How to criticise.

[Fox♠]

Okay. You guys need to learn what's good crit, and what's bad. So - here's a little 'guide'.

Here's vaati's first fake. I've got his permission to use it for this guide, and it's good, because there are errors and stuff, but also good points so-

Good crit:

Okay. First off, although it DOES capture a whale's image, there are several things wrong. Perhaps the main thing is the tail, something is wrong about it, it looks like it's attached to the whale's side, and there's no real need for the checkerboard shading on the tail. The rest oft he shading looks wierd, it should be more rounded, to give a smoother look. It is a wet animal, don't forget. =P
And make the outlines less straight, make it more rounded.

But, on a plus side, it's easy to tell it's a whale, but it doesn't look too much like a normal whale, which is good. Also, it has potential to be a great fake. Keep up the work. =)

Bad crit:

I think it's good, but the shading and tail are wierd.



(I didn't choose this sprite because I had alot bad to say about it, I just find that pointing bad things out is better than pointing good things out. It helps in improvement.)

Use this as a guideline for the next time you decide you dislike (or, for that matter, like) someones sprite.
Remember, kids. Critique is your friend!

That there guide is from my good friend Noise, you see, he never did finish his guides so I'm gonna do the rest for him.(He gave me alot more critique over MSN on that piece, he's the one who pretty much got me to look at spriting in a better way.)

Now it's one thing to give critique, but reciving it can be hard, especially if it's a tougher critic rating your work, but none the less, you should take in what they say and use it, work on what they said.

for example.

The Noise: Vaati, you have ALONG way to go with that, you need to fix the tail, the shading, the outline, the palette looks dated etc.

Vaati:Hmmm, you make valid points, valid points indeed, well I'll take what you've said and work on my sprite, thanks =D

After accepting The Noises' crit I managed to turn my first piece into this:

When giving critique you should always elaborate, whether you like the piece or not, a good review should be atleast 1 or 2 lines. Just saying "OMG it suxors i hate it." is just as bad as "OMG rox I love it 9.55555/11" Both of which are unacceptable and against the community rules. When you add an elaboration your post should look like "Wow, IMO that really sucks, the shading's terrible(not to mention in the wrong style), the outlining and anatomy are awful(the right arm looks far too fat compared to the left, and there's no effort in studying human anatomy) on top of all that you stole the legs from Bean's custom TOTW Zero." Or "Wow, I really like this piece, the shading is perfectionate, I see nothing wrong with the anatomy or outlining. Good work!"

Well, 90% of you will ignore this and carry on breaking rules by spamming up the HotS, which in every case I see you doing so I shall report you, all of you, it's YOUR fault a lot of our good spriters left, it's YOUR fault the critics left and it's YOUR fault that most of you are still doing mixes, recolours and rather shabby customs(to those who do customs, at least you guys make an effort, you deserve good crit to improve, too bad you don't dish it out yourselves).

Wow, it would appear some of this didn't make too much sence, it is early, I'll fix it up later, don't worry k?

 

[Signomi]

Hm. Useful information such as this deserves to be stickied.