Graphics

To be honest Phoebius, I think the top title screen looks better than the one below it. The options screen looks really, really fantastic.

The waterfalls on the second title screen would look better without the rocks at the bottom. You could also try moving the rocks at the top, use the waterfalls between the rocks and then placing calm water at the bottom to give it a better effect.

As for the rocks in the background, just edit them a little so that they don't look the same. Give the rocks some irregularity, and remember, no two rocks are exactly the same.

 

Awesome phobeus!

 

Might as well post the old title card thing I did way back for this project, its not quite the sonic style but it helps to have a variety of ideas for inspiration.

 

<!--quoteo(post=246805:date=Nov 17 2008, 10:21 AM:name=Phoebius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Phoebius @ Nov 17 2008, 10:21 AM) [/quote]

I swear I've seen that Sonic before... Is that influenced off a model of Sonic?

Oh and nice use of the Sonic Crackers title Cards

 

Perhaps you should make an attempt at "pre-rendering" the title screen. I.e. getting a screenshot of a model and then reducing colours.

Just because tbh I'm not a huge fan of that title screen. Too much dithering, especially on Sonic himself.

The Crackers-like title card is a good idea though.

 

That title card font and I have never got along very well. The crackers-style title card is a good idea, though.

Wouldn't something similar to ITC Korinna fit much better? Compared to other Sonic fonts it's more Art Nouveau than Deco but it's similar to the font being used and the Sonic 1 font, and I think it's more readable than the current one.

I suggest this font while watching a rerun of Frasier -- in case you're wondering why I've pulled this one out of the air, that's why.

 

Tails looks extremely cute and adorable

However, I don't like Knuckles. His head is shaped like some deformed egg and IMO the "hair" is too long. Also the steps between the colors seem to be a mess with knuckles. It looks not good.

 

Knuckles' "Ending pose" or the sprite?
And about his head looking like a deformed egg, look here.

 

^personally I'd get rid of those teeth in the hit frames. They look much better without.

also

I hope these aren't finalised because they're a pretty big step back from the rest.

 

Could you elaborate, please? I share the notion that Knuckles looks extremely awkward compared to the other large character sprites, and I would even go as far as to suggest that the pose in general doesn't look good as pixel art. It's going to take a lot of work to fix what you've got right now. The shading is extremely rough, the shape of the head doesn't appear to be consistent, and the positions of the "dreads" don't make sense in contrast with the perspective of the rest of the pose.

If his head is supposed to be turning to the right, it's not made very obvious, and it should be modified somehow to reflect that. You'll notice that most of the large sprites don't try to cover more than one particular view, though; for example, Sonic 1's Sonic didn't try and take a 3D view on his spikes—it only showed them from the side. I think a similar practice would help Knuckles look a bit less awkward, in this case. All of the other characters follow that guideline except for Knuckles.

 

it's amazing what you can do with just a few pixels

 

Actually, I was talking about the ending sprite. I totally missed the in-game sprite you posted earlier, which I don't have any significant qualms with. Sorry about that.

I do think the Knuckles ending sprite could use some work, though (as I described above).

 

hmm

 

Why do you guys use such dark colors? It makes a lot of the graphics look very muddy, at least on my monitor.

 

Actually I think all of them need to use more colors in general -- they could have much smoother coloring than they do, I would assume, and doing so would make the shading areas look less like a weather map than they do. The lines between colors are very jaggy.