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Idle Witchcraft Sprint 5

 This sprint hasn’t been my most productive due to some external circumstances, but I still did manage to finalize our first customer sprite, the knight! This guy proved to be quite a challenge. I haven’t had much experience doing character art, only winging it as best I can when a project calls for it. While far from perfect, I’m still really happy with the result!



I began the process by building out the pose I wanted with a sketch. I took a very loose approach to this as all I wanted was to get an idea of the features and idea I was trying to convey.



After this sketch, I kind of jumped the gun by going straight to flat colors. I tried to refine the details of the sketch while also figuring out the basic coloring, and I wasn’t very happy with where it was going, so I ended up tossing this attempt and restarting this step.


I realized here that trying to properly work out the details and color at the same time was biting off more than I could chew, so I decided to limit myself to a 1-bit palette until I finalized the shapes that I would then fill with color. This step probably took me the longest, as I refined and refined until I got to a point I was happy with. Using only black and white also helps me make my sprite more readable. Without multiple colors, I can only rely on lines and shapes to convey ideas, which hopefully will translate into easily identifiable features when I do color it in.



Once I was satisfied with the 1-bit sprite, I decided to start applying flat colors. This step was fun because I had a lot of room to play around and find a palette that I really liked!



Now finally came the most challenging part: shading. I haven’t got a lot of experience with shading, much less on a challenging material like metallic armor. I had to use a lot of references and ask for advice from friends, but eventually I was able to get to a point that me and my team were satisfied with. There are still parts that I wish I could have done better on, like the shading of the head and chest piece, but overall I’m very happy with the final product, and it’s time for me to move onto other tasks.



On a final note, one thing I notice comparing the final sprite to the 1 bit version is that all of the different features seem to pop a little more on the 1 bit. I think that the contrast between the black/white help each detail to stand out on its own. I think that next time I should pay more careful attention as I pick and apply my palette to ensure that I’m using contrast to bring out the details of my drawings.

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