Can you guys critique my sprite?

[Harion]

Is this better?


Anything else to improve?

[StDrake]

a little better, but keep playing around with contrast
also - try to see your own work with a dose of your own criticism as well - does this look like fire? does this look like you wanted it to look? be able to ask and answer such questions yourself and it will save you some trial and errors - then the critiques of others will have to reveal the details that were not obvious to yourself and give you better feedback

[thespaceinvader]

Note: magic effects are better applied as haloes, since semi-transparent effects break team colour underneath them.

[Harion]

Got both my Trolls better.




And I made Wood Elf Scout.



Feedback please.

EDIT: SpaceInvader, I took the fire ball halo and tweaked it so it would look good on the trolls fist and I think I only cut off a very minimal amount of TC if any so I added the armband TC thing for that also to differentiate more and make it slightly more unique.

[Reepurr]

Wood Elf Scout has a seemingly common mistake. When you're riding a horse, your toes do NOT face away from the horse. They go next to the horse. (It also makes it even more obvious you just amputated and stuck on top an Elvish Archer.) Not to mention that the Unicorn from EoM is kind of small - see the new mainline horses. They're much bigger.

[Harion]

Well I worked with the Wood Elf Scout some more and after a while brought the regular scout into it.


I also made a prototype of my armored troll

Note: I know this is not that good I had to resort to using a Whelp arm.

[Harion]

Well this is what I've got.



And what I'm working on, I call it Heavy Troll.


What do you think? Feedback is greatly appreciated.

[homunculus]

i am getting curious about the reasons why you would want to modify the trolls that way.
what is it that you are trying to achieve exactly?

armored2 seems to have extremely long neck.

[Harion]

The reason I'm so into making new troll units is because I'm planning of making an era and in this era is a faction of only trolls ( though there will be like 11 other factions which I've already planned out).

[StDrake]

you're leaving behind white lines and stains, parts of the picture blurred, part sharp, part being precisely shaded and shaped..and not yours, and the parts that are your own stand out being a general mess
mess is the keyword here that you need to take care of

and the elven scout..well for one thing it's completely unnecessary since elves have already done nice scouting sprites, and another thing is you make him look like he has fee, but no legs..well his feet grow out straight from his butt, c'mon give him some length

as for the era idea - drop it. even nicely done ones get hardly any attention lately
concentrate on a vision first:
-what do you really want to make
-what would make it different from the tons of other eras and factions out there
-why would that be interesting
-and what could make people choose it to play rather than those other complex, cared for, and high-quality art eras

[homunculus]

actually i think the scout's boot is a bit lost to the eye and the leg curves bit strange.

even nicely done ones [eras] get hardly any attention lately

interesting, i have been feeling exactly the same way.
a campaign using an era has become a deterrent rather than fuel for curiosity.
even the infamous archaic era does not seem as nice as core units in the end (my opinion).

for example, if an era fixed the anatomical incorrectness in the parts of female units that should be bouncing a little bit in a funny way (in the core units they are not and that looks terribly wrong and unjust) there would be a clear reason to make that era (=make it right).
but all the troll units seem to be male.
and you cut off the neck muscle, isn't that cruel?

if we set aside the 'new era or not new era' thing, if you could let us know what you are trying to achieve with, say, the armored troll, maybe we could c&c something that would help you modify the brown thing on the body into something that people understand what it is supposed to be (right now i have no clue what the brown thing is, extremely rusty chainmail maybe?).

[Harion]

I get your point, a bigger explanation of the unit I'm trying to make. Well in that case the brown thing is supposed to be a rough leather chest piece with holes in it. I try to make it pixel by pixel.

[wesfreak]

If you want to make a frankensteined elf riding a unicorn, you'd be better off attaching the unicorn's head/horn to the elf outrider's horse's body (since it's the only one with a white horse). Right now, the unit needs legs: it only has feet attached to the body.

[Reepurr]

I was going to try and salvage your armoured troll, but gave up after I saw the mess you made of it. Some suggestions:

1. Don't use [bleep] transparent pixels! Those are shadows only, don't use them in the middle of a troll's torso.
2. Leather is not, AFAIK, ever that red. Try the new bandit's palette.
3. Try making the armour and then putting holes in it, perhaps? Or, since holey armour is rubbish, replace the holes with metal studs?

[Harion]

Well I fixed the neck problem, and the armor color but I don't know which is better the one with the studs or the one with out.



Feedback please.