Let me start off by saying that I've only ever animated sprites once before, and it was years ago. So suffice to say I'm quite new to this, though I'm no stranger to spritework in general.

Old:

What I'm going for is the gem melting out of the socket and flowing into the letters inscribed on the plinth, and so far it's not going well. I was trying to keep an eye on the timing of the frames to make the liquid feel thick and viscous, and it sorta worked, but it also looks... ugh, it just looks gross.

If anybody has any tips or edits, please. Feel free!

Most Recent:Edit:

I was feeling inspired by a couple of different influences (two of which were on this very forum; namely Vedsten's tiles and Arne's thoroughly-worked-through 16-bit palette), and so I sat down and whipped together some hexes while staring at Vedsten's iso-tiles. After a while, once I was relatively happy with the tiles themselves, I moved on and tried my hand at an actual building. A lone tower with simple wooden palisades.

I'm sure there are hundreds of things wrong here, and I'm sorry if I have inconvenienced anyone's eyesight with this. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I could do better.



P.S. the mockup may end up being 2x view, so be sure to check out the image in both ways. Let me know which you like better, both with the current version and your edits (if you do any).

Thanks in advance.

Update: 8 Aug 2011
      * Added people! With the addition of units I think I'm definitely going to stick with 2x for this project.
      * Sameday Secondary Update: Hats! Since it's such a small scale, hats will be the main identifier for units (although if this were to make it to real-game stage, there would also be scroll-over tooltips with unit details. So far, no real theme to the hats... a hardat, wizard's hat, centurion plume, tophat...

Update: 9 Aug 2011
      * Scrapped the previous units, since visibility was shit even at 2x. Trying to design a new model for the units, something that I can group into 2s and 3s on a hex, while still having some of them stand alone for independent and special characters.
      * Sameday Secondary Update: Trying to work the people so that I can have units of 3's, that can be upgraded to 6-man and 9-man teams. I want to make all of the upgrades as visually rewarding as possible (i.e. if I expend some resources to up my soldier's defense stat, I want to see their armor get visibly more awesome on the sprites, rather than just have it be a purely numerical difference). Also attempting to make the towers seem a bit less flat; so far, just an outline. That made it better, but didn't fix it entirely. The bold numbers in gold are for letting the player know how large the unit occupying the tower is (that number will also show up in unit tooltips in-game).
      * Also added another shade to the water. Not sure if I like it.
      * Added an experimental "Special Character" to show he would fit into units. He would essentially replace the leading guy in the unit, and be front and center in everything. Making him as obvious as he is is going to present a problem as I try to face the units in all 6 directions, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I want to nail down the look of the units before I try to face them.

Update: 10 Aug 2011
      * Rounded out the tower a bit! Thanks, Ichigo Jam. It still doesn't look quite right, but it's a step in the right direction.

Update: 11 Aug 2011
      * Finished rounding out the tower, again thanks to further clue-by-fouring by Ichigo.
      * Added bonus: working out unit selection. eventually I'm going to start adding mockups to the tooltip and order menus to this gif, but for now it's just the highlight example. Kinda pointless to post, but hey. More shinies to look it.


Update: 12 Aug 2011
      * Now with 150% more units! At the size I'm working with, it's becoming difficult to make unique characters though. If anyone has advice on that subject, don't hesitate to pass it on.
      * Also, minimap!

Hey, all, I'm back in action after a mild spriting depression, with a new(ish) project that my good friend and I decided to engage in.

We just started this afternoon (as I type this my partner is typing up a vague design document), and I figured I might get a headstart on some generic dungeon-y tiles to get a feel for the game. It's going to be a rogue-like, something along the lines of IVAN or the graphical Nethack tilesets, with some bits of Dwarf Fortress thrown in for kicks. Basically a mishmash of some of our favorite things, combined with some original craziness of our own.

Some of you might recognize the people sprites; they're from an old failed project that I was posting on these forums called SIN.



Please do tear these apart! I'd love to hear critique.

Get to tearing, and have fun! Enjoy the eyecandy 

UPDATE:


UPDATE:

I've been working, messing around with contrast and such. I recently started a case study of the old PSX/PS2 game Alundra, and my very first attempt after my research was a simple RPG-style jelly.



From left to right: Basic movement, basic attack, death, idle, and knockback.

I'm not at all happy with the death animation, but I'm not sure what I can do to spruce it up and improve. If Jad or anyone else with any animation knowledge please help?

Of course any other hints and tips are welcome. I'll be posting any further work on this case study, since I'm more than certain I'll run into a great many things I'll need assistance with. Thanks in advance!




UPDATE: Fixed the death animation up a bit, added an idle animation (yeah, it's supposed to look kinda like it's breathing), and posted the spritesheet so far for an easier analysis of the parts for those interested in seeing.

UPDATE: Added a knockback/jumpback sequence. Started work on the trolls of Sin.