PIXEL ART: BL's mediocre sprites

[Blacklightning]

So yeah, believe it or not there was once a time where I was working towards an amatuer spritesheet. Nowadays I don't have the time or inspiration to finish it, but that won't stop me from showing off my old stuff a little.

Walk/run/dash sequence. You'll probably notice the first one is an extremely rubbish conversion. You might also note that there's no shading - the pallete I used doesn't translate well to anigifs, and I couldn't be bothered changing it so I left the animated versions monoshaded. I really don't understand pallettes that well so it'd be a real help to know a secondary colour that works better.

This is something I'm a bit more proud of. Long story short, my fanchar is a telekinetic and that's a steel ball he's zipping around. This was something of a combo attack I was experimenting around with, and for me it turned out pretty well. The observant might notice a clash of Battle and Advance sprites in this one - it doesn't bother me personally, but most of the more experienced spritefags tend to be put off by it, in my experience.

Obviously, this one was never finished. I got as far as the recolouring and custom cape and couldn't be bothered yet to add in special effects. This was to be a telekinetic field that repels bullets and such, but you probably expected something a bit like that. This'll probably be the first thing I get back to if I ever take up spriting again.

These two were gifts for a close friend of mine. Needless to say, he was quite pleased to see them, but back then I felt he wasn't a difficult person to please. XD

The left one was my first attempt with special effects. The lightning bolt ain't mine (I snagged that one up on a site full of custom sprites for RPGmaker), but the glowing hand thingy is - in hindsight I probably could've done it better, but for a first attempt I felt it was good enough. A little history behind the actual move: called the Lightning Raze, if and only if the initial blow connected, it would send the foe back only to be intercepted by a lightning bolt from the sky.

The other one is probably my last animated sprite. Again, the hand-glowy thing is custom (though I'm kinda disappointed at how it turned out). The column effect, as well as the dummy from the previous anim, are both from Little Fighter 2, a freeware fighting game akin to Streets of Rage, with better combos. I thought this was a fucking cool move, so I decided to try spriting that seeing as it was about the only other thing I could do without inventing or hybridizing custom poses (the friend's char is kick-oriented, you see).

Umm, that's about it. I have another one I did in private but I'm admittedly a little awkward towards posting it. Maybe later.

Edited August 9, 2009 by Blacklightning

[Katanga Askar]

OMGBATTLEANDADVANCEOTHGETHERTRAVCESTYTOMANKIND!

Nah, not really. I didn't notice until you said.

I love the 3 hit combo. Very smooth animation. In fact, that's the case for the majority of your work. On the walking animation, you've pasted the raw image into GIF animator. I knwo that because the quality is lost in some frames. (I just realised that you pointed that out. Ah well, gives me something to write).

[Blacklightning]

On the walking animation, you've pasted the raw image into GIF animator.

Actually, that happened when I was saving each individual frame in MSpaint from .bmp to .gif. I found a cheap way around that though - it seems to manage the shading better when I copypasta from a .bmp into an already saved .gif instead, which is where the flat shading in nearly every other anim comes from.

Thanks for the comments, in any case.

Edited March 13, 2009 by Blacklightning

[Blacklightning]

So SRB2, of all things, convinced me to take up a bit of spriting again. I thought about doing some custom characters and... well, I'm sure our good friend Yahtzee would jump in glee at the chance to tear up the franchise from within.

EDIT: Now V1.1

The non-moving hat and complete lack of shading are deliberate, if only as a testament to the original's hilariously lazy art style. I can't draw perspective for shit though, so I'd appreciate help on the rotations wherever I can get it. Particularly on the feet.

Edited August 9, 2009 by Blacklightning

[Sean]

Looks fine, though you might want to make the feet in the middle frame evenly lined with each other - i.e. only show one foot. It looks like one foot is placed slightly farther than the other.

[Blacklightning]

That's actually what I did at first, but I thought it looked a bit wierd. I might consider reverting back to it now that you've brought it up, though.

[Sean]

SRB2's side-view sprites are already weird-looking as it is (try playing its 2D mode). In the context of the game, reverting it back wouldn't really seem out of place, really.

I would also suggest giving the sprites an extra layer (or two) of pixels around the borders to make it stand out a little more in the game, but this is up to you and I don't know if it really would look better, myself.

[Blacklightning]

Made minor improvements to the standing sprites - tilting the angle of the hat slightly and widening the hands a bit on the diagonals, to my recollection. I've decided to save antialiasing and line thickening and whatnot for later, because these will almost certaintly not be the finalized poses - it'll change later when I think of how to throw an umbrella in, among things.

Also did the first part of the jumping pose, minus the diagonals:

In the front-facing pose, you might notice the back leg looks exactly like the rear pose. This is because I honestly have no clue of how to draw it facing forwards, so I'd appreciate some advice there.

[Sean]

Hm...

It's hard for me to not make that foot look like ass, but there's what I came up with.

[Phos]

I think you guys should use a vector art program for these sprites, such as Inkscape. It would probably simplify such making such simple animations. It might also be able to automate the process of Anti Aliasing the frames.

[Blacklightning]

Inkscape.

I'm probably not going to end up using it for Yahtzee here, but god damn everything if I don't owe you a favour now. I've been needing a decent vector program since I lost the reg key for my copy of Flash.

I'm still okay with using Paint.net right now, though.

[Blacklightning]

So I got around the previous back-foot problem simply by changing the angle of the foot from diagonal to directly horizontal. Didn't think it would be as simple as that. XD

I made an embarrasing screwup on the last two frames, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with how I've progressed so far. I might fix this up further when I'm in a better mood, but christ do I need to wind down for a while after this.

I've started some work on the falling frames, but I won't post it just yet. So far it looks more like a Trinity kick than falling from a height. =\

EDIT: Also, depth perception with mono-shaded sprites is absurdly difficult. =(

Edited August 18, 2009 by Blacklightning

[Dazz]

You should seriously anti-alias these...

[Blacklightning]

I was originally considering it, but I've decided against it for now. Plain pixels are a lot easier to play around with than anti-aliased ones. Plus it kinda defeats the purpose of doing so for SRB2 of all things, seeing as the background is, um, not static. So it'd most likely end up looking like a badly photoshopped jpeg in-game.

I plan to test what sprites I have in-game soon to see how they look though, so I might give it a quick test to be sure.

[Dazz]

You can still use a lighter black around the edges - think Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.

Plus, that doesn't stop you doing it for the insides.

Anti-aliasing will make it look good - at the moment these just look like you went in paint and did different shapes and put them together.

[Blacklightning]

You can still use a lighter black around the edges - think Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.

Plus, that doesn't stop you doing it for the insides.

You're actually the second person to suggest that. But regardless, I'm not doing anything drastic until I get the poses done. If I do it now and change the poses later (which I almost certaintly will), that's just pointless time spent trying to revert it back to easy-edit state again.

at the moment these just look like you went in paint and did different shapes and put them together.

Paint.net, actually. *shot*

Though to be fair, the official Yahtzee wasn't exactly a hell of a lot better in that regard, so it's faithful to the source at the very least. XD

[Dazz]

Yes, but his is vector based - not bitmap...

Seriously - this day and age, if you made a game, you could make it using vector with alpha transparency to make it look nicer...

Just, you know, not telling you it's pointless but, it uh... Kind of is? :|