Hello uwu Im a spriter!
I’m a Pokémon spriter actually but I’ve completely lost interest with it lol. And since I love FE + GBA FE’s sprite style ive started making FE sprites OwO
My first sprite, Daisy from FE4! One of my fav characters. I don’t remember if she was a splice. I think she came out decent enough but idk? Didn’t finish the hackbox since I’m not using her in my hack.
Summary
maybe as an easter egg in a village, though?
My avatar, a sprite I did recently and that was supposed to be my OC before I decided that I liked the design, so he’s not a self-insert OC anymore lol. He’s a splice of various characters though so I think I’ll remake him when I get better.
Another splice I did, the dancer in my hack. While he is a lot better (imho) and i edited him a lot, he is still a splice of Weiss + Deke. Im trying to learn how to sprite from scratch in FE style.
Which brings us to this trobadour that I tried doing from scratch. I’m not sure what, though, but there’s something very wrong with her. So I’m not using her till I get it and make her sprite better.
That’s it I guess OwO. I’ll post my sprites there. If you have any criticism, pls do say it because I want to get better lol.
So, for the custom work, I think the best critique I could give would be to compare the scale, curvature, and shading to the spliced works that you’ve posted.
Daisy and your Troubadour both have rather small bodies in proportion to their head and their hair - FE sprites aren’t entirely realistic with their proportions, but if you had the splices right next to the custom work in a project, they would contrast versus each other significantly.
Next, consider curvature - for the brother, note where the head is posed/directed but where the center line through the collar and chestplate are at. And then, consider the collar and how it is drawn - it doesn’t really give the impression that it rounds around the side of the neck.
Furthermore, if you look at the way the hair is shaded on the siblings, they don’t quite feel like they have depth to their head with a roundness to the side(s) - the hair is rather “flat” and then just “stops”. Part of this is both how they’re drawn and shaded, and the other is just the volume of the head shape and considering depth in the piece.
LordGlenn has pointed out a few main things that can improve your work that you can look at. I think these pics may help explain things a little bit.
The first major one is probably shading/lighting
A good example is in your avatar, you can see the Matthew neck shading isn’t pillow shaded (where everything sort of scales linearly inwards from the border with no lighting direction)
Vs
You can improve by more closely copying the way existing sprites do it;
Also don’t be afraid to use the darkest skin colour more for sharpening features and bordering things like jawlines more. As well as letting the next shade not being next to eachother.
The second major one is body proportions
The splices are a good example at examining body proportions making sure they make sense;
vs
(Girls can still have shoulders too)
I won’t modify a version to give a better example, but perhaps look at some existing GBA sprites from the games to get a better idea how to mold bodies to your liking.
I think for starters its good to start with looking at splicing first so you can get a better feel for how shading and body shaping sort of works.
Thats a nice improvement, I think another technique that helps with shape is just flipping the sprite horizontally and seeing if the shape still looks good; eg
Shape is good
vs
Chest needs to be re angled/shaped to match the rest of her torso’s perspective;
Her shoulders and arms indicate her body should be going in the direction of the blue arrows, but her chest is facing us almost dead on.
(honestly its probably the frills/trimming on her chest piece, at that angle they shouldnt be visible to us on her far side if that piece matches the curvature of her chest)
this is drake! say hi to drake. dont call him short or he’ll fly an arrow to your head.
edgy archer with a height complex which started as a franz splice :v but ive redrawn his whole body expect like… the bangs. he wasnt edgy at first and was more a typical (?) hyperactive shota. but i tried making him more and more different to franz so here is drake!
Your custom stuff is improving, it will take time and more practice before you improve and develop your style. Shading will still take some time, but will reduce the flatness of your sprites. Another common point among your more custom sprites are the eyebrows and eye lids are done really thin, when compared to the splices and standard mugs;
i forgot to reply + got on vacation so i couldnt reply >_> sorry and thanks, its true
ive tried fixing them - i hope theyre fine now!
ive also did another mug, a peg knight (a thea + shanna splice at first) - not really satisfied on how she came out though tbh. i’ll for sure remake her when i get better
and now im doing this shaman - he was a kyle+artur+rennac splice at first, but i tried making him look from behind so i redid basically everything… im not sure the back and neck turned out well though? (and i didnt really finish his cloak yet…) (hes from the same nation as the dancer btw. going to use cormag’s skin palette for units from there)
His lats/armpits are missing but other than that I don’t see anything particularly off about his back. Although his shoulder could stand to be a bit thicker, and if I were you, I’d draw the hand on a separate canvas and paste the portrait on top so that the arm and part of the hand are obscured.
Only one thing about the face that imo is off - move his eye one or two pixels left if you can.
Sorry I didn’t say anything on FEUcord, I’ve been off Discord for a few days.
Edit: Neck muscles are connected to the wrong spot and chin could be moved further out or be squared off as his chin is currently a little weak; FE tends to go for anime aesthetics without compromising on bone structure, so proportions will be more “lifelike” and “masculine” even on feminine, childlike characters.
Edit 2: if you’re still not satisfied with that portrait in five days I’ll help you out on the Discord. Can’t really use the PC unless I’m really really working on stuff for a while because we’re having ANOTHER heatwave.
Edit THREE: By the way, if you’re making all the portraits for your project, you can kinda skirt the style of FE because you only need to be consistent with yourself. If your progress is stalling on your project because you can’t put together mugs satisfactorily to FE style standards, you always have an out.
oh its you owo hi!!! no prob ^w^ thanks for helping when you can
which shoulder, the right one? hes already looking better - well expect the neck muscles lol. but i gotta learn so im re-trying e-e
omggggg noooo dont worry O___O be safe
yeah im making all of them!! i want to get good though and find satisfying to get the style correctly so its not a problem ^^ theres not going to be many units anyway, around 35 - so sov and ss levels (well i’ll have to do enemy and npc mugs lol but its still a small cast) so im fine with proceding slowly
The shoulder closer to our left is quite skinny and is missing the googles latissimus dorsi.
Imo 35 is a pretty respectably large cast unless your hack is >28 chapters long/you’re trying to make it ironman-friendly. My project’s planned party is currently at around 24 for 26 gameplay chapters (including 4 gaiden) although 3/4 of the gaiden chapters are going to be using alternate portraits and all four are going to be using different unit IDs
The 24 is because deployment limits average 12 in most games and letting half of them die seems realistic enough.
So I’m not using her till I get it and make her sprite better.
And talented you are! The sprites are looking very nice, hope to see more from you.
i dont think so though 
