AuthorTopic: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite  (Read 5595 times)

Offline Overkill

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Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

on: August 08, 2006, 05:31:38 pm


I thought that the ten color palette I created was hotness. However, being but a novice, the actual drawing part of this sort of sucks. Anotomical problems and other issues plague this picture, but I'm not sure how to approach some of these issues.

Comments, criticisms and edits are much appreciated.

Offline Skull

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #1 on: August 08, 2006, 06:21:10 pm
It's a superbly unique palette and has wonderful potentual. This looks fantastic.

Offline Tremulant

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #2 on: August 08, 2006, 09:01:55 pm
A very minor edit:


The major problem I've noticed with many people's RPG sprites is the fact that they appear to be looking at the viewer, despite being viewed from a pseudo-overhead perspective (meaning that the sprites appear to be looking upward, not straight ahead). I shifted the eyes down a pixel, and did the same with the hair line.

The palette is great. I didn't notice it till I did the edit, but you did a fantastic job making such high-sat colours look so appealing. Nice stuff.

Offline Terley

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #3 on: August 08, 2006, 11:35:17 pm
very nice, I was pondering on what exactly I found odd about it, scrolled down to see what other people had said and I find Tremulant hit the nail on the head.  ;)
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Offline Overkill

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #4 on: August 08, 2006, 11:47:10 pm
Yeah, the perspective was wrong. I knew of this trap, not doing proper top-down view, before I went ahead and drew it, but I still fell for it. Tremulant, your edit is very nice. I've done some minor alterations to it:



I went ahead and drew some bricks for the hell of it, using the same palette. They sort of pain my eyes, but at a slightly closer view, they're tolerable. I'm guessing it's the result of too much unwanted contrast, saturation and hue variance, by me being too lazy to mix new colors.



And er... sprite on backgroundish sort of thing. Using the same palette proves to be a bad idea even more.



This has been fun so far, and I've learned some stuff along the way, even if my work is still a little subpar.

Offline Terley

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #5 on: August 08, 2006, 11:56:39 pm
I would advise you try some duller colouring for general backgrounds cus that poor sprite could fade away into walls of the same colour.  :-\

when your feeling less lazy that is.. great bricks though  8)
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Offline Overkill

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #6 on: August 09, 2006, 01:00:45 am


Compare. Which do you people think looks best? There's still something that iritates me about these bricks.

Offline Overkill

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #7 on: August 09, 2006, 03:43:59 am
I... double-posted, I feel so dirty.

Updated, now with four directions. Fixed up the bottom of the dress a slight bit:


Smoothed the bottom row of brick tiles a bit more, and decided it was the best of the three since it's the least busy lookin' and distracting (which is good for a game):


Ah, and I revised the tileset with sprite picture:


C & C, as they say. Animations probably to come soon.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #8 on: August 09, 2006, 04:25:23 am
my 2 bits (no pun intended :P): simply having a lot of bright colors doesnt mean you need to use all of them. a lot of very successful games use a couple of colors per tile, even games that dont need to like sword of mana.  since your character seems aimed in that direction, you may wish to study their color usage.  i think though that you may have difficulties form that though in that your palette requires real blending in order to knock it back.  my suggestion is to avoid the brightest colors on things like walls, so that the character can at least be found on the page.
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Offline Shifty McSly

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #9 on: August 09, 2006, 06:20:30 am
Agreed, the wall needs to be a bit less detailed and contrasted, perhaps try a more basic grey/brown/orange combination. The sprite looks really awesome, but I noticed you just flipped it for left and right directions, when from the front on her hair is off to one side more. The palette looks damn sexy on that character.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Nondescript Female Townsperson Sprite

Reply #10 on: August 09, 2006, 03:59:03 pm
here is a quick wall i came up with using your original palette, with a very energetic pattern, and one that follows closely to your existing bricks:


no fancy mixing, but there are 2 main things i was trying to do:

1: knock it back.  this was done in two ways. 

the first wall is knocked back because there is a lot less going on than your noisy bricks, even though its still more energetic than perhaps it should be (2 tiles offers very little to work with, if i could add a tile it would be one that is just the light yellow).  It also utilized only one of your three ramps, again to take down the excitement because monochromatic=boring, though the purple, compliment of the yellow, does pick it up in a way that adds some unwanted excitement.  Alternatively, you could use the dark green in place of the purple, but that causes the wall to lose its color identity.The character though is easily visible on the page, soid consider this attempt of mine to work.
The second wall is knocked back also, but through a completely different approach, mixing.  choosing which colors you mix is very iimportant, because different mixes work in very different ways.  This particular mix of a rose, orange, and green was created for the singular purpose of creating brown.  htis particular mix is incredibly simple.  Pink and green together neutralize to make gray, completely devoid of the saturation your palette has so much of.  need proof? mix crimson and pthalo green paint and see what comes of it.  or, if you are a computer person, take a color that is equal parts R and B, and add to it an equal part of G.  all parts become equal, creating gray.  adding orange to this gray creates a nice brick color, and its position in the mix can be used to make it function as a highlight, giving the bricks form.  This mixing successfully knocks back the colors and the character is easy to see on the page.

2:  Add interest

When you see your walls there, they are completely devoid of anything that would make them interesting.  It does eliminate the grid, but that is only ecause it sets up an equally ugly pattern and we dont want that. The first wall i did has a completely random pattern to it that is very interesting and attractive, but for reasons discussed above it doesnt compete for your attention.  you would only look at it if you were specifically thinking "im going to look at that building and see what it looks like."  The second wall follows the ordinary brick pattern, but with a little twist.  one tile has several larger blocks that make a distinct break in the pattern.  the plainer tile still breaks up things a bit by having every second row be composed of long and short bricks, a common sight in architecture done for the same reason im doing it, to add a little bit of interest without being obtrusive.

hope all that helps.  i think it would be very fun to see you do an entire game with just these 10 colors and trasparency, or if you added 5 more colors and made a 4-bit game but still using just this palette.  it would be cool to see what a person could do with it :P
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.