damn, didn't look at your latest sword x)  

Made a set of Minecraft inspired tools.

i got lazy with the hoe rofl  

Posted by LavaClaw

Made a set of Minecraft inspired tools.
Attachment 6457
i got lazy with the hoe rofl

Nice, you should practice some AA :p  

Posted by Dylan

Nice, you should practice some AA :p

I keep trying to anti alias but it always turns out crap :<

EDIT: Tried anti aliasing the metal on the pick, turned out better I guess.

There's the comparison.  

Keep an outline, but don't make it too dark. Also, AA is for the inside so that the borders are softer. You seem to have done it to the background, and if it were used as a sprite, that wouldn't work. Other than that, nice work.  

Posted by Kondie

Keep an outline, but don't make it too dark. Also, AA is for the inside so that the borders are softer. You seem to have done it to the background, and if it were used as a sprite, that wouldn't work. Other than that, nice work.

Thanks, yeah I thought about that but on the tutorial they did it to both sides of the line so I thought it was okay. The pick still seems kinda rigid though, what am I doing wrong?  

On the left here is your original and on the right is my remake of it.



The major difference would be that I softened the outline, but kept it so that it wasn't too dark. I added highlights on the border where necessary to give it a metallic shine, but I never brought the inner highlights close to the edge so that it didn't contrast a lot and give a rigid look. I hope this helps. (The reason it may still look rigid is that it's a small image and AA doesn't really help on edges like that. I hope it helped you somewhat though.)  

Ah okay, makes a lot more sense now, the remake helped a lot. I'll see what I can do with this on my next piece of work. Thanks  

Posted by Kondie

Keep an outline, but don't make it too dark. Also, AA is for the inside so that the borders are softer. You seem to have done it to the background, and if it were used as a sprite, that wouldn't work. Other than that, nice work.

You can use AA on the outside of the sprite if the background It'll be on always stays the same color.  

You should assume that your sprite will have a dynamic background. The tileset isn't going to be one color after all...  

Made a pumpkin sword with some blood splattered on the bandages and blade. Tried smoothing the edges of the pumpkin with Kondie's technique but I didn't manage to get it smooth enough, Is it just the size of the graphic making it appear rigid like last time? What else could I improve with this too?  

Could reduce the colors, 26 is a lot. I played with the pumpkin. :3
 

Posted by Dylan

Could reduce the colors, 26 is a lot. I played with the pumpkin. :3

Its hard to have less colours and anti alias and add all these nice shading effects though
I see what you did to smoothen the edges of the pumpkin too.  

Posted by LavaClaw

Its hard to have less colours and anti alias and add all these nice shading effects though
I see what you did to smoothen the edges of the pumpkin too.

9 colors :p
 

Posted by LavaClaw

Its hard to have less colours and anti alias and add all these nice shading effects though
I see what you did to smoothen the edges of the pumpkin too.

It's not hard, you just have to be resourceful and disciplined. I find shifting hues when shading helps in recycling of colours.