A couple hours ago I was playing around with Cortex Command when I noticed my copy of Infamous laying on my desk. A minute or two later I decided to base my first mod on it so far. A few hours of work and I've got a basic lighting strike weapon and a sprite. The lighting was easy but I'm having serious issues with the sprite, nothing seems look good to me especially the color. So I've brought my work in progress here to get help and hopefully make the sprite less craptastic and maybe explain a few things I hope to achieve.

1. I intend to bind a key to a simple, rapid lightning bolt ala the game. The rest of the powers will just be normal weapons.
2. I hope to make a sort of electrical health drain skill, I'll try to bind this to a key too.
3. The ability to cling to and maybe even jump off walls. I'll probally try to do the same way the Darklones do it with an assigned key
4.A way to make the actor survive a high fall, else the cling thing will be useless since he won't have a jetpack besides just hig impulse limits.

Blah blah blah, I could go on with my concept forever but that never got a mod anywhere so without further ado, the sprite. Please comment/critizise or just generally insult, it all still counts as feedback!


And a picture for reference

It needs shading. Now it's just solid colours.

The reference has cargo pants.
The sprite has tight pants.
?

Actually it's 4 different shades of a creamy yellow like a guide I read said to do, but I can't for the life of me figure out shading. I figured I'd only need 4 colors, really dark, dark, light and really light going from a really dark outside into a really bright inside but that just looks like solid colors too. Should I just add more shades or am I applying the shades in the wrong spot?



That's the other issue I was having with the sprite. I just couldn't figure out how to jam cargo pockets onto the pants since the sprite is so small. I was thinking of just making it an attachment or would that not work?

Use slightly darker colors to make a shadow of a pocket, and make the end of the pants kind of hand off of the ankles, don't make it skin tight.

You want 3 shades for every color.
You'd probably want to customize your own color by double clicking if you're in, say, MSPaint, the colors, and then "Define Custom Color", make it a bit lighter or darker by changing the "Lum" or luminosity.

You wand a normal, a slightly darker, and a slightly brighter shade.
The shade I see on the example on the shirt looks like the bright color.
When you look at the sprite, make the light come from above, and from the right on the body and head.

Do that, and you'll have a nice sprite.

http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html
That might help out.

LOL!

Auuuaugh!
Pillow shading~

Alright, I darkened the palette I was using to stop it from being so bright and to make the different shades more distinct. How's this?

B+

I can kinda make out the pecs and stuff.
Thats good!
Now add in some detail, I believe in you!

add some wrinkles to the sweater, now it looks kinda blank.

Would wrinkles just be a line of darker pixels extending out from the armpit?

Lol, just use the darkest of the three colors you have an make random lines, and tweak until you think it looks good.

My tip:
You are your harshest critic.
Keep messing with the sprite until you are impressed by yourself.

Well it looks slightly better then the first color wise but I can barely see the damn cargo pockets I put on. I'm no perfectionist though and I'd say I did a decent job on my first sprite so it doesn't turn people off of the mod right away. So do you guys think it's decent enough to start working on the lightning effect and whatnot or should I devote some more time to the actor?

*Edit*
Sprite removed for general uselessness, see page 2!!

it would look better if you made it an animated sprite that grew from the guys hand, but that takes more time. also add lots of glow, there are some topics about it somewhere.

Oh that's what I intend to do, I just wanted to know how the lightning looked like lightning or if I should draw it differently.

*Edit*
Gif Remove, see page 2