Gotta do this too, from time to time. I wonder what happened to Chesu?
*edit*
So, yeah.
*edit2* click it. I dare ya.
5 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Chesu's still around. I just seldom find the time to chat with him.
He's pretty nocturnal, too. I chat with him via MSN Messenger, and I think he uses AIM too.
Pretty neat KZ sprite. :D
(Non-sequitur: Oh, and I played Megaman/Rockman X quite a lot while coming up with the Stylin stories. I liked listening to the SNES music for some reason. ^_^)
I am, indeed, still around. I can be reached almost all day; ask Ben for my contact information if you want. The sprite is pretty good, but as I've been envoked, NEUVOT AIKA.
First of all, shape: sprites of this size and level of detail shouldn't have any extended straight lines or right angles in the biological portions. KZ's left thigh and right arm both have straight outlines that just go on for too long, and her shoulders are... Well, pointy! You want to avoid the outline being more than one pixel in depth, like on the highest point of her right leg, her shoulders, and... pretty much everywhere on her feet. For things like flesh and cloth, you want the texture to look smooth, y'know?
Next up is color. I prefer to use a limited palette, to make sprites seem more.... video gamey. I tend to stick to sixteen colors and less, you can use as many as you feel comfortable with, especially for fighting game-esque sprites. It looks like you actually did use around sixteen colors, but they could have been used a lot more efficiently. On the left in the image below, I've replaced all of the black in the sprite with red; on the right, I've replaced of the blue and dark red with red and green, respectively.
http://i54.tinypic.com/o7j3on.png
As you can see, the right image has two red pixels, and one green. Since video games are always limited by processing power and the number of colors that can be displayed on-screen at a time, adhering to a video game style requires you to be as efficient with your palette as possible. While using black all over like that is pretty efficient, this sprite is more Street Fighter 2 than Mario 3, so you want it to look as good as possible. It's also important to squeeze as much visibility as you can out of your colors. That is to say, your sprite is naturally a fourth of the size you're displaying it as; at its normal size, you can't really see the shading on her clothing, because the colors are so close. I don't know how it looks on your monitor, but on mine I have to bring my face within a foot of the screen to tell that there are two different colors on her bosom, at the 4x size.
I think that about wraps it up! You already know how to shade from a consistent light source and all that, which works the same in spriting. I've taken the liberty to reduce the sprite to an outline and touch it up a bit... You can work from it if you want. In any case, I'm going to recreate the sprite from it to give you an idea of how to make efficient use of a limited palette, and all that good stuff.
1. Chesu! Long time! I'll bug Ben for your contact info.
2. Wow, thanks for the advice. I know more than I'm applying here, so it's sort of sloppy. The animated version is a _touch_ cleaner, albeit not by much.
3. That last edit is _totally_ amazing. You managed to cram in a whole lot of detail, and your colors are indeed much clearer.
5 comments:
Chesu's still around. I just seldom find the time to chat with him.
He's pretty nocturnal, too. I chat with him via MSN Messenger, and I think he uses AIM too.
Pretty neat KZ sprite. :D
(Non-sequitur: Oh, and I played Megaman/Rockman X quite a lot while coming up with the Stylin stories. I liked listening to the SNES music for some reason. ^_^)
That looks pretty cool man, nice work!
I am, indeed, still around. I can be reached almost all day; ask Ben for my contact information if you want. The sprite is pretty good, but as I've been envoked, NEUVOT AIKA.
First of all, shape: sprites of this size and level of detail shouldn't have any extended straight lines or right angles in the biological portions. KZ's left thigh and right arm both have straight outlines that just go on for too long, and her shoulders are... Well, pointy! You want to avoid the outline being more than one pixel in depth, like on the highest point of her right leg, her shoulders, and... pretty much everywhere on her feet. For things like flesh and cloth, you want the texture to look smooth, y'know?
Next up is color. I prefer to use a limited palette, to make sprites seem more.... video gamey. I tend to stick to sixteen colors and less, you can use as many as you feel comfortable with, especially for fighting game-esque sprites. It looks like you actually did use around sixteen colors, but they could have been used a lot more efficiently. On the left in the image below, I've replaced all of the black in the sprite with red; on the right, I've replaced of the blue and dark red with red and green, respectively.
http://i54.tinypic.com/o7j3on.png
As you can see, the right image has two red pixels, and one green. Since video games are always limited by processing power and the number of colors that can be displayed on-screen at a time, adhering to a video game style requires you to be as efficient with your palette as possible. While using black all over like that is pretty efficient, this sprite is more Street Fighter 2 than Mario 3, so you want it to look as good as possible. It's also important to squeeze as much visibility as you can out of your colors. That is to say, your sprite is naturally a fourth of the size you're displaying it as; at its normal size, you can't really see the shading on her clothing, because the colors are so close. I don't know how it looks on your monitor, but on mine I have to bring my face within a foot of the screen to tell that there are two different colors on her bosom, at the 4x size.
I think that about wraps it up! You already know how to shade from a consistent light source and all that, which works the same in spriting. I've taken the liberty to reduce the sprite to an outline and touch it up a bit... You can work from it if you want. In any case, I'm going to recreate the sprite from it to give you an idea of how to make efficient use of a limited palette, and all that good stuff.
http://i51.tinypic.com/r20qiu.png
I couldn't stop thinking about spriting, so I finally gave in and did it.
http://i54.tinypic.com/ayug00.png
Remember, you want nice, smooth lines, and to efficiently use your colors. Even if I ended up only using the red in the one spot.
I have no idea if that GD-looking... bracer thing, on KZ's arm wraps all the way around or not, but I wanted to find another use for the yellow.
1. Chesu! Long time! I'll bug Ben for your contact info.
2. Wow, thanks for the advice. I know more than I'm applying here, so it's sort of sloppy. The animated version is a _touch_ cleaner, albeit not by much.
3. That last edit is _totally_ amazing. You managed to cram in a whole lot of detail, and your colors are indeed much clearer.
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