Well, I just wanted to know how do different people make their own character portraits. This might sound funny and weird for me since I have made character portraits before, but the thing is that those were from a different style, or to put it more simple, they weren’t normal and human FE characters, is what I mean.
Since I think I suck at drawing human characters, I wanted to ask about how you draw human characters. Whether you make them by splicing existing FE portraits, or if you make them from scratch, like fully editing a FE portrait, or carefully searching for references to make that character, mainly if it’s one from another FE game (one that isn’t from GBA) or especially one from another franchise or media entirely. Just wanted to ask to see how I could draw human characters well.
I’m used to make sprites from scratch. I can give you some (I hope) useful tips :
I recommend being familiar with the design of the character you’re spriting. Gather references, draw them on paper, for exemple. Whatever is easier to you. If you know the shapes and everything, you’ll be more comfortable when spriting!
Ask yourself what defines the FE gba style. How are the eyes, what colors are chosen (stealing palettes from official sprites is useful), how much for each shade (like, usually 3 colors for the hair and stuff), etc
Don’t be afraid to ask for opinions, bad or good. Sometimes you cannot see if your work has problems or not, and that’s fine. People can help you by giving you advice or tips to improve. After all, making mistakes is human.
Don’t give up! If you’re not satisfied with your first try, do another one! Correct your mistakes and everything. The more you draw, the better you draw, as I say.
I think that’s it. Feel free to ask anything, I’ll try my best to answer.
Most of the best portrait artists in FEU have years of experience.
I have literally two decades of experience with pixel art. Like, I can’t go back and find the first thing I did, though I do remember it was an Umbreon + May splice I made following a guide.
I’d hit up the usual resources for pixel art (pixeljoint, pixelparmesan, etc) and also check out this video and the associated channel:
No one can really agree what the standard “style” for GBAFE portraits is, but if you break them down into parts, you can see some patterns pop up, like the highlight in the eyeball usually cutting into the eyelash area, or the chin having a fifth-shade line before it ends in the outline color.
