What's up R3,

I've decided I needed to learn how to sprite as I need to help out with my team members in the spiting department of my game to get this process finished faster. Besides I always thought I needed some other skill set beyond scripting, and I think spriting will be the one. I've read up on a couple of Holder's tutorials and they were really helpful. Now, after practicing for a while this weekend, I've become pretty comfortable with Graphics Gale and can now make a decent outline of a RPG Maker sized male character:

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How does this sprite look as of now (outline-wise). As you can see I attempted to shade a little bit and that's the next step I believe I need to learn. Im pretty comfortable with making an outline, but now I'm trying to learn how to shade properly. Then after that I guess I could move into hair, clothes, etc.

But as of now, any suggestions on how to shade? I tried mimicking other good sprites around in this site's gallery, but I'm not to good at observational learning. So any comments would be appreciated!

That's a really awesome base to start with! I'm totally digging that outline! (though I'm not so much a fan of large heads, but that's just my extremely biased opinion which shouldn't matter towards things that are ingrained in society like the tendency to draw heads much larger than they usually appear.)

Shading is often one of the harder aspects of spriting but very beneficial when you can apply it well. An important thing to ask yourself when shading is "where would the light hit?" For that specific sprite right there, the answer would be: "the shoulders, the outward halves of the arms, most of the right hand, the upper chest area, and the top of the feet."
This is based upon the assumption that the light source is straight above, which is implied by the highlight on the forehead.

Also, shading gets easier when you get to work in smaller areas. Try adding a bunch of little details like straps, pockets, and other things like that to clothing to section off small spaces for easier shading. When zoomed in on a sprite, you may forget what sort of impact the shading has done so make it a habit to zoom out to see the resulted textures and shapes resulted from your shading.

Another thing, don't forget about how many shades are allowed within the sprite style that you are doing. Consistency in resources gives a really firm boost of polish to any work.

Isn’t Jello just one big walking head? :x
But, I agree with everything, especially about keeping the consistency. I thought I’d just pop in to suggest the “preview” window since you're working with Graphics Gale. It lets you see a nice zoomed out version even if you’re working in detail.

@shinyjiggly: Thanks as for the heads lol, I kinda just learned it from Holder's tutorials like that plus my constant exposure to how the heads are in RM xD And thanks for the advice on shading, that makes a lot of sense. Basically, you determine where you want your light source to be and visualize from there how the shading should be based on that.

Also, as for the shade limit, I'm trying to get used to that by creating a pallet and using that throughout the sprite. Is that what you mean? And also, what you do suggest for learning how to sprite clothes?


@Knot: Thanks a bunch! I didn't realize there was a Preview Window! That really helps


EDIT: Alright, tried spriting some more tonight and I failed miserable when it came shading once more lol xD so I tried another stance and started shading but I have no clue where to go, would someone mind taking this sprite and shading so I can get an understanding on where to shade:

Yeah, the palette thing should work very well for keeping track of which colors to be using. As for a jigglypuff being one huge head, I didn't design that pokemon and apparently that is what is considered anatomically correct for a jigglypuff. I was more talking about people on the overworld and how many artists choose to render their heads larger than usual. It's nothing really.
I added the shading to your guy and then added some clothes to give you a nice example. Turns out that the head wasn't so big after I put hair on top of it. Top-down perspective can really mess with your perception of things.

it definitely is only a medium-quality shading and clothes job (the pants shading is terribly off...), but it should be good enough to get the point across. When clothing your naked sprites, remember that unless they're supposed to be wearing particularly skintight clothing, make the clothes' outline go past the main outline. And if your drawing program lets you use layers, use them. I put all of my clothing items on the same layer because they don't really overlap too much.

What I'd like you to do is try to shade and clothe your guy using my example as a guide. Notice the differences and similarities in the two and feel free to experiment with things like poofy pants, different hair styles, armor, assorted accessories, and maybe even fancy capes! And in the particular color scheme that went with, don't be afraid to have harshly contrasting shades. You can see a good example of this with the hair.

Woah those look amazing, thanks a bunch! These will really help me in learning how to shade/sprite clothes! Using them as a guide, I tried my best to make some of my own, one with shading, and then I progressed to add pants:



I know they're not all that great, but still, what do you think about them?

That looks really good, though I'd have to say that the lighting on the abdomen seems misplaced.
If the light is caught by his chest, then there shouldn't be all that much on his abdomen; unless his stomach is rather large (but his body appears to be fairly lean).
With the light coming from the top, it doesn't seem to be lighting the correct area (the only lighting error I can see right off is the stomach/abdomen area - but the rest looks great). =]

Thanks XMO! And I see what you're saying about the abdomen, I just saw that when I was doing it, the abdomen looked pretty "empty" so I thought that meant I needed to add some shading lol So I'll correct that up, thanks