Slime Salad

Baconlabs wrote:The bright lines on the face are especially silly, as it looks like the armadillo man suddenly grew a wiry blone mustache.

Heh, I can't see how I missed tha Bad, bad, BMR!

Baconlabs wrote:This is the kind of coolness that can happen when artists combine their efforts into one

Most indeedy, which is why I am so absobalalutely in love with Creative Commons.

Hi. It's been awhile.



Advice on anything?

The skeleton(?) looks as if it's rather sad, like it doesn't quite want to be there and would rather be at home working on his stamp collection

The blob and the thingy look pretty good though, as do the hero sprites.

Edit: I might be a bit off kilter here, but the boy(?) hero reminds me of the Little Prince...

Since it's clear you're working with a unique style for your lineart, I think you're allowed to take artistic license with the skeleton's anatomy. It's worth it for that peculiar, sad expression. The blob is also fine, but if I really had to strain and pick out something to criticize, it'd be the asymmetrical teeth.
That shadow thing over on the far left, I can't make out anything about it. Is it supposed to be a silhouette? If I tilt my screen back, I can vaguely see places where you added another color to detail it, but I shouldn't have to do this. Take another look at your palette and see if you can use colors that are easier to distinguish.

EDIT: This could just be due to my screen's color settings. I've run into situations where my colors seem fine on one monitor, and totally different and slightly harder to see on another. It's impossible to get everything to look the same on every person's computer, but my point about making your shadow-enemy's colors more distinct still stands.

BMR wrote:

Stewie wrote: In Okedoke, FFnnyrfnfr (sp?) used multiple layers to simulate a single enemy. perhaps something along those lines might help?

Heeey.... That is a good idea... You'd be able to go past 16 colors for large bosses that way... And you'd also be able to target different parts of the boss... brilliant!



@Momoka

Hope you don't mind, I took your sprite and edited it a bit to show one way of making it less "flat." Granted, not the best piece of work, but it might give you a few ideas.

Attempt 5 on this armadillo. Still need some practice, but I think I'll have this figured out. Getting a little sick of this damn thing, but practice makes perfect etc.

Baconlabs wrote:There's two things I want to say about the sprite before Momoka returns to continue working on it (in addition, my previous statements about anatomy still stand since BMR did not adjust the lineart) - First, the tail looks like a rocky club. Is that the look you were going for, Momoka? Just curious.

Kind of, but I'm still having some issues getting this lineart to look good.

Getting sick of that Armadillo. I know it's helping me learn and I'm not giving up, I just want to take a break on it in the hour I have before I need to sleep.

I know! I'll take some art from my pictures folder, and try to make a sprite out of it.



Oh yeah, that looks sweet.

Let's see how well I can sprite with a good reference like this!

Progress is occurring on that girl sprite (and I haven't forgotten the armordillo), but I'm still trying to figure out the concept of hands.

Wait, you're sticking with this? I thought you were just referencing the Homestuck girl (or whatever that is in the picture) for a one-time spriting challenge. Are you putting this in your game, and if so, please tell me the context it'll appear in. I'm incredibly curious.
She'd make a good doll, what with her round face, simple hands, and conic body. Something about it reminds me of Mogri's "Do You Want To Be A Hero?" It's a good place to start, certainly better than stick figures. The proportions here are okay for a game sprite, so I'm not going to pick on you for head-to-body ratios or anything.
I am a little surprised that you suddenly jumped to "let's look at a high-caliber artist's work and make a poor man's sprite out of it." No offense, it's just that you've set the bar ridiculously high for yourself. Just about any artist in the world will tell you that human anatomy is one of the hardest things to learn to draw correctly. People take years of classes to figure it out, and even then, it takes many years of practice to polish that skill. I'm not sure what the best advice to dispense here would be, other than "keep working at it."

I don't know why you add in curves for her boobs when the source material has none.

Here's a thought: forget about shading and even coloring for a bit. Go back to forms and outlines. Work on getting them to look good and work from there. It doesn't matter how good your shading is if the base isn't right.

Updated hero graphic. I think I may replace several lines of coding with a simple in-battle weapon change : P

Mogri wrote:I don't know why you add in curves for her boobs when the source material has none.

Here's a thought: forget about shading and even coloring for a bit. Go back to forms and outlines. Work on getting them to look good and work from there. It doesn't matter how good your shading is if the base isn't right.

I think this is probably good advice for me to follow.

Is it really an improvement to remove the hero's (Flynn's?) gun? The rest of the hero sprite is definitely greatly improved, except the boots in the 2nd frame are inconsistent with the rest (and that looks like it'll be an odd walking animation).

TMC wrote:Is it really an improvement to remove the hero's (Flynn's?) gun?

So he can use different guns? Would be what I'd do!

Yes, the idea is that he can use different guns. There were originally seperate spritesets for every gun. Thespazztikone came up with the idea to make guns usable as items from the inventory in battle, instead of equipping them and changing each hero's battle spritesets. However, I'm not so sure that I like this idea. That would mean each hero shares the same guns, which is just silly. Or, the gun is consumed with each use, also silly. I would much prefer to wait until battle scripting is implemented to change battle sprites and equipment mid-battle. I would even take an increase to the number of frames in each spriteset with definable animations (much like the maptile animations).

My idea was to use the "attack" frames as an animation for melee attacks, and the "cast" frame as an animation for shooting so that the player could equip a melee weapon and firearm on each character. However, that would make item use in battle look funny. Still though, I thought this was the best idea. What does everyone else think?

Oh! Yes, I was assuming that you would have to wait for battlescripting or other engine support for swapping weapons in battle (not that it's on the horizon yet).

Using attack and cast animations for guns and melee (or vice versa) doesn't sound like bad idea; the animations are already multipurposed anyway so it wouldn't look strange for an OHR game...