Pillow shading

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A pillow-shaded circle

Pillow shading is a habit of novice spriters who lack the experience to shade sprites properly.

Pillow-shading is the act of shading dark on all the edges and light on all the inside of a sprite while disregarding all other possible light behavior, giving the sprite the appearance of a fat pillow with no further depth or shape.

Although pillow-shading can work just fine for bursts of energy, such as energy projectiles in action shooters e.g. Mega Man, for most objects it is extremely rare for pillow shading to be even remotely acceptable, and it is also quite easy and lazy - as such, most spriters or pixel artists react strongly and angrily to the practice.

See Also

Sprite