Sprites the Second

[Frosty Voltorb]

Well, the last thread I had opened died due to no posts, so hopefully this one garners some more critique than the last.

Fusions
The second Darkrai/Gliscor/Sazondara concept goes to my friend Darkness Master. And the Pikachu/Axew concepts go to Pika22.


Retypes


Scratch Sprites/ Fakemon
Earliest works of mine.


Scratch Sprites/ Fakemon
Most recent works. The first three were done in collab with ReaperNeku for one of the WSC's. Many of these concepts were used for a failed region on here, so credit goes to the users there.


So, there we go. Hope you all like them, and remember: Critique is wanted.

[Bert]

Your fusions are amazing FV, I love the way you try to scratch on patterns rather than copying whole body parts, and the ideas are all pretty good too. However, I think that on most of them the color scheme could use a little creativity, sometimes it seems like you're scared to try something new regarding coloration. An example is the Salamence, I think it'd look awesome with black fur but keeping the red wings. Just my $0.02

The retypes are pretty much great, the Galade one is very well done with the reshaded steel. The least good is Serperior imo as he's basically a promoted recolor and the outline on the neck flame transitions a little abruptly.

The earliest work is obviously bad and very flat, and I guess they're just there so we can see your advancement, which is amazing (How long have you been spriting btw?) and I do think a lot of these ideas deserve another try .

The newest scratches are better than anything I could come up with but they also suffer from the abrupt transition syndrome on the outline.

I know this isn't the best c&c but I'm on my mobile atm which makes it rather hard, I'll promise to go more in-depth next time! Good job

[Frosty Voltorb]

Thanks you, Bert. Fusions are my bread and butter, they've been some of the earliest types of sprites I've done. Coloration tends to keep too one of the pokemon, seeing as that's how I first learned. But taking some steps out of that comfort zone are in the future.

The Fiery Serperior was my first retype, and I see what you mean about that abrupt change.

Yes, I placed my early work here to show the progress I've made. XD I've been spriting for about a year, and many of these sprites will get a revamp or two. The newest scratches are still in my learning phase, so I'm still going to try to get the lining down. Shading is where I focused the most, so I'll switch that up.

Thanks for the crit, Bert.

[Bert]

Alright, time for in-depth C&C. Mainly on the fusions, as those are what I'm best at too and it's no use C&C'ing something I suck at myself.

On your first row the one that stands out is definitely the Deoxys/Wailmer, which looks fantastic (a real juggernaut kind of thing). Keeping the mouth was also a genius move.
The Giratina fusions tickle my interest because even though you did a really good job on the head the rest of it doesn't always look as good. On Giratina/Entei/Kyogre per example the lower body is too slender to much with his imposing upper body. To make it even worse the red lines on the back are terribly misplaced and should just be removed if you ask me. Also, I don't know if they changed it in BW but in DPPt the outline on Giratina's wings wasn't black so to me - I'm not used to 5th-gen at all yet - the black outline looks odd. Especially on the Hydreigon's wings I feel like Giratina's wings are designed to be chaotic and out of order, like a void, but giving them an outline to "define" them, especially with a smooth outline like that, defeats that purpose. Just my opinion. On the Flygon/what'sthatuglything'snameagain? I have to say that, while it looks cool and imposing, it isn't your credit. I can tell that this one was a five minute-job where you picked an already cool-looking sprite, basically recolored it and changed the tail then were done with it. It sure does look cool but again it's more due to the intrinsic quality of the base sprites than to your creativity.

On the second row there are some really bad sprites. Skarmory/Meganium is an ugly little biatch and the Zekrom/Manectric looks horrible as well (especially the color scheme triggers a 'wtf?' reaction in my head). It's probably because most of your other work is so good, because if I'm honest I know that if another spriter made that I'd be okay with it, so don't take this too personal. The cokeldurr/blastoise on the other hand is amazing and it's a terrific job how you managed to fit the bazookas in without making it look too cramped. Also keeping the nose on the face was a smart thing to do, which gives this sprite a lot more personality than I'd thought any conkeldurr/blastoise fusion could have. Salamence/Luxray on the other hand has the same problem that Giratina/Entei has, proportions. Its face looks stupidly big for it's slender body so you could try making that more muscular and as I stated in my previous post you should experiment with colors some more . The Seaturtle/Corsola looks absolutely amazing though! Brilliant idea!

