My attempt at a Marth GBA Sprite

[Armaada J]

I was messing around and tried to make a GBA styled Marth. I used Ephraim as the basis. All criticism welcome!

[BlazeKing]

Some basic things to go over for starters:
1) FE Battle sprites can only have 16 colours in total, 15+1 background colour, and your sprite exceeds said limit
2) You enlarged and edited the sprite so it technically isn't a battlesprite anymore(?)

Enlarging and drawing over it doesn't make it GBA styled, GBA styled sprites are usually 1:1 when it comes to pixel ratio...I have no idea how to word it properly :B

As for the sword....well, item icons and battle sprite weapons are sprited completely differently, slapping an item icon onto a battle sprite just breaks the colour limit instantly

When posting sprites for critique, enlarged sprites makes it hard for people to...critique it...I suppose

Other than going over the colour limit, your palette for Marth lacks the contrast most battle sprites' palettes have, some colours even look barely any different.

....I have no idea how to give good advice, excuse me, but hopefully I can give you some idea as to how to improve, regardless, take my advice with a grain of salt because it's clear I have no idea what I'm talking about

[Light Strategist]

1 hour ago, BlazeKing said:

 take my advice with a grain of salt

I literally read that whilst also glancing at a small salt packet that's by my bed.

 

Ephraim was a solid choice for a base, but yeah, as BlazeKing says, factor in the colour palette, the shade of blue you've added is VERY obvious that it's not primarily there, try balancing the colours more based on other areas of the armour and a shade selection tool. Honestly, it's better to start with simpler ideas first. If only practicing with recolouring things, do that first.

I will admit that the menu icon for Aldhuma looks pretty cool in his hand, but it's also as BlazeKing has said about the colour limit. Inserting sprites into a GBA game requires you to think about colour limits because of how the system can only display so many colours at a time.

Even if you don't intend to use them in a GBA ROM hack, try to adhere to that guideline because it's automatically a possibility later down the line.

For visual appearance, I'd give it a 2/5. Overall, there's not too much difference from the original and certain differences should've been kept in mind. If you want to give him a Rapier, try copying it from Eirika's Roy's or Eliwood's battle sprites. It's a lot quicker and less likely to hit a colour limit.

The size issue I assume was to better fit the Aldhuma sprite in his hand? It kinda broke the balance of his headband/tiara/thing.

Overall, not a bad first attempt, but practice needs to be made long-term.

[Armaada J]

Thanks for the advice. I decided to start over from scratch so that I could try the coloring again. I still used Ephraim as a base, but I chose a different frame so that it would hopefully look more unique. I also used the sword from Eirika's beta sprite. 

21 hours ago, Light Strategist said:

I literally read that whilst also glancing at a small salt packet that's by my bed.

 

Ephraim was a solid choice for a base, but yeah, as BlazeKing says, factor in the colour palette, the shade of blue you've added is VERY obvious that it's not primarily there, try balancing the colours more based on other areas of the armour and a shade selection tool. Honestly, it's better to start with simpler ideas first. If only practicing with recolouring things, do that first.

I will admit that the menu icon for Aldhuma looks pretty cool in his hand, but it's also as BlazeKing has said about the colour limit. Inserting sprites into a GBA game requires you to think about colour limits because of how the system can only display so many colours at a time.

Even if you don't intend to use them in a GBA ROM hack, try to adhere to that guideline because it's automatically a possibility later down the line.

For visual appearance, I'd give it a 2/5. Overall, there's not too much difference from the original and certain differences should've been kept in mind. If you want to give him a Rapier, try copying it from Eirika's Roy's or Eliwood's battle sprites. It's a lot quicker and less likely to hit a colour limit.

The size issue I assume was to better fit the Aldhuma sprite in his hand? It kinda broke the balance of his headband/tiara/thing.

Overall, not a bad first attempt, but practice needs to be made long-term.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Armaada J

[BlazeKing]

Pretty large improvement, that's for sure, however the colours are still a large issue.
Here I did some edits:

Pretty good job for a splice, I personally really like the pose you're going for, however I'll be blunt here, your colours are terrible, for now, I suggest sticking to borrowing colours from already existing battlesprites from the Fire Emblem GBA games, which you can find in the spriters' resource thread in the sprites forum.

In the picture above, I only took the blues from Eliwood and kept the skin colour of Ephraim, your sprite still went over the colour limit by having 18 colours+1 background colour, try to pay attention to the colours while spriting, having a colour palette set beforehand could help. It's recommended you get rid of colours that look only slightly different, because it just means that you only need 1 colour and not 2 similar ones and it frees up a colour slot you could use for other shenanigans.

For the armour trims (gold shiny parts) and any gold part of the sprite, can just use the skin shades, you don't really need an extra colour just for the gold parts, unless you 1) have extra colour slots, or 2) already have gold, yellow, whatever in your palette already, or 3) really want to make the gold stand out (this only really counts if the 1st thing is true for your sprite)

You shouldn't be afraid to use a colour in more places than one, in fact, it's perfectly fine. Learning how to effectively use your limited colour palette to your advantage is a pretty important skill, but for now, borrowing colours from the official sprites is ok, everyone starts somewhere, it teaches you how the contrasts of the colours work etc., eventually you'll get used to how the colours work and you can select your own.

TL;DR: Pay attention to palette limit, burn similar colour shades in hell, borrow colours from official sprites and gold shiny parts can use skin shades.

[Armaada J]

On 3/25/2017 at 11:08 PM, BlazeKing said:

Pretty large improvement, that's for sure, however the colours are still a large issue.
Here I did some edits:

Pretty good job for a splice, I personally really like the pose you're going for, however I'll be blunt here, your colours are terrible, for now, I suggest sticking to borrowing colours from already existing battlesprites from the Fire Emblem GBA games, which you can find in the spriters' resource thread in the sprites forum.

In the picture above, I only took the blues from Eliwood and kept the skin colour of Ephraim, your sprite still went over the colour limit by having 18 colours+1 background colour, try to pay attention to the colours while spriting, having a colour palette set beforehand could help. It's recommended you get rid of colours that look only slightly different, because it just means that you only need 1 colour and not 2 similar ones and it frees up a colour slot you could use for other shenanigans.

For the armour trims (gold shiny parts) and any gold part of the sprite, can just use the skin shades, you don't really need an extra colour just for the gold parts, unless you 1) have extra colour slots, or 2) already have gold, yellow, whatever in your palette already, or 3) really want to make the gold stand out (this only really counts if the 1st thing is true for your sprite)

You shouldn't be afraid to use a colour in more places than one, in fact, it's perfectly fine. Learning how to effectively use your limited colour palette to your advantage is a pretty important skill, but for now, borrowing colours from the official sprites is ok, everyone starts somewhere, it teaches you how the contrasts of the colours work etc., eventually you'll get used to how the colours work and you can select your own.

TL;DR: Pay attention to palette limit, burn similar colour shades in hell, borrow colours from official sprites and gold shiny parts can use skin shades.

Ok, I tried to get it as close to what you did as I could. How did I do this time?

[Jotari]

I feel if you stick that sprite on a battle background the sword would look really awkward without clipping through the ground.