Slic3y wrote:

Ive recently been iconning lately and have come up with a few things:



Hopefully you guys can give me a few tips to improve my icons.

Definitely not bad for being a "newbie" their actually pretty good especially for like a chat mmo but anyway moving on, first things first you can touch up and improve your base by doing a few simple things

Step #1 - Simplistic cartoon style and anime style is easy so we'll begin with that, you have a light tan color and a darker one for the outline, instead make a even darker one out of the outline to have 3 basic colors for the palette of your base.


Step #2 - Do not have even number of pixels from side to side, it creates a 2 line middle instead go for like a 3 pixel chin.


Step #3 - You don't want the poor guy feeling scrunched up so space him out a bit give his arms and legs a little breather room.


Step #4 - Now you need to go with the shading, since your using only 3 colors your not defining a bright light source which is sorta a self decision i personally do not like light sources they kill the feeling of the game.



Moving on, Tree's are definitely not my strong point lol, your tree looks decent for a beginner but if you wanted to make say a anime or cartoonish feeling tree i could help there.

Step #1 - Define a pallete(You can use the one in these pics or even the tree icon lol), you will need 3 green colors and 3 brown colors, but be sure that all 6 of these colors flow with the in-game turf art.


Step #2 - Build a leaf texture(i usually make 1-3 to keep the tree leaves out of repeation) start with the outline the shade toward the bottom of it with the second to darkest green then fill in the uncolored with the lightest green.


Step #3 - Tree size, i normally do my tree's in paint on a 160x192 scale which is 5 tiles wide and 6 tiles high, here you have enough room to start building your tree. Start by making the outline of the trunk try to give it a bit of life with the trunks coming out at the bottom or a hole in the tree etc. Don't forget to make the branches at the top wide apart or have a few spikes coming off of each other.


Step #4 - Start to place your leaf textures over the branches, i generally start at the bottom left and work my way around the bottom to get the base of the leaf top, then work my way upwards to give the tree a bit of a tip so to speak.



Side Noe: You can use any of the icons or palettes present here, this just a simple anime/cartoonish style of pixel art but a great reference if you need to learn a bit, anyway i hoped this helped you out.

No problem lol hoped it helped.