New to Spriting, Guidance?

[TimmyTuShoes]

I'm new to Newgrounds, and also, new to Spriting. Happy Valentine's Day, btw guys. :)
I recently took up Spriting within the last 2 months, and happened to find it one of my favorite ways of creating art digitally. As such, I want to get good at it. I practice quite often, but there are limits to how much you can grow, just off of practice. I checked tutorials, I tried to apply my own artistic learning from paper and convert it to Spriting. It works to some degree, but I feel like the only way I can *really* grow as a Spriting artist is by having people critique my work. I can't really do that currently as I'm not scouted due to being a fresh member, but I'd really like it if I could get some constructive criticisms from experienced Spriters, and people who can critique spriting as well. Don't hesitate to be harsh. If it's for my improvement I'll take whatever you have to say!

I heard Newgrounds has a fairly friendly base for Art, and a lot of the members give great criticisms within the community. Anyways, here's Hawken, thanks for the help in advance!

I'll be uploading multiple images due to the fact that I can only upload one at a time, however, for ease of access, I'll also link them here in this first post as well:

Hawken V1.0

Painut V1.0

[TimmyTuShoes]

Here's Painut V1.0 64x64. To be frank, the only thing I really feel confident about in this is the Peanut texturing. Other than that, I don't think I've nailed a 'good sprite'

[TimmyTuShoes]

Sprited a Metal Urn in a little ways back. It doesn't look very metallic and it feels blocky. I definitely need criticisms on how to bring out materials in objects. :/

Anyhow, Metal Urn V1.0

I say Version in case I decide to revamp btw, so I can show the new and improved version after I've learned from others

[TimmyTuShoes]

Gee guys. Way to help a new guy out...

Removed some sprites after seeing the TOS for NG, too shady for me to risk it even if I do trust NG.

I'll post some more I guess.

122x122, not really a sprite but it's pixel art made specifically for my NG Avatar. I get the feeling people won't take me seriously unless I post things I do that I'm not exactly looking for criticism on... I'm specifically choosing sprites I need help with because I know where I need guidance... Just kinda need somebody to tell me how to fix them, as I'm not really sure. Thanks in advance.

[ThunderSpam]

Quit yer whining.

First off, your fundamental ways of thinking are flawed. "There are limits on how much you can grow just off of practice". No, there are not. In the end, practice is the only thing that will get you anywhere. You have to be studying the right things though. It doesn't look like you are.

If I had to take a guess, people aren't leaping to critique work that they can barely see. Resize it and repost it. Not to mention, what the heck is any of this? Are these like... made up Pokemon or something.

Anyway, they aren't good. They are flat looking, boring, and uninspired.

[TimmyTuShoes]

There, it's not flat. It's round.
(Sarcasm)

But, really... can you be constructive? I get it, I'm not scouted, that's like the initiation cycle here, I'm a brand new member, I'm probably just jumping in to be an idiot and screw stuff up. But I'm trying to be productive and connect to the community here even before I've been scouted. I don't wanna just piss around and ignore everybody or be a total idiot and piss off the rest of the forum. I see a ton of posts in here where people are like critique my art, or stuff, it seems to be the go to place to be subtle about "Hey guys, I'm not asking for Scouts, but I am". Tbh, I dont give a crap for the scouting. I'm almost entirely here solely because I heard the Art Community would be good to talk to for help and whatnot. I'm looking for help, not scouting. I don't care if I ever get scouted. I likely won't, seeing the scouted members and the Art Portal, there's a scale of skill there that's not something I can reach in digital art. That doesn't really bother me.

Even though I'm fairly certain you're not even familiar with spriting (No offense, I just get that vibe from what you're talking of it) (Quick Summary: Old school game art, Megaman, Zelda, A Link to the Past, Pokemon, etc, etc, Limited palettes, extremely small sizes, and limited tins and shades usually down to about 3 or 4 colours and 3 or 4 shades and tints of that colour, I don't exactly have a lot to work with, n a space that's usually less than 100x100 (AKA 100 little squares one way, 100 the other, these being 64) it's not like I have 1000 pixels up and across to work with man. I'd resize them, but re-sizing down or up makes sprites look horrid. Not saying that changes the opinion of them anyway, but could you cut some slack and at least make the comments constructive?

I like your work. The most recent one is by far my favorite. Really striking. It looks like something that'd be in a top level Game, equal to Braid or Limbo or something like that, in fact, if it is, or will be, please let me know as I'd like to play it just off of that art. Really, it's phenomenal. Do you sell stuff or have a site where you do commissions off of? I'd be interested in seeing others.

Anyhow, thanks regardless. You actually commented, which is certainly better than nothing.

[Lucky]

At 2/16/13 08:15 PM, ATTW7-Pride wrote: There, it's not flat. It's round.
(Sarcasm)

long as balls text

man those are some huge paragraphs
I zoned out halfway trough, but again you improve the most by practise , there are no limitations to what you can achieve... unless you're only practising how to do sprites tutorials. I did pixel art for the first time this year and i found it a lot easier than before, just because i had a lot of practise on paper beforehand drawing the stuff i was trying to make into 64*64 sprites... It wasnt easy to do sprites but if you practise doing traditional concepts of the sprites you wanna develop more and then go into photoshop with the 1 pixel brush you'll make a lot nicer of a result i feel.
Also do life drawing, construction training but thats a more overall thing which you should be doing anyway no matter which type of art you want to go into

[TimmyTuShoes]

At 2/16/13 09:07 PM, Lucky wrote:

At 2/16/13 08:15 PM, ATTW7-Pride wrote: There, it's not flat. It's round.
(Sarcasm)

long as balls text

man those are some huge paragraphs
I zoned out halfway trough, but again you improve the most by practise , there are no limitations to what you can achieve... unless you're only practising how to do sprites tutorials. I did pixel art for the first time this year and i found it a lot easier than before, just because i had a lot of practise on paper beforehand drawing the stuff i was trying to make into 64*64 sprites... It wasnt easy to do sprites but if you practise doing traditional concepts of the sprites you wanna develop more and then go into photoshop with the 1 pixel brush you'll make a lot nicer of a result i feel.
Also do life drawing, construction training but thats a more overall thing which you should be doing anyway no matter which type of art you want to go into

Thanks Lucky. Sorry, I tend to talk a lot. If you'd like, I can add a TL;DR if I tend to ramble on... Would that be a good idea?
Also, if you check out my page (Unless sketches can't be seen by members and acts like a private gallery), Spriting isn't my first medium, it's my current passion though. I try to keep up on fine art practices, but I generally have trouble applying them to small scale spriting, but I'll keep at it regardless in the hopes that something finally clicks. Thank you for the single pixel paint brush Photoshop idea, I'll try it out. Up until now, I've been working with Windows Paint as my main program of choice. (The paint brush is annoying and large in Windows Paint even at the smallest size so I assumed Photoshop would be similar)

Any chance you could help me with Thunder's criticisms and offer constructive alternatives for them? I'm not really sure how to round out my images and give them depth due to my issues grasping lighting effects in Spriting. The other two criticisms are obviously have better ideas/execute them better, which I'll (hopefully) learn as I grasp other techniques.

Thank you for the advice and comments though, they're really helpful. I never knew about this Pixelovely site, it looks like an incredible learning resource!