Boy sprite, girl sprite

[Ozwalled]

Here's a sprite I made of a young boy.  For the keen observer, he's based on a Nintendo character.



Comments and criticism are welcome.

ALSO, I've been really struggling with drawing up female characters. Here's one that I'm not altogether pleased with, but it's about the best I've been able to come up with so far. Any suggestions as to how to make the girl more feminine (EDIT: more girly cute, is what I'm trying to say, I guess), but still look like a kid, would be very much appreciated.



I'm looking for a general body type for young, thin female characters in the game, essentially, and I'm having trouble progressing in that area. Hope someone can offer some help.

[Gilbert]

MOTHER!

I think they're more like the DOTT style now, nice work.
In my opinion the colours are a bit dull, which contradicts to the happy/kiddy looks of MOTHER (and DOTT) characters (especially the boy), I'll suggestion lighten up the colours.

[Ozwalled]

Yeah, MOTHER. More specifically, MOTHER 2.

I'm sort of using the original clay models (http://starmen.net/mother2/images/clay/) combined with the game's sprites as reference, and never even considered DOTT as inspiration (though I can see it now that you mention it). Considering I'm no artist, though, progress is slow, as mentionned.

And what about the boy? Better in terms of colour? Or should I just brighten his clothes and leave the skin tones alone?

[Gilbert]

I think it'd be better if you brighten his skin tones as well.
The picture was taken with bad illuminations, I'd seen the model photos from magazines years ago, they're actually not supposed to be that dark.
I'll say just spoit the colours from the game sprites and the brightness would be more faithful then.

[Ozwalled]

Yeah, I know those are badly lit pics I referenced to ya' -- I have better versions at my disposal. I am trying to use a lot of the original game's palette for a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of stuff that just didn't look quite right that way.

Here's a quick example (without oulines being fixed or shading):

Brighter, but sort of too gaudy, maybe? What do you think? I'm thinking the SNES colours worked well on this character partly due to its small size.

Compare that with a more modern version of the character, from Super Smash Brothers (Melee?):



Anyway, I do see that there should be some brightening, though. I'll keep playing around.

[Takara]

I think he looks a lot better like that!  Except his hat and shoes are now pink.  I don't think a little boy would approve of pink... I'd suggest getting those back to the nice red colour you had on your second pic

Takara.

[Ozwalled]

Fair enough. I'll keep those colouring suggestions in mind... Actually, what I might just do is literally take it partway -- overloy them and make one of them partially transparent... Yeah, that's the ticket...

Anyway, I'm still wondering if anyone has any wisdom to offer to give the girl a better, cuter look. As I said, I'm not altogether happy with her, and want to more or less use her final version as a sort of template for other cute-as-a-button, skinny girls in the game. Any quick paint-overs to show basic head and body proportions.

[DragonRose]

I took a shot at painting over the little girl. It was mostly just some minor changes.



Mine is left, yours is right.

First, I lowered the ears a smidgen. This gives her a higher forehead- most little kids seem to have big heads, and this is part of why.

Next, I raised her waist line by a couple of pixels. Kids have short torsos. I also straightened out the torso a bit. The curves were making her look more like an early adolescent than a child.

Last, I shortened and puffed out her sleeves, but that was just a personal preference. Every dress I had as a little girl had short, puffy sleeves, so it just seems right to me.

[Ozwalled]

Thank you -- that's  a big improvement already. You have NO idea how many times I tried making her torso straighter WITHOUT being able to get her look "right". Maybe it was the way I wanted the "skirt" part of the thing to be straighter all the time?... Anyway, it's looking a lot better.

So now back to the boy -- here's the latest for his colouring.



Would y' say it's at a happy medium beteen the old and the new?