The Mana World Forums

I tried to draw a bat and ended up with this:



The death frame absolutely needs improvement, but what about the rest of it?

--Nafti

Bats usually lives in dark places and if you put a dark background you won't see it very well.
About the wings movement, i don't know exactly how a bat flies but the wings should surpass the body of the bat when you look at it by its side, in some point or other, at least the tip of the wing.
And rows second and third are too similar. I think you can play more with movement and frames.

By the way, do you have an animation?

first thanks for the effort. we really need a lot of monsters so we are grateful for everything.

but i think it's too dark. the details are almost invisible. and the monotonous greycales make it a little bit boring. maybe you should add a little bit color by setting some accents with brown when you feel realistic or red or blue when you feel creative.

an idea would be to make the eyes red and "evil" shaped. but that could look a little bit too cartoonish.

The head should be headed forward, not up. If you'd see his current angle as 0, it should be at least 45 degrees, maybe even closer to 90.
He's WAY too dark. He's jet black even when I turn my screen's brightness at it's max. I suggest a low saturated brown or blueish grey for the fur. Yes, the non-wing parts are furry, so that should be notable in it's texture.
The legs look stiff
The movement of the wings seem a bit too subtle
Both eyes and teeth are not grey.

Apart from that it's a nice start.

Additionally make it at least double the size. (I agree to the previous statements about the coloring, too "realistic", blends in too well in dark places.)

Bats live in dark places... but they're also pretty dark themselves too to blend in. Maybe a hard to see bat isn't so bad. Brighter and different colors of bats could be made to supplement the hard to see bat. But the point is that a bat that's hard to see in the dark is pretty correct.

i wonder if we can make it working correctly in the game or if it would "fly" on the ground layer

anyway so far a nice start tho it needs a bit of improvement

Biggest problem I see is positioning; as someone mentioned, the head should be pointed forward, rather than up. That's just how they fly.

With regards to color, I would agree that a more brownish body would be a good idea; for the sake of visibility, some (small) light bluish highlights could be added on the edges of the wings as well (in order to make them appear to be reflecting a certain amount of whatever light there is).

It's certainly a good start, though.

maci wrote:i wonder if we can make it working correctly in the game or if it would "fly" on the ground layer

that's no problem. take an existing monster sprite, create a shadow under the bat where the feets of the other sprite are and move the bat a little bit up. should work. think of the bat sprite as a person without a body and a bat instead of a head.

also make sure it isnt "floating" but "flying". the wings must move all the time, otherwise it looks weird i think

Looking at the bat i don't know if it swings verticaly. It should swing up and down a bit while moving horizontally. I don't know if that can be achieved moving the sprite or changing the position in tthe png.

Also, it needs a position where it is quiet and hold with its talon, maybe upside down. Or better yet, two; one with the eyes closed (sleeping or resting) and other with the eyes open (whenever someone is close and is going to take off and attack).

I think we should add a simle shadow to all our monsters anyway.

shadows, in caves? probably even "blob shadows"? nah... shadows'd be good outside, but not inside. i think this should also apply for indoor/outdoor npcs. yes, technically you also throw a shadow inside, but mostly horizontal (towards the wall opposite the window/torch/whatever), so unless we add light source information to indoor maps it'd probably look weird.

that would require shadows are rendered instead of fixed in the sprite

which would generally be a good idea but i am not sure abut how to make the client acting like that

wow these are hot

mabby a shadow and a white border around the monster for now ? i dunno but i whould love to see a bat