Hey ho

Here we go with some of Johnny's animations.

Initially i worked only with a silhouette:


But the desire for colors was strong.
I wasn't aware at that point that it double the frame count (for walk loops at least).
With a sprite that low resolution, the amount of details you can add, as well as the amount of shading is quite minimal so i decided to just shade the back-facing limbs minimally.




I keep getting back to slightly modify them from time to time, to move a pixel one more to the left or right.
It is quite challenging to make accurate animations if you can only have that much pixel estate to work with.

One thing i have briefly tried is using different shades to imply movement, but it turned out to be too subtle when compared to the pixel jumping off to the side.

I just did a little rework on the jump animation, and i can't quite get the landing right


Few days ago i created the climbing animation but i'm still not sure how i'll need to offset them in-game since the sprite would need to be anchored at the grab-position. Need to look into that.


Other than that:



 

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Edit: Wow, the interpolation really looks horrible on these. No way to interpolate with nearest, eh?
I suppose i could upscale them, given the tiny resolution

Since nobody complained 

I've been actually thinking about the technical approach of implementing the animation.
Games that used roto-scoped animations like flashback, blackhawk, prince of persia, and to a lesser degree heart of darkness and another world, just had such an interesting approach to animation and movement.

Instead of the velocity dictating the animation, the animation dictates the velocity and it is bound to that as well.
You can not jump at any time to cancel the movement cycle, you'll have to wait until the foot touches the ground in order to transition into the jump.

Traditionally those were grid bound. I'd intend to loosen that restriction and have the animations frames more free-flowing. if one walk cycle moves me 1 tile or 1 tile and 2 pixels is fairly unimportant i'd assume. Although it would alter jump distances (i.e. 6 pixels away from the edge vs exactly spot on). This could feel pretty arbitrary i suppose.

I realize this has some of pitfalls.
It would require a number of animations twice. When you jump and your left leg's down, raise the right one. Otherwise do it the other way around. and this would apply for stand-to-walk/walk-to-stand/walk-to-run/run-to-walk/run-to-stand and the list goes on.
I wouldn't want to wait for a specific frame (ie. left foot down) in order to transition into a jump. That would in most cases feel arbitrarily delayed, especially if it isn't grid bound.

I guess i should just go ahead and try it out instead of rambling on..

Whatever are your thoughts on this kind of animation/movement handling?

wow, nice work on the chainmail there. looks great.

One thing that cought my attention is the even distribution of highlights along the arms. I think that is something which contributes to the arms feeling off.
Looking at wolfenoctis edit, the pose definitely reads better though, so thats something to consider.

Hey wes,

The sprite looks nice. The animations feel not quite there yet.

In the running loop, the torso, apart from twisting stays nearly stationary. looks very stiff that way.
The jumping seems more like she's lifted by a wire, than jumping from her own force.

Mhhh i cant really say for sure what exactly is odd with the round slash but it seems off. i guess there might be a frame missing in between the slash to understand how the pose ends up where it started. also it reminded me of ryu's slash
http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/breathfire2/sheet/20122/


The stab looks very defensive since she moves her leg backwards.


made her balance on the hind leg, adapted some of the frame timings, twisted her torso a little in the third frame and shown her left arm to indicate a the actual lunge. finally adjusted the sword position a little to blend better between poses

Edit: After looking at it again, it seems there could even be more torso twisting expressed, especially in the stab frames. With a sword of this size you wouldnt just use your arms but your whole hips and torso to move that thing with the greatest force possible.


admittedly the change is very subtle. but if you look at her hips and back it seems like a more natural motion

Hey people, long time!

I've been working on a game for some time now, on and off. I guess it started around 2 and a half years ago just to play around with flash. I've been fiddling with it ever since, never being happy enough with its art style. I've swapped tilesets a lot, always getting more where i wanted to be, but it never quite clicked until just last week. But let's start from the beginning:

At first there was Johnny


i wanted to go for a low res design to begin with so i can animate fast, turns out that was the right choice for me.

Except when it came to tilesets. To make the environment responsive enough for a sprite that size i went for 8x8 tiles. Which makes it really difficult to place a lot of detail, while remaining tile-able and not feel ridiculously gridded.


