How do you replicate the DS art style?

[Moonratds]

I've played the game a lot. I've seen the fantastic artwork there is to offer in it.

 

Reactivating a 3 year old account because I've gotten back into modding for the game. Though what I want to know is how to get the artstyle just right. I can do the drab colors and squiggly line, but something is off about the things I draw.

Do any of you have tips on how to get the style right? I'm gonna keep banging at it myself.

[Kunomori]

It would be easier to comment seeing what you did so far, but oh well...
from what i saw myself, the things that should be kept in mind while drawing in DS style is:
•low saturated colours
•strong lines of actions always
•a good silhouette
•and very loose, 'scribbled' and fluid lines.
Its the ideal if you could find something between a sketchy and an actual lineart look
Be really careful with the colours... in DS we dont see really saturated colours anywere, and also you wont see any character having too many difrerent colours. Their skin tone also is ridiculously pale. Wilson sprite for example is literally painted white.

The illustrations usually have a light paper texture over them, and its lineart are made with a considerably thin brush, passed over the same place many times.
Talking about the portraits for the selection screen, youll totally want to make a white background outline for your character's silhouette, like he is a cut piece of paper, and make a projected shadow of this paper on whatever is below it.
For more fine details on the drawings, notice how its rare for any empty space to be found, where no little scribbled line is present. Mostly youll find this "clean spaces" on faces, but even there its very common to find expression marks, little stumbles or whatever... 
And notice how the scribbles arent random. Wilson's hair is an awesome example, the lines follow his hair strands direction. Look on the spiders too, its the same on them. They help to build the character's dimension.
And work on the character's charisma! Same-Face-Animu-Disease is strictly prohibited. See how every character is completely different from the other, mainly on their head shapes!

And now for sprites itself, it seems theres no shadows at all, just flat colours. They also have a really thick and strong lineart as border of each body piece... you can also see some stray lines from the lineart, like the person who drew ran his brush many times over the same place in order to achieve thickness.
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Sorry for the long post, but i really hope this helps you! Good luck~

[MidrealmDM]

I personally use GIMP.
Its a good idea to make a backup copy of your work, in case you decide to go back and change something.
This is the technique I use for inventory items and object ANIM files.

I usually start by making an image of 512 x 512 or larger
When making the original image, dont worry about color pallete or outlines or anything, just get it to represent what you want.
After getting the image you like the way you like it.

Add a new layer This will be your "Lines" layer
Draw/Trace around your image to create the black outline, short scribble-like strokes, don't worry if its rough
Because you are doing this on a new layer, you don't have to worry about damaging your original image if you make a mistake

On the original or "colors" layer, (You might want to make a copy of the layer first)
I apply an 'Oilify' filter to make it look more like a oil painting and then
Posterize the colors down to 9 to 14 colors, items in Don't starve has a very limited number of colors.
If your item no longer has the highlights and shadows you want, use the dodge/burn too to add them, use a tool setting with a hard edge.

Add another layer and put it behind your colors layer, the "Shadow" layer
scribble in a black line 'shadow' to appear underneath the item.

You should now be ready to export your image,
First save your Gimp file at full size
Then resize the image to the smaller size for the game (I use 128x128 pixels for Anim files or 64x64 for inventory items)
Export the image as a .png and there you have it.

When exiting GIMP it will prompt you to save the gimp file, if you do, you will be saving the reduced size copy.
If you think you will be coming back to edit the image again, its best to keep a larger sized version to work with.

[ColeenMcCleod]

I personally found it useful to extract the Inventory Images into a viewable format, so I could use them as reference points.  I keep them open in paint while I work on my picture.  Personally, I use ArtRage for drawing in, as I find it extremely flexible, and a whole heck of a lot less expensive than certain other art programs   It's also really nice to have a good drawing tablet (I use a Bamboo, personally).

I usually start by making a layer and using it as my initial sketch layer.  I'll hide it later on so it doesn't show in the final image, but it's where I rough out the general idea of the image.  Over that, I usually draw the black and white line layer.  Then I'll do one more more color layers beneath the black and white line art layer. Beneath the line art layer but over the color layers I usually do two shadow layers, one for deep shadows and one for lighter shadows.  I set the transparency of those layers to 80% and 60%, respectively, and use the hard light setting.  If I need highlights or any special effects, I do those on a separate layer.  Beneath every layer I do the ground shadow, similar to how Midrealm explained above.

I think it's important to note that every artist has his or her own style, of course, so you'll probably never be able to duplicate the look *exactly*, but that's ok!  Above all, just play around with it and have fun.