[WIP] Little Samurai

All development of pixel art, maps and other graphics.


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Meemxes
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[WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

I'm doing some work on a little samurai with a naginata (monster sprite) and I'd like some feedback. The current plan is to make it only a tile high. (In the long run I'd like to make a whole collection of little people. Maybe they can be homunculi...)

1. Should I continue working on this for TMW? If yes...

2. How's the angle?

3. There are currently 8 frames in the attack animation. I'd like to add at least a couple more transitioning to and from the low strike. Do you think more (or less) are appropriate?

4. Other recommendations?

Thanks a bunch for the constructive feedback!
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Zutan
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Zutan »

It is cute and looks like it would be menacing if in full colour and attacking my character.

I hope it can be used.
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Crush
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Crush »

The big challenge with humanoid characters is that they have to copy the style of the playerset to avoid looking out of place but still look distinct enough to be something new. Your animation sketch looks really promising. The perspective is correct and the animation looks great.

To maximize the potential I would suggest to create the spriteset itself without a weapon visible so that we can add different separate weapon sprites later (our engine can build a monster from multiple overlayed spritesets). That way we could easily create different version with different weapons for a more diverse gameplay.
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Meemxes
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

Crush wrote:The big challenge with humanoid characters is that they have to copy the style of the playerset...
That's part of the reason I am making a little character (plus, it's cuter this way). I'm hoping that the size difference will make any stylistic differences seem like they're supposed to be there. :wink:
Crush wrote:To maximize the potential I would suggest to create the spriteset itself without a weapon visible so that we can add different separate weapon sprites later (our engine can build a monster from multiple overlayed spritesets). That way we could easily create different version with different weapons for a more diverse gameplay.
You think this might be worth reusing? That's a high complement. *blush* It would be nice if the spriteset could be used with different weapons. I'm glad you brought that up. I will remove the weapon from the at the pixel art stage for that reason. However, the animation is designed specifically for the naginata. I did a lot of YouTube research on naginata kata. The strikes in particular are very different from other polearms, like spears. So the attack animations should only be used with naginata. Maybe we can have different styles of naginata.

Still, other animations (like walking) or parts of them (like the head) are more general. And even if the whole attack animation can't be generalized to spears & co., some individual frames can be. :) But this sort of reusability isn't as helpful as overlaying spritesets. :(
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

Here's a large version of one of the frames. Recall that I'm shooting for 32x32 for the final product. Please give feedback about colors, shading, style, etc. To handle crush's recommendation, the weapon is removable and will not appear in the final spriteset.

The image is vector-based, made in Inkscape. That makes it easier to modify and recreate the spriteset at any size. I hope to upload the finished product to OpenGameArt.org so that other folks can make use of it, too. :)
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Crush
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Crush »

By the way, color is also something our engine can do automatically, provided that you use certain color palettes as placeholders for the parts which are supposed to be recolored. So when you are OK with not having a fixed color scheme but having multiple versions with different color palettes, just say so and I will provide the necessary details. But when you are sure about your color selection and only want one distinctive scheme, or you think that having different weapons is already enough variation and having also different colored versions would be too much, you don't have to care about this possibility.
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

That's perfect! :D Please pass on the info and I'll make sure the final product can be recolored.
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Crush
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Crush »

Here is the wiki article about the topic:
http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/Image_dyeing

The essence is: To make a graphic dyeable you have to make the dyeable parts in a certain color palette. The easiest is just greyscale, but you can also use pure (hue dividable by 60) red, green, blue, cyan, yellow or magenta with 100% saturation. The files which determine which graphic is used for which objects can then define a color ramp which is used on the grey, red, cyan etc. areas.
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

Let's see if I get it.

Suppose I use three types of simple colors: grays, reds, and blues. Then we can respectively transform those into other colors like dark purple, forest green, and brown. Is that right?

Suppose I have more than one shade of red. If the reds were changed to blues, Then every #XY0000 should become a #0000XY? E.g. #AA0000 and #FF0000 respectively become #0000AA and #0000FF. Is that right?

Thanks again for your help.
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Crush
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Crush »

Meemxes wrote:Suppose I use three types of simple colors: grays, reds, and blues. Then we can respectively transform those into other colors like dark purple, forest green, and brown. Is that right?
Yes.
Suppose I have more than one shade of red. If the reds were changed to blues, Then every #XY0000 should become a #0000XY? E.g. #AA0000 and #FF0000 respectively become #0000AA and #0000FF. Is that right?
You understood the basics, but we can do even more. We can not just define one target color, but a whole sequence of colors. We can, for example, convert the darker shades to blue and the brighter shades to red. This allows effects like shading with hue shift.

Example. Let's say we define a color ramp as B:#000055,#0022cc,#0088ff,#00ffff.

This would mean that the original colors of:
000000 - 00003f (first quarter) are colored from 000000 to 000055
000040 - 00007f (second quarter) are colored from 000055 - 0022cc
000080 - 0000be (third quarter) are colored from 0022cc - 0088ff
0000bf - 0000ff (last quarter) are colored from 0088ff - 00ffff
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Please do not send me any inquiries regarding player accounts on TMW.


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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

That would be great for a sky or an LGBT infantry helmet. :)

Current status: finished side attack sequence in vector format (preview attached). I hope to finish by the end of May.
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enchilado
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by enchilado »

It looks amazing - really amazing - but won't the hands and feet be too small if you reduce it to 32x32 pixels?
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Meemxes
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

You make a good point. I'll have to adjust the hands/feet and tweak other things to make the small sprite look good. I'll be sure to pay careful attention to that. I hope you let me know if I miss something. :)
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Wombat
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Wombat »

This Little Samurai is not consistent with our art style. While good art, we won't accept this type of art into the game.

If making this is practice and/or potential fork content, please continue. If done to get into TMW-eA, it would have to reflect our player set as it is a humanoid monster. Also, we are attempting to move away from heavy use of vector art, while some vector art has passed, its further deepens our art consistency issues, while we are moving in a direction to tighten our consistency.
Current character is "Abolish".
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Meemxes
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Re: [WIP] Little Samurai

Post by Meemxes »

Wombat, I'm only creating a vector version to make the spriteset more general. Plus it's easier to modify than pixel art, which is handy for draft phases. But in the end the vector version is just a template that others can use to create spritesets of different sizes for other games. When I create the spriteset for TMW, it will be proper pixel art. The vector animation I posted represents the final spriteset little more than my first sketches do. A rejection of vector art is inapplicable to what I'm producing. In fact, I agree that vector art is generally not for TMW.

Your criticism is non-constructive and doesn't tell me how to fix the sprite. Please tell me what exactly the game art style is. If we are to make art in a particular style, we need specific information about what that style is, with examples. I read everything on the wiki I could find about it, looked at all of the examples given, and read every pixel art tutorial that the wiki links to. But the wiki and forums are sometimes vague, other times outright inconsistent about the art style. You said to be consistent with the player style (which it will be when I'm done). But as been pointed out here on the forums, the player spriteset is not always at a 45 degree angle and needs fixing itself. So I'm hesitant to take the player spriteset as a representative model.

In this particular case, I would like to understand what about this 32x32 character is inconsistent with the game's art style. Please try to be as specific as possible---if not for me, then for anyone else who might try to help with the project. I will not do any more work on this project unless I know I can fix it to your satisfaction.
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