Fakemon In Need of Spriting Guidance For My Fakemon

[SuperHoopa]

I don't know if there's a better forum to post this on, but I am making a sprite for a Fakemon named Spirazuu.

I'm very new to making HD [In this case, 800x800] sprites on Paint.net, the image making software I use, but currently what I have done just looks like something from a low-budget kid's cartoon... If I could get tips from anyone on how to do proper shading or various optimistics to make the Fakemon sprite look like it belongs in an actual Pokemon game, it'd be much appreciated!

Here's a picture of what it looks like right now, and it's the third mascot for my Fakemon game Pokemon Brown & Pokemon Grey [May be subject to a name change later if there's already a copyrighted fangame called accordingly] It's a Light/Ghost type, and is supposed to represent Beige.

Spoiler

 

[bbninjas]

Not a bad start, SuperHoopa! I'm sure you're aware that 800x800 is significantly larger than official sprite sizes, and thus you're going to have to put a lot more detail + shading for it to look decent. In fact, I don't think you'd ever find a use for sprites of that magnitude.

I've done a bit of spriting myself, and there's a few things I noticed at first glance. First off, you've used preset shapes (e.g. ovals/circles) to create the curves. These presets use an algorithm that doesn't particularly smooth, hence you've got weird bumps around the outline. Second thing, those outlines are pretty small. Single-pixel outlines work on smaller size sprites, but large sprites need thicker outlines. Also, official sprites don't actual have solid black outlines - they are also shaded. Thirdly, you've only shaded very small portions of the sprite, and so that's partially where the cartoony-ness comes from - often over half of the shape is shaded. Fourthly, you don't have a distinct light source. It looks like you've got one on either side of the arms (as indicated by the light on the shoulders), and one below Spirazuu (as indicated by the shadows at the upper part of the body. You should stick with a single, clear light source and base your shadows on that.

I suggest you check out this in-depth tutorial from The Cave of Dragonflies, as it discusses all of this plus more.

I also fixed that justification issue in your OP by chucking the image in the spoiler (which was necessary also because it's a large image). ^.^

 

[SuperHoopa]

Hey, thanks! I'll be sure to use these tips. I need to add some 3D-ness to it so it looks a bit more realistic and not like paper...
As for resizing, I'm pretty sure I can just scale it down by using the Nearest Neighbor feature in resizing on PDN. The usual sprite size for Pokedex entries is 475x475, right? The borders can be fixed by blending I hear, something I'm used to doing with 16x16 sprites, but I wasn't sure at first what would look right, so blending is the right thing to do. The uneven shading is due to me being a noob at using the "Sharpen" feature in PDN, so I can get rid of those and watch the tutorial. Also, as a bit of a Farfetch'd question, do you know a website to make Pokemon Cries? I could use a sound combiner, but I'd also like something original.

Thanks for the help, I think I'll repost it again when it looks nicer!

 

[bbninjas]

Just so you know, the sprite will likely be very different upon resizing it, as the image will try to squeeze those pixels into a smaller space, and that can be only down by merging or blending them. It's likely that the resized sprite won't have that crispness nor bitsy-ness that is characteristic of a sprite.

Sounds like you're using a more fancy program - I just used Paint. The tutorial I linked makes use of no fancy tools, and I don't think the official spriters would have used that either - official Pokemon sprites tend to only use three colours, rather than having a more even or smooth colour distribution that would more likely happen with a 'blend' tool.

That said, good luck! I look forward to seeing the improvements. ^.^

 

[SuperHoopa]

Also, I should mention that it's a sprite that's meant to look like this, in a Pokedex entry, and not one of the in-game sprites. He's supposed to look like this guy, stylewise: