomy, and the other part is due to poor anti aliasing. I'll talk about the bad anatomy first.

While pectorals can take on any number of shapes (look at Feng Wei artwork. His look like man boobs!), yours just don't look like pecs. Because of the shading you used to outline where his pecs word be, they look like...well...man boobs! It looks like this character is supposed to be wearing a slightly baggy a-vest, right? These shirts are always tight around the upper chest area, so anything you do up there will look skin-tight when you do it on a sprite.



Here is an example of a character that wears a tight shirt. Do you see how the shadow basically defines the shape of the pectorals? Also, every A-shirt I've ever worn is tight all the way down to my waist. Look at how Yamazaki's shirt utilizes shading that implies the muscle groups underneath, but doesn't define them as much as a bare-chested would. That's what you should be aiming for. That will get rid of the pot-belliedness, and help define where his waist actually is, so his legs will seem longer. Also, keep in mind that the lightsource in cvs sprites is directly above the character. Because you have the highlight shade going so far down, it looks like his stomach is protruding out far enough to be catching the light!

Now, onto the subject of anti aliasing. The whole point of anti-aliasing is to blend colors into one another. It's hard to describe this concept without a picture, but I don't have time to do that so I'll do the best I can.

What you have done is called "pillow shading". Basically you have taken one color, placed it next to another, and outlined (or traced, both words could be used) the entire resulting edge with the shade inbetween. This is a no no! You are only to place this "in between" shade at areas where this jagged line created by placing these two colors together is noticeable.

(I know. Didnt I say I didn't have time to do this? Oh well )

This should explain it fairly well for you. Obviously, you have alot more shades to work with, and you have to deal with curves and completely different colors intersecting. How you deal with that is something you'll have to learn on your own.

Good luck!

@Jp many of the things I just said apply to you too, but your character isn't even human so alot of what I said doesn't apply too. Just work on your anti-aliasing and you'll be alright. Awesome job so far!

Thanks for the help. i will retry the sprite right now.

EDIT:

How is it now?

[Jdplayer]

Here's the updated version. Thanks for the feedback guys.

[Kaze Masamune]

Hehe. You took Yamazaki's belt didn't you! Still, it looks great, and it defines where his waist is, so now his legs don't look too long. I'd rework the lighting on his pecs, though, for starters. Bring the light down two or three pixels, it looks like his pecs are not only small, but placed too far up on his chest.

A quick note on the head: The hairline is starting too far down. Bring it up by two or maybe three pixels. his hair looks like a helmet right now!

Also, his right shoulder (our left) bulges out too much. Carefully shave a few pixels off of it to make it more slender. While you're at it, and a line of pixels to the top of his left (our right) shoulder so that it's even with the other.

Finally, there's a part of his vest strap that goes over his shoulder, but it goes up too high. It looks like a weird bookbag strap of some kind! Its okay to make his vest straps skin-tight too. There isn't alot of distinction you can make with a sprite this small, so you can't afford to be picky!

As you can see, you mostly have anatomy issues now. Work on those, and then try to perfect the anti-aliasing like I showed you.

JP, do you have a hand drawn picture of the character you are spriting? I can help you better if I see what it is supposed to look like, what with it being so stylized.

[Dominic Maraschiello]

Hehe. You took Yamazaki's belt didn't you! Still, it looks great, and it defines where his waist is, so now his legs don't look too long. I'd rework the lighting on his pecs, though, for starters. Bring the light down two or three pixels, it looks like his pecs are not only small, but placed too far up on his chest.

A quick note on the head: The hairline is starting too far down. Bring it up by two or maybe three pixels. his hair looks like a helmet right now!

Also, his right shoulder (our left) bulges out too much. Carefully shave a few pixels off of it to make it more slender. While you're at it, and a line of pixels to the top of his left (our right) shoulder so that it's even with the other.

Finally, there's a part of his vest strap that goes over his shoulder, but it goes up too high. It looks like a weird bookbag strap of some kind! Its okay to make his vest straps skin-tight too. There isn't alot of distinction you can make with a sprite this small, so you can't afford to be picky!

As you can see, you mostly have anatomy issues now. Work on those, and then try to perfect the anti-aliasing like I showed you.

JP, do you have a hand drawn picture of the character you are spriting? I can help you better if I see what it is supposed to look like, what with it being so stylized.

Thanks for the Feedback. I appreciate it tons. Im going to improve it and make it better.

EDIT:

I did what you said

[The Aboriginal One]

Here's an update.



I just couldn't find a good reference of shoulder pads to feel confident enough to sprite them, yet, so I kept with the white shoulder pads from his original spriting.

[Garuda]

I always loved Dead Dance so much (and hated Tuff e Nuff)!

To me the biggest prob of your sprite are the pants and the shoes; they aren't like that in the original!

[DGO]

   
           Cyberblue                              Captain Commando                             Kagetsura                           Shishioh / King Lion

       Buletta / B.B.Hood                                  Poison                                       Athena                                     Xiang-Fei
   
               Demitri                                     Tabasa / Tessa                               Charlotte                                      Chris

[MDD]

First one has two different light sources on the legs. Second one's left hand (artist's right) looks really bad to me.

Other than that, not bad.

[DGO]

light sources: capcom's fault, i used cvs joe as a base... i doon't touched legs' light source
left hand: snk's fault, i made a copy and paste with the original kagetsura's hands
can i see your work?

[Randomish]

Cyberblue is genious.

[The Aboriginal One]

I suck at spriting...



I can't seem to get the two boots to look like they belong.

[Drex]

   
       Buletta / B.B.Hood                                    Athena

You should give B.B.Hood's legs darker shading since she's wearing a skirt. Athena and maybe Sarkura could get away with it since theirs are shorter and often lay flat against the legs, but Bulleta's skirt is way too big and puffy for the legs to be so well lit.

At least add a darker shade near the upper part of the legs.

[Jesuszilla]

I LOVE Cyber Blue and Bulleta! Glad to see you back!

[Enso]

The rest look very cuter. Most of em are well done made. I love em.

[Titiln]

I THINK those are amazing especially cyberblue.

isn't shishioh supposed to be gigantic, though? (considering his ngbc sprites)

[Hero]

Athena`s skirt shading is incorrect. CVS sprites are supposed to get the light from top, not front-top like KOF ones.

[Garuda]

Demitri is simply amazing, how much have you done with him?

[MDD]

I fucking love Demitri.

[the_mith]

The Demitri sprite looks pretty damn awesome!

[The Railgunner]

Agreed - if you're gonna make CvS Demitri, use THAT sprite as a base. Don't mess around with the SvC sprites, they'll come out looking screwy anyway.