After that i tried to embrace it and go for a more abstract approach but after not too long i got sick of looking at it


Some time passed and i picked it up again, desperately trying to figure an artstyle for the game.
The first attempt was to give some color to the sprite in hope to gain some inspiration for the environment aswell. It was quite a challenge to choose a palette that doesn't look ridiculously bad, and i think there's still ways to improve it


Interestingly enough, while i introduced colors to the sprite, i removed them from the tileset, resulting in an interesting esthetic, but still not quite what i was looking for


Pause again, for close to a year. Then, few weeks ago, when AGDQ2015 were airing i felt it again. The urge to create. Remembering what state i left it in had me hesitate a bit but i kept thinking about it. Finally, last week i decided to give it another shot. I sat down and took a couple days to work on a new tileset, trying to use photos as reference to get a more... seizable feel. It turned out ok, but it still left me empty. This is not what i wanted.


Then, this weekend it hit me! I was showing a friend Irkalla, which in my eyes has a quite amazing design. Why does it look so much more awesome? It seems like a world that has structure, and and depth, yet it is not bloated with details and colors. It's not flat! That was it. It has an actual floor, layers seem actually distanced. So simple, yet it was so far away from me for such a long time.

As usual, i'm still having trouble getting a decent color palette, but the general style is developing towards where i actually want to have it. I'm very pumped about this

After putting some work in it over the weekend i made some realisations:
1. Making this mockup was tremendously enjoying, putting little things here and there to make every corner look a little different
2. But this will not something feasable for a tile-based game.
3. Or is it?
I loved the hand-drawn(hand-inserted?) details so much so i ended up wanting to draw my levels. Not all of it naturally.
Luckily enough i've also been working on a tile-map editor (which started around the same time as the game), which now has the ability to create tile-sheets dynamically, so i can roughly tile my map using basic shapes, and use a pencil to draw all those little nooks and wedges and boulders wherever i want!

This is, so far, my journey with this game. It's been delightful working with different styles throughout it, especially since i discovered one that really hits the spot. Of course this is only a stepping stone as well, and there will be hurdles (like that water over there) which i wont quite find comfortable with, but this is a big step for this project!

Thanks for letting me share this

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After a couple long days of only coding i eventually got around working on the mockup some more, to get a better feeling for the shapes and shades.


I added more shades and highlights. It helps especially in the water area, to get a better feel of submergedness.
I saturated the palette and brightened it up a bit. But after looking at it when it is not at 800% zoom makes it feel pretty dark still. It's tough to get the atmosphere just right.

The background so far is a mystery to me. Should it be darker? Less saturated? Brighter even? I cant manage to find the color that still makes the fore- and background readable enough while still implying a dark desolate place.

I also added a bit of perspective to the ceiling to give it a more roomy feel. not quite sure about adding details to it yet. maybe its not even necessary, as it might grab too much attention.

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I tried to explore more ideas with this style last night.


There is still a bunch of issues i have with it. For one thing i'm not certain about the level of detail on it. That's something which needs to be proven when tested in actual production, but for a mock-up it's fine i reckon.
One thing i liked about this style is that you can get interesting results by using basic strokes and suggest interesting shapes with it. As it turns out, it just isn't that simple.

With the current use of the palette it is hard to differentiate foreground from background, see the little descent above the lava pit.

Liquids are tough! I don't even...

Glows...urrrrgh..

In the lower part of the cave i tried to blend the background with the floor and ceiling, but it turned out more chaotic than it should be. especially the ceiling doesn't read well like that.

Here's the thing with collision in case you're wondering how that would work

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Still cant leave that palette alone. Gave it a slightly bluer touch. Removed the arbitrary highlight color and replaced it with the floor color. Feels more settled somehow.



When trying to create a basic tile sheet out of it i got a little confused. drawing by hand makes it so easy to not abide any rules and just go with the flow. I tried to make some sense out of it and came up with a simple basic outline for it



Tilesets consist of the floor, left/right walls, fore(back?) ground with a lighter and a darker greyish shade, and either a blueish shade when ceiling or the dark grey shade when being used as a crevice.

I am still confused as to when and where to use each specific shade. Its easy to overdo it and just go crazy on this thing. otherwise sometimes less is indeed more. I guess balance is the key.