On the third row the Zeilous/crocodile thing looks like a horrid C/P job as well, and the Breloom next to it has an all wrong outline on the face. Most of the others are okay, and although it probably wasn't a lot of work the Kingdra looks amazing! Weavile/Giratina is probably the best one on this row, and it seems that you excell particularly at having lots of body parts in a sprite without making it look too messy. Personally I'd never have thought of leaving Weavile's hat/hair/thing on, but you did and it looks amazing! This is really the thing that sets you apart from other spriters. I'd turn the little part of its forehead that's left into a part of that hair thing though, since it looks a bit out of place in between the awesome Giratina crown and the awesome Weavile gown (nice rhyme, eh, came up with that myself I should be a rapper ) so I'd extent it a bit and make the forehead disappear completely . Just my opinion (like this whole post, tbh).

Well, that's it for fusions, and you know my position on retypes (promoted recolors imo) and the first work is pretty obviously not ready for C&C.

On to your scratches, then, which I'll discuss briefly. I'l start by saying that the designs are solid; they're creative, original, but not over the top, which is a great thing and you got that balance all right. Anyway, the spriting work is done well too, but as you said yourself your shapes could be a bit smoother in some places (mostly this applies to your curved body parts like tails and arms .. ) and here and there the outline is terrible. The blue water thing with the claws per example is horrendous, just compare the shading and outline on the left arm with the right and you'll see what I mean. It's by no means dynamically shaded and I think this one needs a lot of work (also the shape of the right arm needs work). The shell armor needs more and better placed black outline to define it more (notice that on official sprites hard materials like rock and shell are usually sprited with a darker outline compared to furs and skin with the same base color. This is because darker outline defines them more, making them seem more sturdy. Also different parts of a shell should be separately shaded, just as is the case with Onix's rock body, where each rock is shaded as a standalone body part. It's because the shell curve isn't 100% smooth therefor each of the compartments are reflecting light in a slightly different angle.

The tree pokemon also has some problem with the shading on the legs (the left one has a different light source compared to the right one) but it's not as obvious, however the outline seems to be colored a bit randomly, and I think you just put black here and there to make it look more detailed. However you should keep shading rules in mind when coloring outline so the darker parts should have darker outlines and vice versa. This is especially noticeable on the upper mouth where the left part got the darkest outline despite the light-source obviously coming from the left. The hair is a bit confusing, it seems to lack black outline but I have a hunch that they're meant to be flames. If so, keep the outline but try to make it look a bit more flamey, if you can.

In regards to this also look at the purple bird with the hat, where the black outline is placed on the part of its hat which collects the most light, which is absurd.

That's it for now. Please don't think I'm being too negative here, I already said I think your work is great overall but I'm trying to point out the flaws that I can see. I'm not the best spriter in the world either, but after all this the point is that we try to help eachother become better, right? So for the last time to make you feel good on this Christmas day, I love your work. I just think you need to be a bit more disciplined and consistent and put just that extra bit of effort in your sprites to truly stand out.

I gave you this C&C, which admittedly is a wall of text, because I know you'll enjoy it and because I feel like as of late there's far too few constructive posts (or posts at all, actually) on here . I've only been back on here for about a month but could you inform me when this degradation of quality posts started? I think it may have something to do with the large amounts of stickies and types of threads which discourage individual showcases (I'm talking about the spriter's lounge and the WSC) but I don't know.

Anyway, I'm ranting and that doesn't belong in your thread I suppose, but I would like to hear your opinion about this.

P.S. here and there you have some transparancy issues, some loose white pixels so you should be a bit more careful on that with your future sprites.

[Frosty Voltorb]

This sort of attention to critique and feedback is exactly what I want! It's what will help me see these faults and simply give me the plans to excel in this field of art. Thank you, Bert. This is much appreciated.

