First of all thanks for the responses and sorry for the delay, I have no internet so I can only answer like once in a month when I go to a friend's house.

Rikfuzz: I like that take on the portrait! Definitely feels like Super Street Fighter II, or maybe Streets of Rage 3.

I probably won't use dithering for the faces in women portraits, but maybe I could try to use some for male portraits, as in SSF2. Chun and Cammy have a simpler, anime-ish look with little dithering in their faces, but for males they use it extensively and it gives them a more rugged, stronger look. I'm pretty bad at dithering though, it requires a degree of skill I lack to do it well, but will give it a try.

I tried to apply some of the ideas I liked from you version to mine. I particularly like how you did the face bandage, really looks like a piece of cloth instead of looking flat like in my version. I attempted to pull off something similar, though it looks nowhere as convincing.



What do you think of this?

Hawken: I used to draw everything by hand on paper and then scanned and traced those drawings to convert them to sprites.

That method proved to be tedious and counterproductive, so nowadays I draw everything directly on the PC with graphicsgale, since it's easier to keep things consistent that way. I also use rotations for some inbetweens to give animations more weight at a fraction of the time it takes to draw a framw from grounnd up.

Once I get the design of a character down I draw a single neutral frame to get key measurements (how many pixels long is the waist, head, legs, shoulder to shoulder, etc), and then decide the palette. Once I have that, I plan the keyframes and timings on paper, and decide beforehand which frames are eligible for rotating for inbetweens.

I draw the initial roughs on a single graphicsgale frame with layers for each animation frame, so I can clearly see the previous drawing, which increases accuracy and efficiency, and once I have things in place and the animation works well I make each of those layers a separate frame and proceed to fully draw all the keyframes and main inbetweens to the last detail.

Then I use asesprite's rotprite algorhythm to do some extra padding inbetweens. It's a much less destructive rotation than what most editors do, so it doesn't take that much work to clean a sprite rotated that way.

When I started with this project my process was much less methodic and I ended up having to edit and re-edit things many times due to inconsistencies, bad production decisions and plain lower drawing skill (I constantly had to revise things to make them look consistent with my latest work)... I guess they were unavoidable mistakes I had to go through to learn to do things better. With the way I do things now newer animations are ready much faster.

Tourist: do you see that in all animations, or just in some attacks? Would you specify a bit more so I can try to fix them?

Decroded: Makes sense, I didn't think it that way even though it seems obvious.

I was talking about using a fully frontal vanishing point too since boss battles will have little advancing scrolling and be more like in a versus fighting game (KOF; SF; Guilty gear, etc) with back and forth scrolling so perhaps that kind of view would be good for those fights.

Lately I've been practicing slashing effects. This is the character's super move, and is supposed to be a very strong slash that leaves a lingering wave over her. Timing is a bit off since the slash effect should have its own timing, but it shares the character's so it looks strange towards the end. Also, right now the slash has only one color. What could be improved? 



Lately I decided to drop cel-shading on shadow areas, since I don't think it really adds that much in terms of style and it adds a lot of time to edition, particularly when rotationg frames. Now I only use that darker color to delimit areas and do some details. I decided this after looking at this artist's work (http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=2595023, some NSFW content). I think the sprites look cartoony enough without them due to the low color count, what do you think?

I've started to give the finishing touches to the sprites of other characters too. I should say that the game is suppossed to take place in a WWII setting with fantastic elements, so designs make a bit more sense. The main character and her allies are based on Allied countries and the enemies on Axis forces.

An ally



Making Chinese girls look distinctive is very hard since they are very popular in fighting games. I tried my best but she ended up looking a bit like Bao from KOF, which does not speak very well about the quality of her design. Perhaps I should give her a Chinese sword, though Namco already did that with Xianghua...

What do you think about the pallete? Skin color right now is the same as the girl I've been posting and seems to work fine for this one too, but probably could change. I'm also not sure about the shading on her dress; it's meant to make it look tight with the tension points on her waist, but doesn't look that convincing.

and enemy bosses



I think this one needs more contrast to differentiate the armor and uniform better, but I can't think of another pallete for metal. I could change the uniform's color to black, but I already have many characters that use black and I don't want to make colors that monotonous.



