Woops, a triple-post.

So, with the big pixel art basically at a point that I'm happy with it (or at least can't be bothered doing anymore to it), I've decided to move onto other sprites.

I decided to put that one Klonoa Brawl Mod into Brawl Box so that I could pose the model and animate it, for me to use as a base.
And while my animations don't look great up close, at a much smaller size they look decent.

Here's a horrible-quality gif of a standing animation I did. (Flash's gif exporting is awful, which I used because I was having trouble getting GifCam to record it properly)


After that, I did a quick trace over the first frame of the animation, and then touched up edges that looked weird, and so far I have this:


I'm not sure about it. A lot of it doesn't look right, and I know it doesn't look right, but I don't know why it doesn't look right.
I'd appreciate any help with pointing out what's wrong with it. Even doing an edit of it, if you're feeling especially generous. I think it's a massive improvement over all my previous attempts, but I'm obviously still not there yet.
Some things I know are wrong with it is that he looks unnecessarily angry, and that the contrast in the palette is a bit too low.

I've also started designing a Klonoa-stage, based on Coronia from Klonoa 1, mainly because I always liked the look of the level, and the music that plays there is pretty great.

That's nowhere near a state I can show, yet, though. I've only started designing the layout of it.

And that's what I've done in the last day or so.

Let's compare to two so we can help you improve that amazing sprite.
Gem: Double it's size, and make sure to keep it's hexagon shape.
Ears: The white tips are suppose to be bigger then the black part, also with 5 points.
Hat: Could slightly make pac man bigger on it, so it's more noticable.
Shirt Zipper: It's could be longer to be more in with it's source.
Hands: They just look odd, i'm sure why, maybe better outlines.
(Optional) Expression: He looks so series, put a smile on the guy
You did the shoes and legs really well, and maybe it's just his standing that hides it, but i can't see the tail.
Let me know if the advice was helpful or parts you disagree with.

The gem is about the size it is in the 3D model, but I think the ring as a whole could do with being a bit more pronounced, I guess. It doesn't even have an outline, which looks a little strange.

The white parts on the ears could also do with a bit of a touch up on the curves. Even though most of the size is hidden by the perspective, I do think it looks a little small. On the amount of points, I agree, although that's really hard to show on a sprite of that size.

Also, yes, the Pac-Man on the hat could definitely be bigger. I'll see what I can do with that.

Compared to the 3D model, the zipper is about the same size, and I did mess around with the shading of it a bit to seem less flat, while also not having an outline (mainly because it's so small that an outline just looks silly), but it's not quite there. I'll try again with that, and see if I can do any better, but I'm not entirely sure what to do with it.

The hands definitely are an issue. I completely forgot about those. The fingers aren't very defined, and the hands are a bit bulgy. I can see a few easy ways to improve them, although I'm not sure how much better I can make it beyond that.

With the expression, I think the main reason he looks so serious is just because of the shape of the eyes. The mouth is fine, I think. I'm not sure how well I could do a smile, either, due to the size of the face. But I guess I should try that out, anyway.

And the tail can't be seen because it's behind where the right hand and ear are.

Yet another double post. Delightful.
So, I've spent a bit of time touching up the Klonoa sprite I did (no animation yet) and even just changing the palette really made an improvement I feel, although I fixed up a bunch of other things, too. Anyway, here's the updated sprite:


And I've noticed that people going back through this thread would never see the changes I've done, because I just update the old picture, changing it across the whole thread. So for that, I made a comparison between the old one and the new one, for people who didn't see it earlier.


I wouldn't say it's perfect now, but if I saw it in SSF2, I think it'd fit okay with the rest of the characters.
Now I just need to animate it, which will hopefully mask any of the remaining problems a little bit.

Only a quick and small edit... I've changed some things that mage said:

- Bigger white part
- Bigger shoes
* Changed shadow in the sole

Hm, I'm not sure about the larger shoes, they seemed big enough already, for me.
But I never really thought about how the shading of the sole was wrong, I didn't pay much attention to the light source, there. The difference is extremely subtle, but something that I should fix anyway.
And I do think that the white on the ears does look a lot better when it's angled like that, although maybe not as heavily as you've done it there.
I appreciate it, it did give me a few ideas on things to touch up on!

I'm making decent progress on the animation, too, so I'll hopefully be able to show that, soon enough.

Well, I finally finished the animation of Klonoa standing, and I'm fairly happy with it.
There's probably many problems with it, but I think it's about good enough.



It took a lot longer than I hoped it would. Animating is hard.

At some point I'll get back to working on my Klonoa stage and maybe some more animations, but I currently have other projects I'm more interested in working on.

What do you think, anyway?

That is really smooth in the best way possible. The only thing I can think to improve it is to add a bit of movement to the torso or face. Everything else has a lot of movement while those parts have none.

The face doesn't move at all, no. I wasn't sure what to do there. Do you have any ideas for that? I was going to add blinking or something, but because the animation loops so often, it would look strange if I did so.

The torso does have a little bit of movement, but it didn't come out very well, and the sleeves and zipper are lacking.

EDIT: I touched up the torso a bit, and it still looks fairly static, but I think it's better than it was.

Full length idle animations usually have a few loops and then some form of idle animation, so possibly just have it loop 3-4 times and then once more where Klonoa blinks and then 3-4 more and he does an action. That's only if you want to go full force, though.
Otherwise maybe make his whiskers move? Are those whiskers? I dunno. Worth trying.

Torso has definitely improved, though.

The issue with the torso before I think was that while the shape and the zipper changed, then didn't change quite as much, and the shading didn't change with them, so the movement more looked like errors than anything. It's good that that's mostly fixed now.

He doesn't have whiskers, just a second layer of face hair, basically. I was going to make that move, but it was hard getting it to look right at all, and I don't know if I could move it more than one or two pixels at the most.

I have ideas for a second part to the idle animation, which I might do when I get back to this sprite. It'd have to have a completely redrawn face, so that would alleviate some of the lack of motion there, hopefully.

I guess I should try and make another animation for the model, so I have another base to work off of.

I found a version of my Klonoa pixel art with a few WIP changes, so I fixed them and a few other things up, and I think it looks quite a bit better. I finally fixed his right hand (visually left)! That's been bugging me since I first made the pixel art.

I also find it fun to compare it to the very first version of the pixel art which I made just over a year ago, now. The basic shape is essentially identical between the two, but after enough tweaks here and there, it actually looks good now.

Although the dithering effect on the bottom one is rather appealing to me personally, the top one is definitely really defined, looks great. Good job with the changes.

Thanks! I also really like dithering, but it doesn't work very well with the art style that SSF2 portraits use, which is what I was trying to replicate.

I see, I understand what you're saying, I agree. It fits much more now how it is to the SSF2 style the devs are going for, it's really good.