Many of the fusions came from the Serebii Spriters Weekly Spriting Contest (back when this forum was alive. It began to die around the time the groups were disbanded, so a quite a while ago. It has been a bit of a resurgence in here, but the posts have no meat to them: simply being praise and sporadic number ratings. No analysis of the work.) Some (The Flygon/Haxorus) was done in five for practice. Same goes with the Skarmory/Bayleef.

The scratch sprites are were the lining is most off. Most of these come from revamping the earlier scratch sprites, so it was some recoloring in sections on older sprites. The hair is indeed fire, and it took quite the experimenting. I used many examples (Torterra's tree and some fire types) as I have with many of my scratch sprites. I try to mimic the lighting and outlines as close to similar sprites as possible, but I still have to practice on that (I do leave random black lines to make it seem more "official")

Once again, thank you for actually looking at the sprites. This was well appreciated.

[MissDigitalis]

The last 2 on the second row of the fusions look AWESOME! I love them. They look like they could be real Pokemon, to me at least.

[Frosty Voltorb]

Well, thank you MissDigitalis. Praise is always nice, but critique is what I'm striving for.
Anywho, here is a scratched revamp of my fakemon, Storumpy.



I am unhappy on how the arms came out. The fingers just look bleh (I think they aren't defined enough to be noticed.) But, what does everyone else think?

[Bert]

The main problem this little guy has is the outline. It's well-shaped, it has enough black, but the contrast between the black and the lighter outline is too heavy. In fact I'd only use that shade of outline for the truly highlighted parts and add an in-between shade of dark gray to cover most of its body, including the arms (this may also fix your problem with the undefined fingers). Maybe you could refer to Geodude for outline colors and Machop for how to apply them?

Also the shading on the belly needs to be a bit more rounded, especially at the part on its right side, just above the rock (?) skirt/thing. Ironically, I also think the contrast between your two main shades of body color is too light. Luckily, if you darken the darker shade you're also pretty much forced to darken the outline (otherwise they'd be the same color, removing the outline) which means you get to catch two birds with one stone.

On to the good news though, I really think you shaded its skirt (I don't know the English word for it, forgive me) exceptionally well, although a little more black outline wouldn't hurt him here (maybe some for the hat, too) and I think that with a minimum of added effort (see above, I doubt fixing him will take long) will make this little guy a really really really nice sprite.

Hey, you also get bonus points for having an awesome spriter's spirit (preferring critique over praise), way to go!

[Frosty Voltorb]

I see what you mean on the shading. I referenced Crocnaw and Pignite for the shading, and Machoke for the hands and the lining. Oh, and it's based on storm clouds )Storumpy= Storm+Grumpy) so the skirt is supposed to look cloud like. I'll return to this guy to fix these problems up, thanks for the advice.

And praise makes meh feel good, but critique make my sprites better.

[Electricbluewolf]

Ohh, a name I recognize.

I would say your latest fuses are rather good- the Axew x Pikachu is a nice combo, and the Hax x Flygon works as well. I few caught my eye for improvement though:

Serperior x Manetric- Seems to have odd little pixels of white on his face. This sometimes happens when making the background transparent though.

Skamory x Meganium- This one to me is too big- the neck also has a small chunk out of it on the right side. I woudl try Meganium's features on Skarmory. The shading is good on this one though.

Shaymin fire re-type - I like your idea of the antlers being on fire- but from here you've used the cyndaquil evo color scheme. I would try to experiment with your own "fire type" color scheme. Also, the antlers seems to close to the head, making the head looking a little bit squashed.

I diffidently think that your new scratches are good- you've gotten shading down to an art. However the last one on the fourth row looks odd, and not pokemon like at all. The black band across the knees makes it's legs look thin, and the red and white frill looks odd (I presume this was a Christmas entry?)

The little blue elephant on the last row needs some outline work done, but otherwise these are really good-
keep up the good work c:

[Frosty Voltorb]

The scratch sprite (Mantiest) came from a failed region project on this forum that I helped redesign. It was a concept of a praying mantis with a priest, thus the look. I agree that it doesn't look according to the "Pokemon" style, but I was trying to keep it as close as the members original sprite looked. Thanks, Electricbluewolf.

