Style and Shading Development

[GrooveMan.exe]

I figure it's not something worth putting in Sprite Discussion, since I'm not trying to produced a finished product, but I'm working on a spriting style for a project.


Pay no attention to the sprite itself, it's more about the use of colours and shading; I just chose a random large-ish sprite to practice on.

In brainstorming with someone else, we decided the style should have the following
- Desaturated colours
- Hue Shifting
- A method of shading that uses a dark colour to 'block out' things that are in shadow
- Outlined sprites (selective outlining in situations where it's appropriate)
- 4 shades per colour, with once colour being the shadow/outline colour

I felt that what I've come up with works, but I'm concerned about whether using a colour that's not black as the shadow will work every time, how I should go about developing a palette for this style, and how to go about doing highlights. The 'square' highlights that I've seen 1up use work well, and make her lycra suit look shiny - but that's probably not going to work out for other materials.

[dragon_knight]

Shadow - Yes I think it will though u may need to use black occasionally
Palette - erm....choose the four shades of each colour, make a square of each then copy to a document.....I dno sorry.
Highlights - square should work if used in the correct manner.

Your sprites are actually pretty cool. I think the gloves are a bit dull in the complete ones though

[GrooveMan.exe]

Nono, the whole point is either to use black for the shadow, or not al all. It's kind of half-hearted to have a little bit of black.
When I mean palette creation, I'm talking about the mathematical hue/sat/lum patterns to make a set of colours. A lot of palettes go by very specific value rules, and if I can figure out the rules to make a palette for one colour, I can easily apply it to others. For that image I cheapened out, and just used colours from some Nippon Ichi sprites.
As for the square highlights, "correct manner" is kinda vague and not too useful.

I should probably pm tyvon or 1up about this, they're already used to some aspects of this style.

[Alpha Six]

The squares seem a bit too light, and a teeny bit misplaced as well. Square highlights also shouldn't be any bigger than the usual 4 pixels, anything bigger looks odd.

Everything else seems pretty solid though. Like I said on MSN, my thinking's a bit on the fucked side so I might have more to say later.

[GrooveMan.exe]

Right, I'll make a note of that - thanks. =D