Mr. SU's VS Sprite Emotion Edits

[Mr. SU]

Howdy Gamers! I'm currently working on a mod of Pokemon Reborn that has a short, lighthearted take on Reborn's story and I want to use the VS sprites used before battles as character mugs used for dialogue. I'm still a novice to sprite art and art in general so I'd really appreciate any feedback I could get in regards to these sprite edits I've done so far. I've just been focusing on Decibel since they're going to be the protagonist and I'm nearly done with my checklist but I figured I'd post here since the sprite edits chat in the Reborn discord server hasn't been super helpful. Here's what I've got so far and a few examples of them being used in-game.

 

First off we got the varying levels of pissed off trio

 

 

For nervous and sad I just could not be bothered to go with Decibel's normal eyebrows cause in their original vs sprite it's like 4 pixels so I said fuck it and just give them jet black eyebrows cause Clarity > Realism

In particular I'm very iffy about moving the eyes in the nervous sprite but I think it turned out alright?

 

The shouting duo was kind of an emotional journey and I don't even know how they turned into anything resembling passable. I copy pasted Terra's mouth then I kept editing them over and over and somehow it turned into something passable over several days of minor edits

The nice thing about this being a light-hearted mod is I can make these look silly and have fun with them.

 

Lastly I have thinking Decibel.

I used Kiki's sprite as a reference but honestly I have no fucking idea what's going on with the shading here cause it looks genuinely random to me (There is most likely a method to the madness that I don't understand since I'm a novice) and I tried over and over to replicate it until I said fuck it and made the eyelids flat colors.

This is what I'm talking about btw

If anyone has any advice on shading the eyelids for thinking Decibel it would be greatly appreciated. I also really gotta fix the eyelashes for thinking Decibel but I'm not really sure what shape to give them.

 

The only two emotions I got left on my emotion edit checklist for Decibel are surprised and embarrassed and I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do with those other than that I want them to both look really funny.

 

Here's some examples I got of them in-game so far.

 

Also on another note:

Florinia

Things are happening here.

 

[Espeon]

Though I did some sprite art last year, I'm certainly no expert. From my experience and the advice I read online back when I was spriting, however, you just have to try out different pixel placements when working on parts of an image. For the closed eyes in the in-thought emotion, for example, try making the lines for the eyes less curved, see how that looks, try making them more curved, try moving the whole line up, down, right, left, etc. I'm afraid there is no strict logic when it comes to sprite art, as least not as far as I'm aware of; it's a practice makes perfect kind of thing. It does seem like you're on the right track, so keep it up!

 

I hope this advice helps you out. Good luck with the project!

[Mr. SU]

34 minutes ago, Espeon said:

Though I did some sprite art last year, I'm certainly no expert. From my experience and the advice I read online back when I was spriting, however, you just have to try out different pixel placements when working on parts of an image. For the closed eyes in the in-thought emotion, for example, try making the lines for the eyes less curved, see how that looks, try making them more curved, try moving the whole line up, down, right, left, etc. I'm afraid there is no strict logic when it comes to sprite art, as least not as far as I'm aware of; it's a practice makes perfect kind of thing. It does seem like you're on the right track, so keep it up!

 

I hope this advice helps you out. Good luck with the project!

Thank you! I've noticed it really does come down to trial and error, changing a few pixels then zooming in and zooming out and eventually testing how it looks in-game. In general I've been having a lot of fun with these so far even if they've been difficult in spots. I think the most important thing with starting out is having reasonable goals and making things fun for yourself, i.e. making really silly expressions lol.

 

Thankfully the other characters I plan on going all-out with emotion-wise like Terra, Blake, Cal and Victoria all have much more defined eyebrows unlike Decibel, whose left eyebrow is covered up by their beautiful hair and their right eyebrow is like 4 pixels. With the minor characters, I'm gonna be reasonable with myself and just do like 2 or 3 emotions. I am not looking forward to restoring Samson's upper hair though.

 

Radomus's 20+ hats are not real and they cannot hurt me.