HOW DO YOU DRAW YOUR PIXEL CHARACTER SPRITES?

OK I'ma give you way too much detail on this, since I come from a pro artist background and do pixel stuff as a hobby.

1) Research, research, research!

You're gonna want to study the poses themselves, plus you're gonna want to study other sprites of similar size and see how their artists pulled it off.

There's a lot of difference in how sprites can work: Early Final Fantasy sprites focused on the face over anything else, whereas sprites in Phantasy Star IV and Symphony of the Night focus on the entire body. The former tends to give a very cute, personable look, while the latter is a bit closer to realism, and allows a lot more room for movement.

You'll of course need a general idea of how the movement looks IRL (with the caveat that realistic movement looks much less cool than cinematic, dramatic movement). I like to look up videos on youtube of specific martial arts weapon strikes, go through them frame by frame, and just study how all the body parts work. You can also do the same kind of study of fight scenes in movies, if you want a more dramatic-looking approach. (Bear in mind that you won't have the benefit of camera angles to make it look extra cool!)

Since you're presumably working in RPG Maker, bear in mind that you'll have size and frame limitations, so things are going to need to err on the side of exaggerated poses and quick, simple actions. This is not a good format for subtlety, much to my dismay!

If you're really trying hard, you can also look up animation tutorials (especially pixel art sprite animation) to get some pointers. (Learning about Line of Action as a kid was a big revelation to me!)

2) Actually drawing the damn thing

During your research process, you should hopefully have chosen what kind of proportions you want to focus on (or else you're forced into certain proportions because of preexisting sprites). I find it helps to have a base reference handy, whether it's just whatever base sprite you're working from, a quick sketch of your proportions in stick figure form, or just simple blocks of color defining what parts are what size.

I always start out with a basic stick figure, so I can get the movement down quickly and easily. I draw the whole animation out, focusing on line of action and on movement only. I check the animation sequence and go back until I'm satisfied. (Which is something you should be doing often!)

After that, I go over each frame with pretty basic, blobby shapes to define the major parts of the body. Things like colors don't matter a whole lot at this stage- you're getting the silhouette down, first and foremost. I'll go back in and refine things down so all the shapes look about right, then get to the detail part.

Details are fairly simple at this point, since I'm starting with the structure. Two things you'll want to remember: 1) the more detail something has, the harder it is for your audience to follow; 2) it's a really effective technique to have some smear frames for the really big actions.

3) A final bit of advice

Don't fret too much about getting everything exactly right as a beginner. You're going to start out having really crap-looking stuff, and that's absolutely OK. It's all part of the learning process. Even the greats didn't start out with super-awesome work.

author=CorbanWolf
I was also thinking to myself "am I actually bad because I need a reference image and cannot use my imagination to imagine the pose that I need to draw?". Here I sent an imagine I referenced to and what I tried to accomplish. My main question was boiled into "Is using reference image making me a bad artist?".

Pretty much everyone at the pro level, and all the great masters, use reference. Anyone who thinks you should never use real life or photos to help you figure stuff out has no idea what they're talking about and can safely be ignored.

I'll address the rest of your post later, but yeah, use reference as often as you need. The whole "drawing from imagination" thing only works after you've used enough reference to memorize what certain stuff looks like.

If I were to critique the biggest flaw in one of the animations, it's that there's barely a line of action on the first pose and none at all in the actual attack pose. This ends up looking really stiff. The first pose is a good start but it helps for the final pose to have maybe an opposite curve to create a contrast. As long as your character isn't flat as a board, it's more than enough to make it feel dynamic.

The first pose I can't tell if that's the idle or the anticipation, in any case the swing trail shows it swinging at an angle that doesn't hook up well with the first pose. You have them swinging from overhead but swinging in a very awkward downward angle that looks like it was swung from the waist. It'd be easier to simplify (starting out) if the swing was entirely done in profile meaning you don't have to worry about perspective and it's completely sideview. If you can get the slash to resemble a clear crescent it'll be easier to show where the action came from.

You want the anticipation to let the viewer know the action is about to happen, then a follow through (and then an overlap if you're feeling fancy but don't worry about that).

To add on to what Sooz said the reason why you'd want to find real life reference is that the world is full of natural curves and circles. You need to bend a lot to create a lot of force. Even walking around in real life, just observe and look for interesting shapes.



There's way too much to go over but hopefully this touches the surface. But yeah look for references and do your best to transcribe the "feel" of the poses.