Suggestions for Devs and Artists

[Solo]

I have a few suggestions for new monsters, but since i'm not a pixel artist, i just drew them on paper, hopefully they'll generate cool ideas for the game. Also, please keep in mind i'm not an artist of any kind, so these don't look professional or anything, nor are they in the correct prespective for TMW, i think, but here they are anyway...



Giant Spider

This is an idea for a Boss-like monster, with thousands of HP and Exp, which will take lots of people to take down. Also it would be my suggestion that these would drop the silk needed to make the robe later on. Location, maybe in the western caves. I think though, that the animation for the legs would be a nightmare, but everything can be done with patience, i guess.



Desert Monster

This is just a fast sketch, even worse than the 1st one, based on Blackdon's Skull hat, (topic link at bottom of page), and the legend of an ancient monster. The name, i guess, would be up for debate, i'm not good at that either. But for it's skull to be able to be used as a hat, then it would have to be pretty big as well.

I hope these are good ideas, and if feedback is good, i'll make some more. if not, i'll just drop the subject and keep on playing, lol.

Skull hat link - http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4892

Mário a.k.a Solo

[Rotonen]

We can never have enough concepts when it comes to art.

Please do keep on churning out more. Don't be restricted by reality.

[Solo]

Thank you for the reply Rotonen, coming from a developer, it really means a lot, i'll keep drawing some ideas, hopefully with better quality.

About the silk, i was thinking somewhere in the lines of the dyer scheme we have now. The silk drop would be like a stringy ball of silky mess and would have to be taken somewhere else to be woven into a silk cloth to be used to make other items. I still think that monsters shouldn't drop the finished product, like Mouboo's dropping a nice square piece of cotton cloth, but that's just my opinion. I think it would add more to the game by giving people more tasks to get the items, but i also know that some believe that's too much hassle.

I just wish i could be of more help when it comes to pixel art, and deliver the finished concept, like Black Don, instead of just drawing them and let someone try doing all the work themselves if the idea is actually good.

Again, thank you for the encouragement.

[EJlol]

Really nice concept art, please continue. The only thing Im worrying about is that it will get lost in the forums (like many things).

[Solo]

Here are some more sketches, these are a bit simpler, i think.



Monasteriense

Meaning "monster" in Latin, this creature walks on 3 spiky legs and casts a magic spell to do its damage. Its intelligence and prowess makes up for its slow moving speed, it's attack reaches as far as a forest bow.



Veneficus Leach

Veneficus meaning "magic", this creature is sort of like a mix between a humming bird and a mosquito, its stem leaches only MP from its victims. They usually flock together and are speedy flyers.



Raptor Lizard

Raptor, as in "thief", this little guy acts like the yellow and green slimes we all know of. Drop something, and it will take it away, but more quickly than any slime we've seen. The antients used its tail to make a hefty spear. Also his bite is poisonous, so be sure to have some potions on you if you come across it.



Magus Nex

"Magic Death" should say it all, its powerful magic spell will take both HP and MP. Usually loners, very territorial and agressive, so if you need to stay alive, you need to steer clear of them.

I hope these are good too, but from now, i'll be trying to learn more about pixel art.

[kr0n05931]

I don't really think the raptor lizard is a fitting name for that particular one. Out of anything it looks like an archosaur, not a therapod.

Btw, the mosquito like one looks like it could be a natural predator for slime.

[Rotonen]

The naming is irrelevant of the concepts. The naming comes into play in the finishing touches when it actually goes into game content after pixellation. Of course the original author of the monster should have a lot to say on it, but it's not something to concentrate on this early in the process.

I like the spiky thingy. Animating how it moves around should allow really creative bendy and rolling fun or alternatively hilarious hopping. Would you mind illustrating that one a bit more so we could push it into production? Especially how you imagine it to move around, attack, etc.

Also, more concepts, keep them coming. We just cannot have enough. Rough and simple sketches are nice and actually better in mass producing the stuff we need on the long run. We can pick stuff straight into production like this or then we can come back to the massive pool of concepts later on.

Someone move this thread to the gfx section.

[Solo]

Ok, here's my first attempt at pixel art. I used MS Paint so that should explain the small number of colors, its a drag to create more colors (add to custom colors, etc...). I also left the color pallete underneath, i don't know if it can be of any use, but there it is. I added the character to illustrate the size of the monster, for scale. The animation is going to be a lot more tricky, so it will take me a lot longer to make.



PS: Rotonen, i hope this was the one you meant by "spiky thingy".

[kr0n05931]

That is a very good start, I personally recommend you use the gimp for pixel art. http://www.gimp.org

Also, try to remove all the anti-aliasing and blur that seems to be around the center.

[Crush]

First lesson regarding pixel art: Never NEVER NEVER!!! save a piece of pixel art in the Jpeg format. The Jpeg format is an image format made for only one purpose: Photographys. The compression algorithmn creates artefacts which are almost invisible on photos but extremely ugly on all other kinds of graphics, especially pixel art.

The perfect format for pixel art is PNG because it has lossless compression, support for 32 bit colors and a small filesize (it is also the format used for TMW, by the way). When PNG is not available use GIF (only 256 colors). Use BMP when you have to (full color and lossless but huge filesize) but never, ever jpeg.

[Solo]

...try to remove all the anti-aliasing and blur that seems to be around the center.

I didn't try to blurr anything, kr0n05931. I don't know if it happened when i uploaded the image or what.

...Never NEVER NEVER!!! save a piece of pixel art in the Jpeg format.

I know your intentions are good Crush, and thank you for the feedback, but i did save this image as a PNG file, again, i don't know what the heck happened to it when i uploaded it.

The only way i know how to put pictures in here is to upoload them to myspace first, then put the link in here, maybe that's what's wrong here. But please, if you know a better way, PM me instead of posting a reply to that in here, thanks.

[Jaxad0127]

First lesson regarding pixel art: Never NEVER NEVER!!! save a piece of pixel art in the Jpeg format. The Jpeg format is an image format made for only one purpose: Photographys. The compression algorithmn creates artefacts which are almost invisible on photos but extremely ugly on all other kinds of graphics, especially pixel art.

Many sites automatically convert images to JPEG. Google Pages (which I use for limited web hosting) does it for larger images.

I know your intentions are good Crush, and thank you for the feedback, but i did save this image as a PNG file, again, i don't know what the heck happened to it when i uploaded it.

The only way i know how to put pictures in here is to upoload them to myspace first, then put the link in here, maybe that's what's wrong here. But please, if you know a better way, PM me instead of posting a reply to that in here, thanks.

Try Imageshack.

[Crush]

You can also use the attachment feature of this forum.

[Solo]

You can also use the attachment feature of this forum.

Well, there's something i hadn't noticed, lol.

Thanks Crush, here goes the same image, but in PNG format.

[Jaxad0127]

Notice how much better it looks than the JPEG version. kr0n05 was talking about the artifacts introduced by JPEG compression.