WONDERPUP'S PROFILE

Okay, I'm trying to plug away at these sprites, and I'm not having too much luck when it comes to coloring them properly. Practice will make (nearer) perfect, and I was wondering what I should do to improve on these. As they are now, the ahriman and ogre are particularly bad.

Slime
I posted this one in the "Whatchu workin' on" thread, and SorceressKyrsty was kind enough to edit it and give me some tips. The second one here is the one I submitted to the thread, with the third being the one Kyrsty fixed. I made some adjustments to that and ended up with the fourth. I feel I may have made it worse than hers, though.



Sample animation frames for slime:


Ahriman
Here is where it starts to go downhill rapidly. I don't find too much issue with the initial outline, really. In the end, it will have a shadow beneath it, and the wings will flutter when animated as he hovers. When I add color, though, it makes him look like a creepy play-doh character. What am I doing wrong here? How do you do fleshy tones with a light source? The third sprite here has had the lighting source dampened some to make it less grotesque, and I rounded its head/back more.



Sample animation frames for ahriman:


Ogre
I haven't really tried to finalize the coloring on this one, because I can't get the color of his skin correct when shaded. I guess it's the problem I'm having with the ahriman carrying over to here. His hair, horns, and...everything...look terrible. That's supposed to be a caveman-type tunic on him, but he looks more like a voluptuous woman than anything else.



Sample animation frames for ogre:



And for reference, here is the concept drawing I had posted before:



Wild boy:


Sample animation frames:


Wild boy concept drawing (which was heavily strayed from):



I don't find too much fault with the outlined drawings, really. It's the calamity that happens when coloring comes into play. If anyone is willing to critique what is going on here, I would appreciate it.

I know it may be a faux pas to post a new thread for what I'm working on, but I'd like to just use this thread over and over to bring up my sprites. "Whatchu workin' on" just didn't seem to be the appropriate place to keep posting these.

Thanks!

I have made adjustments to the slime's sprite, keeping a fair amount of SorceressKyrsty's suggestions intact. A lot of the lighting she suggested pointed out some of the flaws in my original design, and I've made a few changes to fix it.



Next, I have a dispassionate/apathetic ahriman. I'm not asking anyone to touch this one up, but how would you color it properly? More stippling? I imagine his coloring to look something like a turkey's skin once you take it out of the oven, almost. Maybe a little more grey. I am including the basic outline to give you all a better idea as to how he is supposed to look (I somehow lost the shape as I colored him). As it stands right now, he looks terrible, and I would really appreciate a critique.



When it is all said and done and I animate this, I will have to make its height taller than 32 (so that I can have him hover and cast a shadow beneath him). Will this cause much of a problem where I need to make custom chipsets for doors?

My last character will be an ogre (the same as in the concept sketch a few posts above). When I make him, he will tower above 32x32, so the ahriman's perceived problem will carry over to the ogre.

I thought I might try spriting, and I feel like I'm doing it wrong. This is the first sprite I've tried to create, and I would appreciate it if someone could critique what I have so far and point out what would make it better.

The character is a green slime. I really like the one in the RTP for RM2K3, but I want to do my own design. What I have come up with feels a bit "off". I have also included one of my early concept sketches that he is (that picture is of poor quality, though).

Sorry for how small it is, too. It's 32x32.

What are the standard dimensions for characters and tiles?

I ended up downloading Character Maker 1999 and Paint.net. I'll give those two a try. Hopefully, they'll be everything that I need to get things done.