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Messages - zez
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41
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Run-n-gun game sprites
« on: June 15, 2010, 11:45:29 pm »
I generally cheat and use a rotation tool on the previous frame (just the bit that's moving, to rotate it towards the new position) and then base my shading loosely off of that, with some variation for where the light would be hitting it (like if a leg is no longer getting shadow from something above it) by using a semi transparent layer with the rotated bit ontop. Obviously I dont use the rotated bit in the final sprite, as that would look horrible, but it helps keep my pixel clusters in fairly consistent spots.
That being said, your shading pretty much blows mine out of the water, so Im not sure how applicable that method is with all the subpixel stuff you have going on.
I think the two jumpiest bits you have on the legs, btw are right above the crotch, where the torso gains and looses a pixel, and the fairly intense jump from frame to frame on his butt. The butt seems to be constantly gaining and loosing 3 or 4 pixels. You also may want to ditch the sellout on his front leg and just use shading. I think those issues would pretty much fix it.
Also, welcome to pixelation! Nice to see more migration.

42
Pixel Art / Re: Character re-do
« on: June 15, 2010, 08:04:08 pm »
So, first off... Im about 10 times as into the first one as the new one.
I think she could work at that resolution, with some minor changes. First off, her proportions got wonky. I would make her arm skinny, like it was in the first. This wouldnt bug me as much if it wasnt for the first sprite, but her pose just doesnt read as well now. I would also raise the elbow a little bit, and elongate her legs/shrink her torso. right now her torso appears considerably longer then her legs. I think part of the problem is just how far down her crotch is, but raising the belt a few pixels, and maybe getting rid of the top black line on it. (just so you have more room for the actual torso).
I also really dug the front arm holding the sword, but I can see that being a pain in the neck to animate, so I cant really blame you for culling it. The blue hair matching the pants gave her a bit more style. I like her new haircut, and I really dig the way you rendered the ear, but making her a brunet makes her look more like an NPC and less like the main character.
I would also EITHER give her eyes, or lower her bangs and the shadow. Im not suggesting drawing eyes on the face exactly, just some shading to suggest they are there, right now her face looks pretty weird at 2x zoom. It works at 1, but if you are zooming in, I would add eyes, or just lower the bangs/shadow.

here's two edits that basically address all of that. They are basically the same, I lowered the bangs on, the other I gave her an eye. I tweaked the anatomy on both, they are a tad bit rough, but take what you will from them.

43
Pixel Art / Re: [wip] the ruins of Paris
« on: June 14, 2010, 12:46:14 am »
Word, that does look a whole lot better.
I was using the same darkest color I used on the player (mostly around the boots) so it was a fair bit more saturated, yours definitely looks better, and manages to work fine as the darkest color on the player as well (ends up upping the contrast a tiny bit and actually makes him pop more, well making some details more noticeable.)
The batman bricks are friggin gorgeous, but I think that much dithering would be to distracting, given that the game will be double sized. I bet that looks amazing on a crt tho.
I also may steal the idea of having lighter 'pillars' that are made of larger bricks to show some illusion of depth, as that looks really good, and totally shows up in french architecture.
The line on the pillar on the left hand one looks pretty good, and does a good job of making it look rounder and pop from the rest of the building a little bit, unfortunately it doesnt work on the one on the right, and as of such the rightmost one looks flat in comparison. You have however inspired me to try and shade the pillar better, so there should be another version of this soon.

44
Pixel Art / Re: Game sprite: Ubume ghost [WIP]
« on: June 13, 2010, 02:48:52 am »
Thats... awesome.
I think it could use a transition frame between the middle frame of the player holding it, and the final one where he is almost dropping it, and possibly a slight bounce back on the last frame (like he dropped it ever so slightly further and pulled it back up a little.)
Is there seriously going to be a dont drop the baby mini game? Thats friggin amazing. Just had to say that.

45
General Discussion / Re: 3d vs 2d Myth (or is it?)
« on: June 13, 2010, 02:25:01 am »
Heh, reading this I actually had kind of a similar metaphor come to mind, only vaguely backwards.
2d is like improvisation on an instrument. You need to know how to portray exactly the feeling you want, and your hands need to know exactly where to go to make it happen. 3d on the other hand, is like playing a song. You dont need to have a clue of why something works, or feels the way it does to play it, you do however, need to have the mechanical skills down, or it will sound awful, and well that is true of improvisation, sense the improvisation has no pre-existing structure, your ability to convey the meaning is far more important then technical proficiency you use.
I have taken a number of solo's at shows where I botched notes, or played slightly offbeat, and the crowd still ate it up. If I did the same thing with say, the chord progression, people would probably up and leave, or start throwing beer bottles at me.

