MSPAINT FTW
Yeah i'm too lazy to figure out photoshop or gimp

I can highly recommend getting over that laziness because your workflow will improve exponentially when you can use layers and (re)index images and paint with transparency and oh god everything. MSPaint is fine if you just want to do lineart and colour but the more fully featured packages give you so many more options that can help you speed up how you work and thus improve your productivity. Sorry to any paint purists, but it's like saying "I prefer to use midi cause it's simpler than learning how to mix tracks and synthesise or record my own music" or "I prefer to code everything in batch CMD cause it's easy and C++ is scary". Your options open up a lot more when your software doesn't have limitations built-in.

One more analogy: why try to learn to fly in a room with a low roof?
[/rant]

Meh if i feel like i want layers ill use Graphics gale.

With Photoshop, if you open a sprite that is in palette then the pic will already be in palette and you can edit it and save it and still be in palette unless you change the format.

Well, I usually do this when spriting in photoshop:
1) make the sprite, in any palette. But it is recommended to get the CC palette from a thread here that I forget which, it's called CC swatches or something.
2) copy a vanilla .bmp, put transparent pink over all of it, and make that a template for every other sprite you're gonna use.
3) duplicate, copy, resize, paste, and ta-da, your sprite is correctly in palette (but yeah, there will be some kind of dithering of sorts, doesn't matter unless you're a perfectionist).
4) ???
5) FROPIT!

I say you shade it lighter in increments of three and three pixels.
I'd make you an edit but I'm not on my main.

I think this REALLY needs to be cleaned up a little. A bit of banding and strange light reflections.

Not to mention pillow shading
Oh and a complete lack of respect over the shape of it.

Hello this is my first sprite... Its meant to be a gun.


EDIT:Now with added resprite action.

Non: what are you going fr? Do you have a reference?

NCB: I think your primary problem right now is that you are trying to avoid simplistic shapes and trying to emulate the complicated shading style of CC by, well, spraying pixels haphazardly over your sprite. The core of spriting is that every pixel is completely intentional and has a well defined purpose, and in addition not thinking about pixel placement makes your sprite look bad. You'd be better of doing flat, monotone blobs than this.

Here's some of the ways you could do the first gun. I don't really know what you were trying to do so I made several variations.

Go lok up some shading tutorials, there are several on the front page to get you started.

Thank you for helping me out, it looks way better than mine...
What i was going for was a MA5B rifle with a wood stock.

Here i am trying to mock up a sniper. I read the tutorials and edit my sprite a bit.

Be careful, as both pics carry noob sprites.

Hey guys, I'm posting here for a critique of one of my first sprites, and assault rifle very loosely based on the coalition assault rifle.
I think its pretty good, but I don't know anything about spriting...

PS: For you Photoshop users I have included the color table I use to put my sprites in palette.
Simply Go Image -> Mode -> Index Color, then when the dialouge comes up click the dropdown next to palette and select custom. In the custom dialogue box, hit load and choose the file I attached. Then hit OK, and its done. (still need to save out as a .bmp tho)

No offense Non, but I think your version of his gun is a bit of a downgrade. By homogenizing the tones you've pretty much ruined the shape of it, it looks very flat now. By making it darker you've made it look like a background piece, reducing the visibility and readability. You've also ruined the unique barrel with random nose and you've butchered the nice hue shifted outline.

Reef: keep your gun as-is, you are a good spriter.

Non: Your helmet is looking decent though. I'll do an edit tomorrow.

Non - Outline.. Thats whats missing, also some stray colors seem to be.

Reef - Ditto with Contrary, But also, Outlining makes everything prettier.

Like so:

Also I guess While Im here



Helmet is a tad too big.. I think atleast.

Coop: You are amazing man, I don't know if I'm qualified to give you critique. But if there is any flaws in your sprites, they would be:
The ankleplates. The lighting looks strange to me, and the interaction between the ankle in the foot is a bit strange. These two things throw the perspective off a bit.
The shoulder plates are lit weird as well, I moved the highlights over a bit.
The head is very good, but it's somewhat irregular to have a full sideways head. I wouldn't recommend it, especially with how far back your foreground shoulder is.
You could also use black more evenly, but that's a small thing.

I made a rough edit.

Non: That looks really good, actually. I'd like to see unrotated parts before I can really critique, though.