This is supposed to be a magician. My main problem is the book, which, well, doesn't look that much like a book. Perhaps I should add some runes or magic symbols to make it look magic-er. Tried with a pentagram but I can't make it look right.

Sorry for the wall of text and for what will probably be a late reply next time I'm here.

Quite a late reply, but I've ben busy lately.

I retouched the hair a bit. Here's how it looks on the portrait and the idle sprite.




Does it look any good? I didn't attempt to resolve the bra issue, ha, I don't think I quite get how to solve it.

As for the animation process, now I draw keyframes, then rotate inbetweens with rotsprite and then edit them to clean them up. I only rotate when I've finished the keyframes (color, lines, etc), before I stupidly rotated unfinished frames and had to do a lot more work.

Right now I'm doing the lines for the last two enemies I want to have for testing and demoing. After that I'll have to do at least a part of a stage, which will be a new thing for me since I've never drawn stages. I'll probably end up having to hire help for that eventually with some crowdfunding campaign, as it will be a lot of work for a single man.

Thanks for the input. Now I'm doing a portrait, and I'd like some advice on the hair and foldings if possible (ignore the unfinished buttons):



Some progress on the older sprites

Wolfenoctis: The body is eight heads tall, a basic unit of proportion from traditional art. Making the head bigger would either make her childish or stocky, so I went with eight heads.

I like some of your edits, but I can't use most of them. The pants look nice, but I want to go for something tighter so I won't put that many folds, and the style is too realistic and I'm going for something a bit more anime-ish. I really like the knife, but it has to be a double edged dagger (because some of the slashing attacks I made would look strange otherwise as she would be trying to cut with the back of the knife) and having the knife on the other hand would force me to redraw a lot of stuff.

I took the colours you used for it and tried to make a dagger with them. Also changed the pose a palette a bit.



Couldn't do much more on the pixel front since my monitor broke so I'm stuck with the pencil and paper side of things for a while.

Hi, thanks for the replies.

mrpixel: Yes, I draw on paper with pencil (I have a grid drawn on tiny 10cm x 10cm sheets for reference), then scan and trace. It's probably not the most effective way of doing things, but I don't have a tablet and I'm too accustomed to pencil and paper.

Neophos: The animations are still a bit rough as I tend to correct stuff when I color, but I hadn't noticed the problem in the feet, thanks.

As for the punch, the game will have 3 attack buttons, punch, kick and slash, with punches being light attacks, kicks mids, and slashes hards, so it's supposed to be a quick light attack. You are right about the knife, I'll try to keep it more static.

I'll see if I cn change the timing of the other moves a bit. I put more frames on them since they are special moves and need to be slower, but probably the timing is off.

rikfuzz: No rotoscoping, but I referenced the run from Eadweard Muybridge's "The Human Figure in Motion". The attacks I pre-plan very roughly on paper and then draw them when I have them mostly defined. I referenced timings from SNK and Capcom fighting games. I'm not ultra methodic like real animators, which in the end probably makes me waste too much time. I'll check that run, thanks. You are right on the contrast bit, I'll try to make highlights stand out more. 

shark jacobs: I took out a frame on the startup and I think you are right, it has a bit more impact. I think I put too many frames on the startup of some attacks, with bad timings. The woes of being a noob at this haha.



wolfenoctis: Which particular proportions would you say are off? I tried to make legs as high as the upper body, the whole body roughly eight heads high, the waist a bit less than one head, etc. I remember my very first sprites being REALLY off proportion-wise (like the waist being like 35 pixels wide haha) and not being able to tell by myself until a lot later.

Some other animations, with unfinished colouring.








A regular enemy with unfinished colouring. Suggestions for the shield colours? Not sure how to do the mail either. Some colour theft herer, heh, the skull I got from Bornnam's portrait in Shippu Mahou Daisakusen, and the metal colours from Cyangmou's zombie knight pic. I'm terrible at palettes, sorry.