Trying sprite art

[Piotyr]

I've always been fascinated by sprite art, and I enjoy programming sprite animated video games, so I thought I'd try my hand at learning to do my own sprite art (inspired most recently by Silver Jelly).

I thought I'd start really simple, 64x32 sprite dimension characters, as few colors as possible, and using a familiar character for reference. So, this took me about 30 minutes:

Longest thing for me was trying to get the proportions right, and I'm still not really happy with the hands/feet. I don't like having to waste a pixel all around for black, but otherwise the light colors blend into light backgrounds too well. I feel like I should add more definition to the clothing, but I also want to keep it simple to avoid it looking too busy. It's just 7 colors total, so maybe I could play with some alternate shades of clothing color to make it a bit better defined.

I figure since everybody else is doing art for February, and I've never drawn a thing until now, it'd be a good time to start. Criticize all you like, I want to get the hang of this kind of thing for my own projects.

 

[Jiarn]

Well if it helps, I was able to instantly distinguish who the character was and I've never seen a single episode of Avatar. You're definitely on the right path.

 

[Piotyr]

Fortunately for me, Aang is extremely unique and has instantly distinguishable characteristics. Going to try Sokka and Katara to see how well I can distinguish the two of them (the hair loopies are going to be challenging).

 

[Jiarn]

I think you should do sprite art of Halforum avatars. Yep.

 

[Hylian]

I think you should do sprite art of Halforum avatars. Yep.

↑

So very much this

 

[Silver Jelly]

It's very good, especially as a first sprite!

It's a good still sprite, but the real trick to learn spriting is doing spritesets that can be animated. It's the perfect way to learn what to simplify and how to organize the color areas to make them distinguishable (of course, with pre-existing characters, you have an extra difficulty, as you can't do a Super Mario and add a mustache, some overalls and a hat to avoid any problems you had.
Also, in general, I try to avoid (even if I don't always succeed) "pixel L" in the blach outlines, but sometimes they make the shape read a little differently, so they shouldn't always be avoided.

Also, I don't know Avatar, and I did recognize the character, wich is always good.

(This is what I meant for "L" pixels.

But, of course, what's important is that the sprite looks good, and I think the head is a good example of nice "L" pixels

 

[Piotyr]

Spent a good 45 minutes on a Katara sprite:

Still not too sure I got the proportions right, but I tried to make her look somewhat feminine.

 

[Jiarn]

Good sprite but there is something missing in the feminity.
Though I'm not sure what you could do to improve that.

 

[fade]

Ankles and feet, maybe? Narrow the shoulders? I think the trapezoid shaped shoulders might be coming across a little beefy.