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[Ghoti]

Well as long as all the other sprites look like colored pieces of cardboard stacked on top of eachother. Then there wont be a problem! 

[ramondarkdemon]

Here:

(I add some effects with paint)

[Amazigh]

Here:

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(I add some effects with paint)

The outer layer is made from flat/angular lines, while the next layer is made from bumpy/wiggly lines, and then the final layer is a mix of flat/smooth and flat/angular lines.
I'd suggest you make all of your areas have a similar style of lines eg: only use one of the three types of line I mentioned above.

[ramondarkdemon]

Here:

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[close]

(I add some effects with paint)

The outer layer is made from flat/angular lines, while the next layer is made from bumpy/wiggly lines, and then the final layer is a mix of flat/smooth and flat/angular lines.
I'd suggest you make all of your areas have a similar style of lines eg: only use one of the three types of line I mentioned above.

ugggh thanks??

[TheHappyFace]

what he means is that the sprite looks a bit odd due to the variety in styles mixed in this one design.
some lines look a bit bumpy although you might not see that the same since you got the design in your head.
I would say: straighten up that part is the most important thing.
also adding some more shading would give the viewer more clues about the 3d shape.

[sirboomalot]

Well folks, I have just made my very first sprite for anything EVER.

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Now tell me how to fix it.

[xenoargh]

Well... it's basically using a riot of colors, lacks any lighting to tell us about shape and form, and it's under-detailed.

Suggest that your first step be to convert it to grayscale, then give it a single, generic hull color, then slowly break down each part, giving it lighting and shadow to give it a 3D form.  You may want to start over again, with a fighter, to learn the ropes.

[sirboomalot]

Hmmm, ok, I guess the colors ARE a bit overboard... the ship I would make if I knew how to make a good ship would be a ship with mostly black armor but with bright colorful light coming from any and all parts of the ship not covered in that armor, and pouring from the cracks between the armor plates. If I also knew how to mod it into the game it would be a fast ship that uses mostly lasers of all kinds... Am I going to be able to make the kind of ship I want without photoshop? If so, what image editing program should I use?

Oh, and in case it is useful in any way, here is what I did to an onslaught to make that sprite. If you looked at a normal image of the onslaught you could probably see what my ship would be like without the crazy colors.

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[xenoargh]

You can't really go about it like this; you're just applying filters here.  I get what you want to do, but this won't get you there.

You need to build the art up, starting with form and light.  You need to build it up, starting from deep grays and defining the surfaces and light and darkness, then add the "lights" in the places you need.  If you're not familiar with classical painting ideas / how to draw, you need to learn how to do that first.  This stuff isn't all that easy; start with a fighter, learn the basics of shading and how pixel detailing works before trying anything huge.

You certainly don't need Photoshop; GIMP is just as good for stuff like this, and it's free.

[sirboomalot]

Heh, ok. I'll download gimp and try to create a fighter from gray. Any other tips before I start?

[xenoargh]

Well, look at good examples of well-shaded fighters for some hints about how to create some form from a smallish number of pixels and study them up close to see how they were done.  

For a good example, I'd say look at David's dagger_trp.png; it's a good example of what can be done with a very small number of pixels and careful attention to detail

[FlashFrozen]

Those, glowy ships and that black armor / color red seams make me think of

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TRonn!

It's just the simple glowing edge stylize will make it all different colors

Just as a expansion on your original idea but making it slightly more.. coherent...

Examples:

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[sirboomalot]

WOW... I hadn't realized that I was thinking of tron, but that is exactly the kind of thing I was looking to make right there... Was there an easy way to make those images or was it just amazing skillz at spriting? Can you tell me how I can make something like that?

[FlashFrozen]

It's a multi step process,

This won't be 100% accurate, but here's a rough guide of what I did,

Clicky:

Spoiler

Create a copy of the original sprite, so you have 2 copies of the onslaught total.

use a glowing edge stylize on one of them edge width 1, edge brightness 20, smoothness 15

This will be used for the white crisscrossing grids you see on top of the black armor 

select the other copy layer

use a glowing edge stylize on one of them edge width 1, edge brightness 3, smoothness 1

This will be used for the tron glow

Erase some parts from the Tron glow layer ( 1,3,1 layer) so that the crisscrossing grid layer ( which is below ) appears from underneath.

once your happy, go to image => adjustments => hue/saturation => drag the saturation slider to 0 for both layers to make them black and white.


now this is the semi tricky part. getting the color you want.

working with the tron glow layer go to image => adjustments => hue/saturation => => tick colorize =>drag the hue into the color you want =>  adjust the brightness also,

now with a colored layer, image => adjustments => brightness/contrast and drag contrast to 100 to make the highlights stand out more, and increase brightness if necessary,

repeat:  image => adjustments => brightness/contrast

do this until the lines standout visibly

When satisfied, duplicate the tron layer, on the 2nd copy tron layer, hit filter =>  blur => gaussian blur to make it glow.

on the 2nd tron layer, switch the blending mode into linear dodge(add) and you should be done.

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[xenoargh]

The second one's pretty cute!  Good use of the glowing edges; really pretty nice considering it's a filter  

Here, I tried an edit: