Marky Marx posted:Hey, I'm working on a sprite for a platformer, first time in this thread. It's essentially supposed to be an edgy, 90s style edutainment character, similar to Bubsy. Here's some of the works in progress, let me know what you think works from the restyles I've been working on. My criticism would be that it doesn't seem like much is going on. There's no shading but I'm also thinking this is like some sort of concept thing and you haven't committed to a design to really flesh out yet, but I haven't seen that before myself.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:09
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Marky Marx posted:Hey, I'm working on a sprite for a platformer, first time in this thread. It's essentially supposed to be an edgy, 90s style edutainment character, similar to Bubsy. Here's some of the works in progress, let me know what you think works from the restyles I've been working on. I'd say if you're going for the 90's style 'tude then this is simply too tame a design. His personality isn't coming through very strong. Especially in the most recent variation. Keeping the "angry eyes" and maybe finding a way to add a smirk could potentially help. As of right now he looks too generic. I see where you're going with it, you just need to take it one step farther I'd say.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:50
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Thanks, I'm working on the body design before shading and additional details but I don't want to start with all that before animating of course. I'm just happy the body features look unobjectionable so far. I'm trying to avoid the angry eyes because he's more of a kids character like mario, maybe happier eyes? Or any emotion, really.
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Apr 22, 2015 02:06
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 Changed my kung fu kick to more of a gut kick
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Apr 23, 2015 13:38
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Shoehead posted:
Try bending the purple leg more and letting the torso carry forward to help balance the body but also throw more weight into the kick.
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Apr 23, 2015 17:30
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your kung fu kick is going to send that nerd tumbling backwards due to the entirety of his weight behind behind his center of gravity instead of above it e: maybe less:  and more:  Babe Magnet fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 21:08
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I knew you guys would see what was up, thanks! 
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Apr 23, 2015 21:49
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Really digging the last one, it's really readable for only four colours! It usually takes me days before i get something that i'd even consider submitting/putting up so i usually avoid the dailies. How long does it usually take for you to make/finish one of these? Do you find it helps, I imagine it's sort of like a practice? Time wise, using that week as reference, here are some rough estimates including any time wasted starting over trying to get things right. This could really highlight my inexperience to some of the real artists in here...  About 2 hours  About an hour (not even joking)  About 2 hours  About 3 hours (I started out with a really complicated pose - total disaster) - worth stating the scene/backdrop took about 20 minutes And here's one that took me a full evening after work...  About 7 hours (and an additional detail, the top down Solid Snake took about 4 minutes) But yeah, I'm really not an artist, but like I said, I think I know when things are "ready" so I just throw time at the issue. With enough time I think even people without natural talent can achieve something good. That's what I hope anyway  As an example of what I managed to achieve solo in a weekend - here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=25406 Hope that helps in some way. I totally get that it's hard to know how long things take, I had that problem when people asked if I would do contract work - when I gave them prices and a time frame they went silent 
Aneurexorcyst fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 04:23
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Aneurexorcyst posted:I'm super new to this stuff myself - I'm no artist (I'm a designer by trade). I started poking about with this stuff in my spare time about a year ago - I'd still say I'm not very good, but I feel I have a good enough filter to know when something is passable enough to show to people for possible critique or appreciation (though I got be proven wrong there). Although i don't really deserve to rate other people's work given the problems with mine, i honestly find your stuff is pretty good, especially for someone who claims to not be an artist (although what does it even mean to be artist anyway, especially if it's a hobby, not a profession?). I think you've improved and i know (from what you've said about the third picture) that sometimes you get ideas in your head but when you put pen to paper it's actually difficult to get it down, let alone make it as you originally envisioned. I've spent a long time being frustrated by my inability to translate what i think into actual practice (see alot of my earlier bases/people poses). Also your post does help, i've found myself spending way too much time on strange details that are probably acceptable but i find personally ruin something. When making stuff i usually stick to bases, i find it cuts down time alot, although that's probably not the best thing to do, I very rarely totally re-do stuff. I should probably change that and rely more on what i've learnt and the skills i've developed. Here's some updates, i've added more animation and an actual background. I'm still messing about with the size and proportion of limbs (not shown in the animations) of the bases atm, im trying to have three varying sizes of base which all fit into 32x32 tile sizes.    They're not massive changes but hopefully they look less static and less boring. Also finally down the fourth animation: 
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Apr 24, 2015 11:35
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I'm not sure your intent is coming through with this guy. The animation is fast enough, and the color change in the plants is subtle enough, that it's not clear that they're not just a side effect of what he's doing. (Also, there are a few frames between the yellow "magic" flash and when the plants die.) Try starting the plant animation in frame 1 or 2, and have the magic flow from the plants to the staff, with the plants going brown immediately. (I hope this makes sense. I didn't get much sleep last night.)
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Apr 24, 2015 12:07
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Besesoth posted:I'm not sure your intent is coming through with this guy. The animation is fast enough, and the color change in the plants is subtle enough, that it's not clear that they're not just a side effect of what he's doing. (Also, there are a few frames between the yellow "magic" flash and when the plants die.) Try starting the plant animation in frame 1 or 2, and have the magic flow from the plants to the staff, with the plants going brown immediately. It makes perfect sense don't worry! My intent was that he was sort of channeling earth energy and that the byproduct of that is it helps plants grow, but once he's used or spent it, said plants die. You've basically explained/put it across better than i tried to do in my animation, thanks for the critique will take a look again and edit it accordingly.
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Apr 24, 2015 16:33
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I think it makes sense. the green guy's animation is pretty good, much more impactful than this one: where it looks like he's leaning back before firing, rather than being pushed back. and imo this one shouldn't lift the staff while he crouches, it's an awkward movement that goes counter to what you'd expect: something like this might be better 
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Apr 25, 2015 10:14
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Exclamation Marx posted:I think it makes sense. Thanks for the edits, the purple one will be easy to fix but im unsure of how to make the blue one look like he's being pushed back. Here's a quick attempt at it:  I'm just hoping the sliding isn't too egregious.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:32
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Chipp Zanuff posted:Thanks for the edits, the purple one will be easy to fix but im unsure of how to make the blue one look like he's being pushed back. Sliding's fine. Rubber-banding back to neutral isn't. With the easing that impact should have, the movement should be sort of mirrored, not reversed. Which means, when the leg is sliding back, it starts off slow, suddenly goes fast then slows down gradually. When you pull your leg back from that, you'd move it fast first, then slow it down into its proper position. The joint itself should also move differently (the knee).
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Apr 25, 2015 19:28
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You ever just wanna draw some skulls? Or draw something in black and white, and maybe grey because black and white just isn't enough sometimes?   Or do... whatever this thing is?  Yeah, me too. All the time. Kinda waffling on trying to animate the fire on that dragon, but animating anything in photoshop is such a pain. Then again, I drew it in paint mostly, so maybe I should just fulfill its lifetime irritation guarantee already.
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Apr 27, 2015 14:57
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Pyxel Edit has some decent animation tools. I tend to use Gimp for animating. Maybe either of those would be an easier alternative to Photoshop for you? The Chaos Engine and I have been tossing ideas around about this dungeon crawl game for a while on twitter. One of the names we were thinking of was 'The Sanguine Cinema' and I decided to do a mockup where I ran with the notion that this dungeon is some kind of set for the entertainment of others. I imagined the audience or critics being an interpretation of your score, and the director is like an achievement generator that you need to heed in order to keep your score up. I don't know if this is something that we will develop further but I liked making this mockup to pitch the idea with.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:19
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     I managed to actually work today
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Apr 27, 2015 19:57
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lookin' good
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Apr 27, 2015 20:37
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Scut posted:Pyxel Edit has some decent animation tools. I tend to use Gimp for animating. Maybe either of those would be an easier alternative to Photoshop for you? I use Graphics Gale for most pixel art related stuff, and I highly recommend it. It's a great combination of being easy to use while also giving you the kinds of tools you want for pixel art. It's not as powerful as something like Photoshop or Gimp, but the tradeoffs are MORE than worth it just for the ability to very quickly and easily animate a small sprite then export it to a sheet. The free version won't allow you to save in most of the formats you'd probably want to use (png, gif, etc.) but it's otherwise feature-complete so it's great for deciding if you want to use it, and the full version is only like $15 so it's great value for what you're getting.
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Apr 28, 2015 02:49
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I use Graphics Gale for most pixel art related stuff, and I highly recommend it. It's a great combination of being easy to use while also giving you the kinds of tools you want for pixel art. It's not as powerful as something like Photoshop or Gimp, but the tradeoffs are MORE than worth it just for the ability to very quickly and easily animate a small sprite then export it to a sheet. Honestly GraphicsGale is more powerful than Photoshop for like 99% of pixel art related things. Cosmigo Pro Motion is even better but the interface for that is depraved. The only thing I can think of that photoshop has that GG doesn't is Dan Fessler's index painting tool: http://danfessler.com/blog/hd-index-painting-in-photoshop
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Apr 28, 2015 15:46
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Imma put in my suggestion for Aseprite. I originally started using it because nothing else let me draw with another colour on left click like paint (seriously this was my deal breaker) but in the year or so since then It's gotten a lot more powerful and stable. It's got a good animation timeline with onionskin and a ping pong option. The layer controls are pretty standard but they lack reordering atm. Tiling preveiws are handy as hell, exporting/importing animation in sheets, custom palettes, nice little features like that. It's awesome that there's so many more options now. As a kid I was doing lovely head swaps and recolours for rpgmaker 2003 in MSpaint.
