Graphic: Relic Dagger
 

Hey. I'm not really a graphics guy, and I've never done serious graphic development before, but I'm interested in improving my skill with graphics and hopefully raise the bar to a point where I'm able to produce acceptable graphics that can be used on servers. There's quite a bit to get used to in my opinion. I've still not grasped shading my graphics yet, so I'm currently working on changing that and getting used to shading different shapes to build up my confidence with shading.

This was one of those shading tasks I've given myself. It's a sprite sheet of a dagger. If y'all can leave me with feedback (constructive criticism) I'll greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

Wow, I really like that design. The shading could use some fleshing out, but it looks nice.

dayum. i couldnt do that if you gave me a day to make a dagger.

pretty sweet if yu ask me

Thanks for the positive feedback! I've made a few slight tweaks to the shading. I don't even know if the changes are visible, but they looked better when I was editing it (when the image was zoomed in 10x larger on my screen :3) I've made the handle and the outside of the blade ends a little smoother and the shading should be more noticeable.

add more shine to the actual blade. the blade and handle are both the same color/shaded the same way so essentially it looks like the same material.
what is the grey part in the middle?
on your diagnol views you have floating pixels (2 i think) that create a white/transparent gap in them near the bottom copper looking handle on the side. I suggest rotating by hand or just going over it and making touch ups
is that a ruby? if so give it more shine

tl;dr: Contrast your color selections more. If you look on the interweb of peoples art you will notice some of the advanced art's color range is majorly wide going from red to white, but that gives the "shine" feel.

Good start though

The white part in the middle is just the handle ;) Thanks for the feedback, I'll build on what you've given me.

Pardon the double post, but I've got another question I'd like to ask that I feel isn't worth its own thread. I'm just playing around with some more shading, and trying to shade a sword I made. I think I've got the actual sword to a standard I like, but I don't like the handle one bit. Can anyone give any tips on how I could shade it?

Hmm, it just seems like the handle is just an extension of the blade. I would recommend making it a darker color than the main blade. As for shading, I guess you can look at Riley's Sword thread for an example.

Here it is:

http://www.graalians.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6969

Thanks for the feedback, but I guess I wasn't specific enough when asking for guidance. I'm referring to the golden bar near the bottom of the blade. My bad!

Take a look at this.

http://www.graalians.com/forums/atta...1&d=1338354812

In here, it looks like he started with a dark color at the bottom of the hilts, and gradually shaded up from there. Also, lighter colors used for highlighting the hilt might look nice as well. I'm not much of a pixel artist, but take what you can away from this and look around on that thread I posted before. There's some great examples there. ^.^

I've already got that image saved and study it while making edits quite often, but thank you for the idea. It's proving to be quite hard shading smaller images. I had some feedback from Rexx (thank you) and he's told me I need to show some contrast between the colours I'm using to shade. It looks a damn sight better now.

this is what I used when I started to make swords and such. Perhaps it would serve you as well as it did me.

http://www.vbgore.com/Pixel_Art_Tutorials

This looks fantastic; thanks for the link. I'd rep you, but I've given to you recently ;)

It's okay haha. Just here to help :)

Great design! I like very much so.

nice keep it up:)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26870341/ba...ng%20sword.png
heres a quick preview of how to shade a metal sword. first you make the basic colors and the basic shape, then you add some details to it and make a plain shading, and eventually you can shade the rest of the sword: the outlines.
theres a way to do it in 3 steps and theres a way to do it in 2 steps. i personally like the one with 3 steps the best =P
i hope this was helpfull in some sort of way. just save the image to get a better view at the shading =]

i like what you have made so far! :D

Thanks for all of the positive feedback guys ;) I really appreciate it.
I'll have a go at this, thank you.

Looking good Emera :D

I've improved the contrast between the shading colours on the blade and handle. It looks better I think. I've not put the rotated diagonal sprites on the image since it's a pain rotating them using Rotsprite (I'm not rotating them in Paint.NET because it just gives me a screen full of pixel blur :3). Thanks for the feedback guys.

GIMP has a nifty rotate tool if you ever feel like trying it out.

It is looking WAY better now! good progress

I've used GIMP before, and I never really enjoyed using it. I'll check it out though if it's got some features that can help me out. Thank you!

if you will use gimp to rotate, make sure to index your image to avoid transparent/off colored pixels. you will probably still have to go through and do touch ups

Alright, thanks for the pointer. Touch ups aren't that hard, but Paint.NET just makes a mess :(

Edit: Instead of double posting, I'll just post this here. I managed to make this in about 7 minutes, and after those 7 minutes I didn't know what else to do. I threw it at Tizzee, and he showed me that you don't always have to shade from dark to light. The light hits the middle here and gives it a nice metallic shine. I still don't like it though :/ Also, if anybody could give me some pointers on dithering, I'd really appreciate it.

you should try choosing a specific point where you want the light to come from. i always use light from the upper right side. its easier working knowing what side it comes from.

http://www.graalians.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5264

you can find pointers on dithering here, although you probably would not dither a sword

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26870341/sh...ial-by-bas.png
i made this tutorial on how to shade a blade for my friend a while ago. then i remembered you made this thread so ill post it for you here aswell =P
you need to save the picture to see the adjustments better. otherwise the last three swords look too much alike ;)