It’s currently jpeg.
If you upload a PNG I’ll have an in-depth look and point out a couple of things here an there that might help you out.
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Here’s a better look
I made this as well though I’m not as impressed by it.
Any chance you could upload them at their original resolution instead of blown up?
I don’t think I’ve got any programs that would resize without fucking up all the pixels.
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yeah sorry
Not so good at explaining things, so bare with me.
Only done a facial pass so far.
First thing I did was went in and worked on the nose. It’s smack-bang in the middle of the face and thus is a big focal point, it’s the reason I’ve been working on spriting them and trying to find ways to give character too them. Big nose, strong nose, firm nose, soft, weak? Whatever. Here we’re a little generic but it’s okay.
I typically start with the gray skin-tone, the fifth from light to dark and shade where underneath the tip would be. FE is typically anime styled so we can’t get into realistic techniques, but imagine a triangular prism on the face, you want to shade the side where the nostrils would be to give the illusion of a 3D shape. Only the further side because too much will pull the feature inwards and also because the light source is coming from the side the character is looking away from.
(At this point I’ll also bring up something I’ve noticed but is never mentioned, people say the light source is coming from the “top right”, this is because when the sprite is in the game it’s generally facing right to left, however if your graphic was left to right it’d be opposite, so it’s a little clearer to say the character is looking away from the sun unless your breaking form like a couple of my mugs. However, this only gives us an idea in 2D depth. The truth is the light source is in front of the character, not to their side. I’ve done a crude diagram to try and visualize this.)
When you’re done with the bottom face of the prism you want to work on the nose’s bridge, the line that accentuates the farthest side of the nose’s shape that gives it definition and helps bring out the nose more and solidifies that illusion of depth. Generally this line curves into the far eye unless the nose is a very soft shape, which is often used on young characters or females.
(On the bottom of the graphic are two face edits after the fact, you’ll notice different noses for them both, with more effort in the right one, you’ll see how a couple of different pixels and placements can change the 3D illusion and affect the shape of the nose.
The mouth generally I find to be the easiest part of the face. Using the darkest skin shade just put two dots roughly where the sides of the mouth are and then use the third shade between them, If the two dots aren’t on the same line then you’re going to need to curve, like in the second edit on the bottom. In this instance just curve your line until you get the general gist of the mouth, it’s okay if it doesn’t look perfect as this is more or less just something to work on.
I tend to soften the middle of the line but ultimately that aspect is down to preference. The dimple underneath the line and the shading you use above and beneath the mouth will give the soft illusion of lips which helps with that illusion of depth we wanted with the nose. The two pixel line underneath the lip on the right also helps with that effect.
The eyes are a bit tricky, in that I don’t really play too much by FE’s rules. I prefer a more realistic smaller look over the ridiculous large and anime eyes that a lot of FE goes for, I’ve tried to appease both sides here but I’m not too sure it works. Underneath you’ll see I have a single point of shade 5 and then soften it outwards to the sides, with one being darker. This serves as the bottom eye-lid and will also come in to play when doing blinking frames, which is why my darker edge generally is facing inwards so that the blinking goes a little smoother, but again, it’s preference somewhat.
The core of the actual eye, I tend to do a line of the outline colour and then a line of fifth tone before adding in colour respectively. I tend to define the upper eyelid more than the bottom, starting with a single or double pixel of outline before softening outwards, working with it to result in whatever eyeshape you want, however here is more or less default. I use the fourth shade to sort of make end points of the eyes to give the impression of the full shape, but not too over-powering or over-bearing. I tend to leave out the eye-shine when I can, I feel it’s silly but it leads to a little bit of “zombie-look” in some mugs, so it’s a give or take.
And that was pretty much it for the face, excuse the poor explanations, I definitely prefer just doing and then showing but I figured I’d give it a crack.
I’ve been doing a lot of face-stuff lately so it’s what I focused on, might tackle hair because Nick Tee’s School of Hair, maybe…
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Some more nose stuff.
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I’m gonna get so much out of this info thank you.
I tried fixing the nose up a bit, but I’ll be frank I am not good with eyes. I just sorta pasted the one you provided. I also added spikes because I was bored.
I finished the sprite Sheet for the Eirika Lord
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Another map I’m doing
Question tho, what tiles can you not have if you have boat on the map?
For reference:
The chapter goal is escape, and the players start up at the inn.
One of those villages gives an item (probably a sword for Belle) and the other gives you a new unit.
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You can’t have cliffs/coast tiles and boat tiles on the same map. If you’re gonna have a boat, I suggest having docks à la FE8 ch9Ephraim (the one in Taizel).
iron blade iron blade iron blade
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9E could mean Eph or Eirika lol
Maybe
gjreuigwhrefsuovsouyrhveiosyrhioryeh
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hwat?
yeah not doing the boat now
…Haven’t I seen that exact map in a hack before…?
I can’t remember what hack, but it was very similar. Interesting…
Beats me, if it does actually look like someone else’s map I’ll have him change it lol
I haven’t seen an exactly similar map. It kinda looks like chapter one of Bloodlines though with the bridge.
The second chapter?
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Yeah I got em mixed up