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  

Posted by Jester Lapse

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.



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  

Posted by Jester Lapse

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