[WIP] Adventure Game Sprite(s)

[Mortis]

Hey all,

This is both my first post and my first pixel art piece in years. I'm not a graphic artist by a long shot but I thought it would be beneficial to work on a project completely my own, from start to finish - to learn the ropes, so to speak. I hope none of you are offended by this admission, as the quality of art here at Way of the Pixel is incredibly high. I am slightly concerned that if I now post a sprite, the feedback will be too good and I won't be able to implement or learn enough of it; "Learning from the best" has that inherent problem. Hopefully this won't be the case!

Now with that out of the way, this here is a non-player character ("John") for the aforementioned adventure game project; The character is supposed to be wearing shaggy leisure clothes. I've attempted to make him look like he enjoys solitude and stays to himself, exactly the kind of person who doesn't look into your eyes when you're talking to him. His posture, the rolled-up sleeves and closed fists imply caution and even slight physical danger.



The reason I'm pasting a few poses for the sprite now and not after I've done walk cycles and other animations (I've already tested out some preliminary animations, of which there will be plenty I assume) is that I'm afraid of jumping headfirst into animating before the sprite is where it "should" be, that is, with the little artistic tools that I possess right now, so I thought this might be the best stage to ask for help if ever. I think the main issues here with the sprite are related to the palette (there may be a few stray colours left but the palette is approx. what I've included) and definition. I'm also not sure if the light sources are beneficial.

Indy from FoA stood next to him during the pixeling but the sprite is original from start to finish. The sprite size too is chosen after the usual LucasArts 320x200 characters. I'm hoping my sprites would fall stylistically somewhere in-between the graphical realms of Indiana Jones IV and BASS.

Thanks for understanding!

[surt]

Looking very nice.

Main thing that was bugging me was the face on the viewer facing sprite. Looks like his head is tilted back into the screen and he is looking up at something. Reworked it.
Also squared the shoulders on viewer facing sprite and shortened near sleeve to match the other.
Shaved a few pixels of the arms to better define them.

[Mortis]

Main thing that was bugging me was the face on the viewer facing sprite. Looks like his head is tilted back into the screen and he is looking up at something. Reworked it.

Thanks for your effort! The fixes are helpful and I like your interpretation of the character a lot; It definitely has more "character" - if a little less spunk and a little more subservience - and is way better defined, the shading reminds me a lot of what is going on in Full Throttle.

Since the topic says "Sprite(s)" I'll defy all the odds and add some more! Here's a walk cycle I did. I had no idea how hard it would be, but alas the walk cycles are so rudimentary that I can't really avoid them at this stage. It took me a while to realize that I'm supposed to bend a character from its knees to simulate the head-bop, though right now the bop seems to me a little too bouncy, and was wondering if anyone knew what was wrong here. I'm a little hesitant about adding a 9th frame, but it may be the case that sequencing the up/down-bops might be easier that way (3-3-3 would probably be smoother than 2-4-2). Maybe it's the left hand that goes up too high? I apologise for some of the bouncing pixels that are all over the place too.



The head is currently a monstrous blob of pixel and will hopefully be edited away as soon as I've had an in-depth look at surt's version.

[sharprm]

Very good since drawing humans is challenging. Those shoes look massive to me. When u redo face, make sure his jacket doesn't look like a beard. Look through Baccaman21's posts, he has alot of good advice. eg. maybe the head should rotate, reusing legs frames can make it look like his legs swap over so offset them a bit etc. Maybe his shins are too short?

[Mortis]

Very good since drawing humans is challenging. Those shoes look massive to me. When u redo face, make sure his jacket doesn't look like a beard. Look through Baccaman21's posts, he has alot of good advice. eg. maybe the head should rotate, reusing legs frames can make it look like his legs swap over so offset them a bit etc. Maybe his shins are too short?

Very good points, thank you. I think I'd gotten blind with the feet: The shoes are indeed massive compared to any such similar sprites and the shins definitely do look too short, at least in a few frames, markedly so in the bop frames. I'm beginning to feel like the original sprite design will be detrimental to other animations and that I should go back to the drawing board... also thanks to your tip I also discovered baccaman21's set of "tutorials" and they seem incredibly helpful. I'm probably not the only one to wonder why he hasn't made a full tutorial yet!

[Mortis]

I hope I'm not spamming here; I apologise for the current state of disregard for the critique that I've received so far, but most of the matters pointed here are still on the more general pipeline, so to speak. I just wanted to point out that it has been greatly helpful so far even if it isn't actually visible! Today I've wandered off and bumped into a bunch of things that I find hard to wrap my head around. Here is a front walk cycle frame for the same John Doe character as in the other images:



I really do apologise for writing about things that feel self-evident... but quite aren't: I am really, really stumped. What I've done here is attempted to clarify and unify the palette as much as I humanly could and... I think it's more "readable" as a game sprite than the previous ones, but I also have many problems related to the frame overall: Firstly, I'm not sure how to go forth with highlights. I can't seem to find a suitable colour. Secondly, what do you guys think of the direction of the palette or is it just plain misguided overall? Thirdly, I think I'm overdoing dithering because of the limited palette (there may be some extra stray colours again, sorry about those).

Fourth, I just can't seem to be able to pixel out the head for a frontal pose. I've tried doing it more than I would care to admit, but the honest fact is, I'm gloriously, gloriously stumped. I was wondering if anybody, anybody had any pointers regarding this matter?