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Apr 28, 2015 16:43
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Aseprite is great but it crashes a lot, especially if you have more than one file open at once, and sometimes even if you don't. Still a really fine program, though, awesome for animating.
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Apr 29, 2015 01:02
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Cicadas! posted:Aseprite is great but it crashes a lot, especially if you have more than one file open at once, and sometimes even if you don't. I haven't had trouble with Aseprite crashing, personally. Also gonna put my recommendation in; it's fantastic.
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Apr 29, 2015 03:41
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Yeah Aseprite has been good to me, too.
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Apr 29, 2015 06:25
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I use Graphics Gale for most pixel art related stuff, and I highly recommend it. It's a great combination of being easy to use while also giving you the kinds of tools you want for pixel art. It's not as powerful as something like Photoshop or Gimp, but the tradeoffs are MORE than worth it just for the ability to very quickly and easily animate a small sprite then export it to a sheet. I've been using the free version of GraphicsGale for a bit and it seems like the only things that the full version allows you to do is export animations to gifs and make .ico files. You can still export to png and make spritesheets and whatnot. Seconding though, it's a really awesome program for per-pixel work. The ability to pick colors using the right mouse button is amazing.
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Apr 29, 2015 07:59
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I would say that MSPaint is still an OK option for pixel art, but the "ribbon menu" update to it really ruined most of the tools and made everything require twice as many mouse clicks to use.  I mostly work with Pixen.
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Apr 29, 2015 13:57
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Internet Janitor posted:I would say that MSPaint is still an OK option for pixel art, but the "ribbon menu" update to it really ruined most of the tools and made everything require twice as many mouse clicks to use. If you're on Windows, I'd suggest Paint.NET. It's the closest thing to MSPaint I could find.
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Apr 29, 2015 17:02
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If you used Aseprite 1+ yr ago and had crashing issues, try it again. Dude has gone hogwild fixing/adding junk and it barely ever gives me problems. Also, he takes requests and adds stuff at a relatively quick pace. Best program ever.
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Apr 29, 2015 17:30
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Been using GraphicsGale for all of my stuff, tried using other programmes but always came back to GraphicsGale. I'd seriously recommend trying the free version (has most of the features barring gif creation). Tried to update some of my tilesets for the maps:  Tiles are 32x32. Grass tiles are based off of Cyangmou's grass tutorial.
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Apr 29, 2015 21:32
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If you have a windows XP install somewhere you can just yoink mspaint.exe off of it. It still works fine on newer windows.
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Apr 30, 2015 00:39
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SystemLogoff posted:If you have a windows XP install somewhere you can just yoink mspaint.exe off of it. It still works fine on newer windows. Really? I could have done that and not had to go through the rigmarole of acclimating to newPaint? 
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Apr 30, 2015 00:44
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On Linux, Kolourpaint is a perfect recreation of old MSPaint's functionality and UI and it also adds the most glaring missing feature: transparency.
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Apr 30, 2015 01:27
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SystemLogoff posted:If you have a windows XP install somewhere you can just yoink mspaint.exe off of it. It still works fine on newer windows. Ohhh I might do that for my win8 tablet. Thanks for the tip
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Apr 30, 2015 07:56
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http://www.mspaintxp.com/ Despite the URL, also lets you get paint 95, which is slightly different. You can use + and - to resize the eraser and paintbrush beyond normal limits, and the dropper tool doesn't go away after using it, so you can get three colors (left click, right click, control+click) without reselecting it.
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Apr 30, 2015 13:36
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http://dacap.itch.io/aseprite eyy it's even on itchio now.
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Apr 30, 2015 18:56
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I was thinking of doing this game again, since last time feature creep killed my motivation and I stopped. Of course, since Nightmare Castle's aesthetic was so beloved, I'll probably be using that kind of art going into this: Since it's the first thing you see, it should be pretty... something.
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May 1, 2015 03:16
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 I'm really sick so I did this, but I wasn't happy with it so.. 
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May 1, 2015 20:23
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Shoehead posted:
I like the first one more, although I'm not sure I dig the scanlines.
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May 2, 2015 00:31
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Did somebody say scanlines?  
Noyemi K fucked around with this message at 05:57 on May 2, 2015 |
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May 2, 2015 05:10
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Noyemi K posted:Did somebody say scanlines? Really like the third one, and I looove the second. I do think the scanlines would look better if they weren't pure black though... but then again, that would ruin your palette. :V
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May 2, 2015 06:16
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