If you start like that you won't, no. There is little to no point in starting stuff if you're already doubtfull about your own abilities and yadda yadda.

What I mean, chances are low someone'll die when custom sprites turn out to be less-then-stellar, so there is nothing to lose (safe for time, but if spending time on the computer is your hobby then that may not be the worst thing in the world). If you really want to continue with spriting, then the best thing you can do is go to the process and trial and error early on, so you can learn how to make great custom sprites. It's the best not to rely on editing to improve your spriting skills. It'll definetly help some, but I don't think it's a substitute for learning how to make your own sprites.

You can just post your custom-made sprites on a forum you're comfortable with, and have people help you improve on the areas in-case-neccesary.


Regarding your custom Asura, I think the head needs a little work, as does the perspective on the front leg. If you want, you should try playing a bit with that.

Everything looks nice, but some characters like Han look a little.... flat in my eyes, some Shading could be nice, but most of the sprites here are VERY nice.

I made this with the best intentions. One thing is clear the front chest muscles need work. Use my example to excel.

I've been trying forever to get decent crit on my sprites...
I've got four on the front page that I posted in the EF's Custom Sprite help, and after like three posts about how I don't sprite feet, everyone just left them there.

Okely dokely, even though I'm just about as worst as they come in the area of 'sprite teaching', maybe I can share a few tips with you that have helped me so far:

-Custom sprites takes some research, both in official and hobbyist-made custom sprites. Just scroll through The Sprite database to take a look at official sprite, and The Spriters Resource for some good hobbyist-made sprites (I'd say DA too, since there are some really inspirational and magnifiecent spriters out there, but about 50+ is crappy Sawnicks and other unelegant edits, still worth a scroll). Compare this to shopping in a supermarket; if you see an aspect that you like, take it. By that I mean; try to incorporate said aspect in your own custom works. If you take different aspects from different styles you can make your own personalised styles and stuff.
-Never use other sprites as reference. Say you wanted to sprite Asura, then don't use another Asura sprite as reference, because then it's likely that you'll just copy it unintentionally. I prefer hand-drawn official pictures as reference, because I find that easier to create a colour pallet from. It's always easier to use more then 1 picture. I always have 2 or 3 handy.
-Experiment, experiment, experiment and who knows, you might discover cool stuff.
-Talking to other sprites also helps you build a style and way of working. I, myself, benefitted a lot from talking to Blinsey, Qui, ZI, Ramsey and Dhraggie Dhragson about sprites. Sometimes, someone else just has the idea that you'll need. This also goes with the 'check out other spriters' works' thang.
-Start a little bigger, perhaps. Sprites like JUS are small, so you usually wanna cram 'em full of details. That's difficult. Why not make it easier by making your workspace a bit bigger? It doesn't have to be HUGE, but someones just a few extra 'xels can make your life a whole lot easier.
-Don't make it more difficult then it has to be
-Don't step into the ring thinking you'll fail, or you will. Believe in yourself.
-Don't always be too satisfied with your own work. Someone's it's better to be a bit critical about your own stuff, and try to adjust things before posting. Someonetimes you'll see things only after people have told you them, wich'll cause you to see a brand new concept, but some stuff, you can weed out yourself, and you know it. (P.S. you don't need to be so cirtical that you shoot yourself in a depression tho, remember this whole spriting buisness is for fun)
-Listen to music while you sprite. Very important.

Sometimes it's just a matter of having the right people point out the right stuff. Granted, we don't have many people here who are good in giving feedback in the area of spriting, but you won't know untill you post.

This is all I can really tell you. I'll try to give you some good feedback when I learn how to properly do that in the near future. 'Till then, just keep at it brother!


(p.s.; feet are indeed pretty difficult to sprite. What you can try, is look at a bunch of reference sprites. You can also try to sprite shoe-like feet, then adjust the shape to make them softer (no rouh edges), making the big tie more apparent, and then use shading to indicate the pressense of the rest of the toes.)

But lets say for example if you wanted to make your own character FE style and you want to know how to sprite FE style: Isn't one FE sprite worth having as a small sprite reference so you know both the shading and style of FE characters when spriting your own?

Or are you basically saying that you should never use one sprite of the same character/item as a reference to make that character/item?

Im not generally trying to ask to copy n paste everything (which i currently never have) but we know that most spriters aren't always so perfect and that each has a different technique of their own

Other than that, your tips are very helpful sir c:

Bingo. If you want to sprite, let's say, Mickey Mouse, then it's the best to rely on pictures alone for reference.

