I'm working on improving my gravity gun sprite, and I need some tips on improving it.

Sprite:


The top-left is the latest one.

Pretty sure there is an art dump for a reason. Critiquing and posting of artwork goes there.

This is related to modding, so it kinda fits here.

The "claw" in the middle looks very weird. I'm not exactly sure what the best thing to do to it would be but it definitely looks weird.

Uhh, looks like you got shading down right. The other critiques I have in terms of colour or shading is that a darker background and more contrast would make it more dynamic.

I think biggest place for improvement is the monotonous tone of the body of the gun. If you look at Vanilla sprites, even most well regarded sprites in general, they don't have a large bit of one colour, unless it's one piece, like an armour plate or something. I think even changing the center most body bit or even just the stock or the handle? Grip? Forgot the right word.

Anyways, you should really ask CoolJoeSmith or Toes or someone like that.

The reason the "middle claw" looks odd is because you sprited your gun at a full side view. If the third claw lines up with the foreground bottom claw (as it would if you're spriting side on and if this thing is somewhat symmetrical), then it would be blocked by the foreground claw and thus not seen.

EDIT: DDEEEEeeerrp totally tired and didn't realize it was the HL2 grav gun.
EDIT2: Restoring my 2 minute sprite anyway upon request:

I worked on this last night, and this is what I have:



I added the notch/vent thing that the HL2 gravity gun has and adjusted the claws. The 2 top rows of images are the latest ones.

Here's my edit on LFOW's.

I think artistic license should always be taken.

It looks less Gravity Gun-like. I added the notch instead of a spot of color. The back handle/grip is also a single color on the HL2 gravity gun.

Edit: Some Gravity Gun reference pictures.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/reviews/914642_20041112_screen106.jpg
http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/downloads/1/18/17368/thumb_620x2000/gravitygun-halflife2.jpg