Now, some new work. I've reworked Storumpy again, getting the fist where I want it. Although I'm a tad bit iffy on the shading, as Bert pointed out. And also, a quick fusion of Giratina and Swampert. The mask is 100% scratch.

[Bert]

Woops, kinda lost track of this one. Sorry, exams and all that ^_^"

I'd say it looks better, but if it's meant to be cloudy I think dark grey isn't really the color to go for. I know grey clouds exist but they're very hard to sprite without making them look like rocks. Just my opinion, of course.

That new Swampert/Giratina fusion is looking pretty badass. I like how you kept Swampert's eyes with the (beautifully) scratched crown. However I think it could do with some more Giratina elements, besides the colors and the crown. I couldn't tell you which or where exactly, though.

Great job :-) Please give us all some more!

[Frosty Voltorb]

Thanks for that. It's intended to appear like a stormy cloud (hence the name and coloring.)
And I was thinking of adding a little more to the fusion, but was at a loss as to what.


Revamp of an old sprite, it's the alternate evo for Stormeanie.

[Bert]

It's definitely got that cloudy feel and the shading is a huge improvement compared to the original sprite. However, I think the right arm's finger is too dark, it's a bit of overkill and I think the regular darker shade of blue you used on the lower part of the arm would have worked there. Again, very little black outline to be seen here, but with this one it kinda works, being a cloud and all that. I like this one more than the other one, simply because its design is less confusing.

On a final note, don't be afraid to bump if you've got new material after like 24h, it's apparantly allowed and you shouldn't wait for replies if you got more to show off. You also avoid people like me accidentally forgetting about it .

[Frosty Voltorb]

I see what you mean about the shading being too dark. I'll most likely go back and rework the shading/lining.

And I didn't know about that rule beforehand. Now, I'll have no hesitance in showcasing the work I have.

[Frosty Voltorb]

Gosh, how long has it been since I was last here? Well, after what seems like a lifetime, I have some new sprites and ideas in the works. For now, I wish to present my latest one: Mumeow.

I am unhappy with the tail, and other than that, I am looking for any other faults there may be.

[cooloolcool]

This are super cool! Are people aloud to use them in sigs?

[Frosty Voltorb]

Sorry cooloolcool, but that would be considered theft. You can look in any request forum for a sprite or any other sort of media for your signature, or discuss it with me privately, but don't go and steal something from here.

[Bert]

I kinda like the idea of a mummified cat (obviously partly because cats played a big part in Ancient Egypt's religious life etc...) so design-wise all's well. I have a couple of remarks about the execution, though. First and foremost, I think the sprite is a bit on the small side. Especially since BW were released I think sprites like these are almost unacceptably small. That's pretty frustrating since there's no easy fix, so I can totally understand if you choose not to redo it because of that.
On the more technical side, I think you did a pretty lovely scratch job, especially keeping its size in mind, but I'd shade the linen straps just a little more individually as to emphasize they are, in fact, linen straps and not just fur-patterns.
Also the eye needs more depth (tbh making the whole sprite larger would probably make it easier to work on details like the eyes) and I think it needs to show at least a portion of its other eye, in its current pose at least.
Lastly, the pink thing (a jewel?) should be a bit more detailed as well, but other than all these tiny little remarks I think this is a fine sprite and a job well done. I have no idea why you don't like the tail as it looks totally fine to me.

Glad you're back in business!

[Frosty Voltorb]

I see what you mean about the size. When I start scratch spriting, I make a 96x96 box, seeing as how those are the size limits for sprites. From there, I sprite within the box to make sure I keep it to the limit. But I think making this one a little bigger would be okay.

The bandages were a bit tough to finish, and I think I can go back and fix the shading. And the single eye was sort of how the design was supposed to go, with the other being under the strips. And I'm thinking of removing the jewel all together, really.

Thanks for the input, Bert. It's great being back.