First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

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darryl.revok
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by darryl.revok »

Espozo wrote:I made the character a bit less wonky looking in my opinion. I think the sword swipes can be improved to look more like the latter ones you made, but I don't feel like doing that right now. You could try to find a color somewhat in between the two, so the eyes and the sword swipe look good.
I think you found a good balance for the feet. Asides from the outline, is that all you changed? I think I'll integrate these changes with my design, and try incorporating a non-brown element, or a highlight into the boots. The file you're working with has a couple other weird mistakes I fixed yesterday, so I wouldn't worry about errant pixels unless you're bored. :)

Another weird little thing is that the boots are knee-high in the attack images but they're shorter in the walk. I think I'm going to make them all knee-high. I feel like it works better for a lot of frames because it separates the upper and lower leg into two easily distinguishable elements.

I redid the slash on the normal attack yesterday, actually. As I do this more, I feel like I get closer to what I actually want, so I go back and adjust it. The regular slash is a little weaker than the other ones, so it has a little less blue action, but I found that the nice contour curves look way better than the little twinkly thing I had for the first one I drew.
tepples wrote:Do you plan to scroll in 2 directions on each map (like SMB2, Metroid, and Mega Man) or in 4 directions (like SMB3)?
I'm not certain, but I think I could design for either if I better knew what the trade-offs would be for a game to have 4-directional scrolling. Mr. Gimmick is one of the most advanced games for the system and it only has 2-directional scrolling. I would prefer though, if it's not too much trouble, to at least have an engine capable of vertical scrolling. More like Metroid, where it will scroll vertically in a vertical shaft, unlike Mega Man 2, for example, which never scrolls vertically even if it's appropriate for the level design. With all of that said, if it fits within other design considerations, 4-directional scrolling would be the best.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

darryl.revok wrote:Asides from the outline, is that all you changed?
I did a bunch of random stuff, like in some frames, the legs where bent really weird to where it looked like there where 2 knees and weird stuff like that.
darryl.revok wrote: try incorporating a non-brown element, or a highlight into the boots.
I personally think they look fine. The skin color is too bright for a highlight for the boots.
darryl.revok wrote:The file you're working with has a couple other weird mistakes I fixed yesterday, so I wouldn't worry about errant pixels unless you're bored.
Wait, why didn't you just post the newest file you've made?
darryl.revok wrote:Another weird little thing is that the boots are knee-high in the attack images but they're shorter in the walk. I think I'm going to make them all knee-high. I feel like it works better for a lot of frames because it separates the upper and lower leg into two easily distinguishable elements.
I made the boots a little higher just now:
Slightly Better.png
Slightly Better.png (5.68 KiB) Viewed 3924 times
darryl.revok wrote:I found that the nice contour curves look way better than the little twinkly thing I had for the first one I drew.
I agree.
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darryl.revok
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by darryl.revok »

Espozo wrote:Wait, why didn't you just post the newest file you've made?
Sorry about that. I posted the first one when I made it, and then kept working on it. I mentioned earlier I was going to hold off of posting the individual frames while I was still tweaking them. Everybody's been so helpful though, so I don't mind. It just gets confusing when there are multiple versions.

Right now this is what I have for the walk and normal attack animations. I left off the uppercut attack because I want to rework it quite a bit and add in a few more frames. This image doesn't include any of your suggestions yet.

I'm thinking I'm going to time the speed of the attacks by their number of animation frames. So, since I'll consistently make these for 1/6th of a second, I want to add more frames at the start of the uppercut swing so it's slower to initiate. I'm going to think about how fast vs. strong I want these attacks to be when I'm animating them.
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Walk/Attack1 animations cycles draft 7-27-15
Walk/Attack1 animations cycles draft 7-27-15
Walk-Attack1.png (47.06 KiB) Viewed 3898 times
Sik
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Sik »

darryl.revok wrote:Even if I had 64 tiles per character, my walk cycle alone is 64 minus duplicate frames, so there may be some issues loading up the next animation.
Most mappers are ROM-based (meaning you just change banks), and banks contain several tiles, so you're just looking at writing a few bytes.
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darryl.revok
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by darryl.revok »

Added a new frame for the crouch back attack animation. Here are the individual frames for it. That made it a little smoother, but also made it slightly slower vs. a normal attack which was my main intention.

Next I'm going to do a new animation for drawing her sword, and figure out how I'm going to handle animation for attacking with sword sheathed vs. attacking with sword drawn. I want it to be a little quicker if the sword is already drawn, but drawing the sword early would limit her mobility.
Attachments
Animation for Crouch Back Attack with new frame added. 7-27-15
Animation for Crouch Back Attack with new frame added. 7-27-15
NewCrouchAttack7-27-15.gif (1.54 KiB) Viewed 3859 times
Crouch Back Attack Frames - Draft - 7-27-15
Crouch Back Attack Frames - Draft - 7-27-15
CrouchAttackFrames.png (16.86 KiB) Viewed 3859 times
Erockbrox
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Erockbrox »

But playing these games once again stirred the desire to make my own contribution to the gaming library of my favorite consoles.
This is exactly how I feel. As if making a new game is a contribution to gaming.
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Picto
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Picto »

These all look pretty neat. Smooth animations, but not impossible within NES limits.

I wouldn't be opposed to putting some sort of design on her boots, but I also think it's fine how it is—Up to you really. Her wearing a leotard already makes her arms and legs visible, kind of like Mario's overalls and Link's tunic
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Pik wrote:These all look pretty neat. Smooth animations, but not impossible within NES limits.
I'm honestly jealous of CHR rom on the NES. Really, with a mapper chip, you can have just about as many frames of animation you want, can't you? Not even the SNES can do that, all because of vram and how slow it is to update it...
Pik wrote:I wouldn't be opposed to putting some sort of design on her boots
I really just don't have a clue what the design would be.
tepples
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by tepples »

Espozo wrote:I'm honestly jealous of CHR rom on the NES. Really, with a mapper chip, you can have just about as many frames of animation you want, can't you? Not even the SNES can do that, all because of vram and how slow it is to update it...
On the Super NES, you're also typically displaying far more and larger sprites. An NES scene can have up to 128 tiles' worth of sprites. On Super NES, 128 distinct sprite tiles take up 4096 bytes, which is well within what can be DMA'd to the PPU.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

You can still animate backgrounds. :wink: Having something like a Metal Slug style boss on the NES would be awesome, even if it would obviously take the background.

This is what I mean:

Image
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Picto
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Picto »

A boss of that scale on the NES would be the coolest thing ever. I doubt it could go full-on Metal Slug, but I'd like to see where it goes.
I really just don't have a clue what the design would be.
Maybe adding shine would work? A bright pixel or two to represent some gleam. It's not a design, but it's something.
Sik
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Sik »

Espozo wrote:You can still animate backgrounds. :wink:
For the record, you reminded me how After Burner literally has the nametables in CHR-ROM (which makes it much faster to change them, at the cost of needing more ROM =P)
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darryl.revok
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by darryl.revok »

Hey ya'll. Still working on this. I've only got a few more animations I want to add before I start working on getting her into a game engine.

Here are some of the new and improved animations. Any thoughts?
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SwordGirlAnimations7-31-15.gif
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by Drew Sebastino »

How the heck can you animate so fast?
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dougeff
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Re: First Sprite Designs - Opinions?

Post by dougeff »

It kinda looks like she's not wearing anything below the waist but thong underwear, and after she pulls the sword out, she's not so much walking, but shimmying and shaking her butt. Just saying'.
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