Neel - Sprite Progression (Patreon)

Hello everyone! I just thought I'd post an image showing the progression of a character sprite. This is Neel (who doesn't have a last name).

These are the steps I usually follow for creating a new sprite.

1. Posing - I build the pose from a 3D model to give myself a foundation to quickly sketch from. These models are somewhat limited in their articulation and have some other issues. It's really difficult to get the head the right size because the head and face are disproportionate to each other. I nearly always have to further adjust the head. The necks are weird, the shoulders don't really move the way real shoulders do - they tend to be stiff and square so you can't make them look properly relaxed. The hips and spines don't move naturally. The hands are weird - you cannot position the thumbs naturally in a lot of cases...etc, etc.

So these are good for a base but you can tell from my sketches that I make a lot of changes as I'm sketching to adjust the pose.

2. Sketches of body, the hair/clothes. I didn't focus a lot on Neel's hands (I didn't even bother to pose them in the 3D model. LoL. I knew they'd be in his pockets and just live there permanently so I didn't fuss with them too much. He has hands - he has fully sketched hands, even. But they're just kind of low-effort because they are hidden.

3. Flat colours - pretty self explanatory. Neel does have a proper body under his clothes, as all the sprites do, but I didn't really feel the need to show it. LoL. Coming up with a colour scheme for characters is always a bit tricky - especially for side characters like this, who I do not have a clear mental image of when I'm going in. Often I have to do a lot of playing around with colours but in Neel's case, I decided to make him a red head and green is kind of a natural colour choice due to the contrast. And I only did one colour swap for his clothes (he just looked better in darker clothes, than the lighter palette I originally had for him (originally the hoodie was a lighter green-grey).

5. Finally, shading. Again, his body is fully shaded but it'll never show up in the game so no need to show it here. Neel is a Neo Human, like Quill. And I've gone through a lot of back and forth over whether they all look totally human or if some have some in-human features and what would those be?

I eventually decided that Neel has unusual eyes just because I think it helps the player visually to remember that most of the characters in this route are not human. But otherwise he looks fully human

I like how Neel turned out - he turned out pretty similar to how I wanted for his overall vibe. 

He's a "hacker" type of character and you meet him in Chapter 5 (poor Neel has his date interrupted by Morgan - he's not happy about it. He just wants to go on an uninterrupted date!). He and his partner are fairly minor characters and only show in a few scenes but aid the protagonists when things heat up later in the route. He's a good guy even though we don't really get to know him extremely well.

He doesn't have much of a backstory though it is hinted that he used to use his skills for illicit purposes. But he's turned over a new leaf and no longer does illegal things...usually. Later, when there is a communication blackout preventing the characters from contacting anyone outside the city for help, Neel is the one that is trying to break through that barrier.

He also sneaks around in some systems he shouldn't be in and learns some critical information that gives the protags a head's up that things are about to go south.

Overall, I like how his design turned out - I think his hair colour looks quite nice with that skin tone. And, really, can you go wrong with a red/green colour scheme?