Let's say you wanted to sprite the Mouse in FE style, then it's best to have some examples of the said style handy.


A lot of sprites that have become extremely good in the art, usually don't sprite stuff in official styles anymore. Of course, it can't be denied that taking a quick gander at another sprite of the dcharacter-that-you-are-spriting makes things easier to pull off. But if you always go and scroll down Easy Lane, then it's going to be a very, very long walk.

Not as maroon as I would like it, but I'm going with it.


This is just a basic idea of the look I was going for, sans the goggles. It wasn't my reference.

The lenghts of the arms seem to differ, you should take a look at that. Furthermore, you should probably make the legs a little bit longer overall. Sprites usually don't have long bodies, but like this. The pointing arm should be redone entirely, it's off. Use Phoenix Wright as reference for teh structure of a pointing arm. And keep working on your consistancy within the sprites.

Head looks nice. Could use less rough egdes and more contrast, mainly between the actual shades and outline (applies to the whole sprite, kind off).

The color choice is dull. Theres not much reflection of light source on the character itself. It doesn't stand out.
If the arm on the left is supposed to be behind Maroon when hes doing the finger pointing, then that arm should have darker colors as a tip of light source.

Also, what Damian said: I'd recommend using Phoenix Wright as a reference for the finger pointing.
The head is nice but the hair detail is poor compared to the maplestory reference you're using.

Next thing would be to redo the entire anatomy of the sprite. Keep the pointing hand, but the rest is better redone entirely imo.

Adding to this ^^
You should try and use some common techniques to get the anatomy accurate
http://www.fantasy-artzine.com/2010/06/ ... learn.html
All of these guides and techniques can be scaled down into spriting.

I've been working with Sukapon, so I made one of his enemies, Giant.

You wanted some feedback on your sprites, so I'll do my best to help you;

In the next 24 hours I will be reviewing, examining and discussing the sprite in question. I'll start off with, what I feel, is the most important mistake that you have made here.

This is a very boring re-sprite.

This is the most important point of the sprite, because there is little to nothing about this sprite that would, let's say you were a shop keeping and I was a young, gorgeous, award-winning movie star that happens to be your client (just to imagine a situation), make me want to come back. What you did here, was take a sprite and then make it smaller with a few more shades added that still make the sprite kind of blant to look at.

Well, I'm not your client and I do love visiting this topic to see how you improve your spriting, so don't worry.

But back to point; What you did was essentially just make the sprite smaller. And, even though there are still rough adges that you should not have copied, you did a good job at that, but I don't really think that is what spriting;s all about. When you re-sprite things, it's always neccesary to up the quality, because otherwise you might as well not begin. You obviously understand this concept, as you did see it as neccesary to add more shades to pronounce certain areas, so you've got your head firmly on your strong shoulders and there is no need to question your understanding of a re-sprite. That part's all good.
But back on topic; where the sprite ultimately fails to capture my attention, is because, compared to the original, you did absolutely nothing to spice your sprite up. You didn't really add more details, or make the colours more vibrant... Nothing to make the character more fleshed out. Like with TSR, Sukapon, they gave him some new details (up to some degree) not present in the original game, to make the character less bland. And this paid of in the presentation. You should've done this too, and not just because it makes the sprite overall a lot more comfortable to look at, but also because then the sprite would've said:
Greetings world, I am a sprite and I was made by Reix!
(sprites don't really talk tho)
Because then, you could've given it your own personal flair. Reflect your own ideas on it a bit. The original sprite is really bland, there was a lot of room for improvement that you could've made. For example, you should've tried to picture 'what would this character look like if he was recently created for a game developed in this age, with newer, more modern, engines and graphics'. That would've been an interesting concept. The re-sprite you made might as well have appeared on the NES. With large plain sprites like this guy, there are lots of options with how you can fill in the space with newer technology. This is called a 'Remastered sprite' (remastering that sometimes also refer to just adjusting shading and cleaning up pallets), this here is a 'sprite made smaller with new shades'.
Speaking of the shading, I can't really detect a common lightsource in the piece. This is probably caused because your lineart is akin to the original, and you just shaded it from there. Lineart also should've been more fluent then the original

Now, I've given you a lot of s*** in this post, and I really really really reaaally hope that this doesn't get you down because it shouldn't. If this is what you like to do then by all means you should continue with it, but in my opinion, you're better then this and this Brain Guy is not a sprite reflective of your abilities. Really sorry to come across as a jackass, because once more, I just want to help you and I hope to see more of that redhaired guy.

Also excuses for possible (most likely) bad grammer and uncomprehensible sentences.