Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: API-Beast on April 17, 2016, 12:11:20 pm
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(http://i.imgur.com/elknATN.png)
Empire
Warprince Marius
Highly efficient fighter
Riposte throws melee attacks back.
Can Impale characters, for heavy bleeding damage.
Pose-Reference ("Pflug"-Langschwert stance) (http://theringofsteel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/braunstick-0541.jpg)
Hand of Steel
Lord Steelclad
Metal Manipulator
Lightning Magic
No Reference
Steel-Guardian
No Reference
Lightning-Orb
Casts a strong lightning attack after charging up.
Used 3D base constructed in Blender
Damned Souls
Charon
Summons ghost versions of previously defeated bosses.
No Reference
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Wonderful style. I especially enjoy the 2nd sprite. Do you plan on animating these?
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You currently have too many colors on these, animating them would be a pain. I think you can significantly reduce the color count without really losing detail, an edit to illustrate:
(http://i.imgur.com/NeDUrPT.png)
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You are right, I don't plan animating these, but the workload is still a bit much and lowering the color count should make creating new sprites faster.
The reason why they use so many colors is because I use one big palette with around 100 colors, which I extend as needed. I created that palette by drawing different materials and figuring out which colors I need to give them all a high fidelity look, more akin to digital paintings than pixel art. I did that to get a consistent look for them.
(http://i.imgur.com/crp5BZJ.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/WKhXwtd.png)
I now have reduced that palette down to ~64 colors.
(http://i.imgur.com/CqUJW5o.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/5bul6kl.png)
Afterwards I remapped the sprites, shaving off ~10 colors on each.
This isn't much difference yet, but should improve future sprites a little. I want to maintain a high fidelity style, but I will have to experiment a bit more to find a good middle-ground between detail and work load.
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(http://i.imgur.com/IF0y5H8.png)
The first sprite is for "Lord Steelclad" as I dub him currently. He is powerful mage who perfected metal manipulation and has near endless control over it. His sprite was actually the first one I drew in the series but I left him out of first post because I think the quality is rather lacking in comparison to the newer ones.
The Hand of Steel is a small cult centered around him. Apprentices who want to learn from him and the magical constructs he animated as his personal guard.
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Those sprites look pretty good!
But you can still remove a lot of colors from the palette.
I'm not a pro but you have pure white (255,255,255) and 254,255,252. The difference is not noticeable so it's better to remove one of them.
Same for the 100% black (there are two pure black squares btw) and the 95% black in the middle. I don't think you having those two colors in the same palette can be useful :)
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I definitely notice the difference between the whites you mentioned, maybe your monitor needs calibration Curly? The two dark blacks look the same on my monitor though, maybe I also need some calibration.
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@gil
(http://i.imgur.com/dUmkaZD.png)
The first and the last white seem almost similar to me.
And the blacks do seem almost the same too.
I think api-beast is trying to stay at 64 colors?
I do love the reduced colors, api-beast. Keep it going!
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I can see a difference between the whites, but not the blacks. I do agree they're too close to be useful though.
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He was referring to these two colors. Which are really similar and I simply overlooked. I actually never used both in the same sprite so they can go.
(http://i.imgur.com/S8wgvD9.png)
I also removed two other "whites", they are clearly distinctive (very bright gold and silver) but the pure white can be used for the same effect.
The almost black is used a lot and can't be replaced by another color easily.
(http://i.imgur.com/f2XmHW7.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/ScSed3e.png)
Also tweaked the guardian a bit, just to make him that 20% cooler.
(http://i.imgur.com/cmvnLzQ.png)
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I like ur sprites and materials and colours :-)
I feel like lord of steel could be a little taller and more menacing posture.
Hand of steel i feel can benefit from varying the strength/brightness of the outline as its currently a bit overpowering and flattens him imo
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One more for the Hand of Steel. Used a 3D base for this one.
(http://i.imgur.com/fQ8x8WZ.png)
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I definitely notice the difference between the whites you mentioned, maybe your monitor needs calibration Curly? The two dark blacks look the same on my monitor though, maybe I also need some calibration.
It's new so it definitely needs some calibration :) But anyways they are so similar that you won't use both in the same sprite.
And that's the point of making a palette, right?
The "almost black" color I was talking about was this actually (http://i.imgur.com/iQuVlAN.png)
I think it's 95% black and maybe you won't need both.
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Ah, I see, overlooked that one too, removed it now, it wasn't used anywhere. The black entry is duplicate because Asesprite thinks index 0 in a palette is transparency, I should probably just set it to transparent.
Palette now looks like this.
(http://i.imgur.com/Pqy0EGP.png)
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The "Fix-Yesterdays-Mistakes"-step in my workflow :P
(http://i.imgur.com/hgtknPV.png)
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The only thing I can comment on is that there are a few jaggy lines