46
Pixel Art / Re: [wip] the ruins of Paris
« on: June 13, 2010, 01:32:45 am »

Pretty massive changes made to the pallet, and some changes to the enemy sprites. There are now female version of the bloodwolves (the blue guys, its kind of a joke,) and enemy's are given a gender randomly on creation. The bike in that screen is super WIP, btw. I still need to add in the engine block, and actually shade it, but thats the overall form blocked in.

Anyhow.... If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix the bricks in the tiles to look more textured and blend better with the rest of the game, that would be rad. Any other comments or suggestions are also more then welcome.

*EDIT* Ohyeah, Im also down to 16 colors counting alpha. That number will likely go up as I add in more enemys, as the different gangs all get there own gang colors, but yeah.

47
Pixel Art / Re: [wip] the ruins of Paris
« on: June 09, 2010, 03:11:02 am »
Huh... there ARE 113 in that, hang on... that makes ZERO sense....
layer 1- 13 + alpha
layer 2 - 6 + alpha
railing - 4 + alpha (shares 2 with layer 1)
player - 10 + alpha
enemy - 5 + alpha
shots - 3 + alpha (times two I guess, because the enemy shots are all pallet swaps of the player shot)

// other stuff
temp foreground tiles seem to be at 17 colors + alpha, thats the one bit of sprite work that isnt me, and is actually for a totally different area...
there is another 1 color for the bg, and 1 more for the unfinished silhouette in the parallax layer (mostly just there so I could make sure parallax was working)
...

that should be 46 total in the assets being used (everything but the 17 in the foreground tile,) and 63 total.... That is also making the assumption I never reused colors, and that is flat out untrue.

That being said, I just noticed that I didnt crop out the windows vista screen boarder, and when I copied a small portion of that into a new image, got a solid 73 colors, time to crop.
... ok, new count is 43. Thats still slightly overkill, and I could probably do things about it like match the bullet colors to the player, but its not nearly as daunting...
Ill re-assess the hue on the bricks them self, but Im kind of curios on how to suggest a brick texture... My art has all the subtlety of a "sex crazed rhinoceros on bad acid", and as of such any pointers on doing that would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, umm.. heres the cropped image

48
Pixel Art / Re: Retro-Style Sprites
« on: June 09, 2010, 02:36:32 am »
I second what alspal said, I would honestly recommend up scaling everything to a 200 zoom, leaving the hud as it is, and the actual screen size around the same, that way everything will look good (that hud will look awful at 1x zoom) and you wont have to worry about large open spaces so much. Its amazing what zooming will do to make caves seem more claustrophobic.

49
Pixel Art / Re: Game sprite: Ubume ghost [WIP]
« on: June 09, 2010, 02:30:24 am »
Thats really pretty, I like where you are going with it. The right arm (my right, her left) seems to be moving from a totally different wind source from the rest tho, and is generally a great deal less smooth. The sleeve is kind of doing this 1-2-rest-rest thing on a shuffle... erm, pardon the music vernacular, it moves twice, rather jarringly, in rapid succession then hangs for a second and does it again, well the rest is blowing super smooth. That totally would happen if there was a sudden gust of wind, but that isnt how the wind is moving in the rest of the piece.
There are also a few pixels popping in and out of existence that are a bit jarring, there's one around the right shoulder (just under,) and two on her right leg, just below the hips, that also happen to be a much lighter white then really makes sense.
Anyhow, keep it up, this is gorgeous.

50
Pixel Art / Re: [wip] the ruins of Paris
« on: June 08, 2010, 11:26:26 pm »
Im not totally sure I agree with your critique, the pallet was based on numerous reference pics, and although it IS simplified,  bricks actually do take on a dark greenish yellow hue when exposed to massive amounts of radiation (near as I can tell at least, I have seriously sifted through far more images of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl then I thought I ever would in my life... Google it sometime, if you arent feeling too squeemish.)
Ill admit that the background colors and the character clash a bit, but Im not really sure hue shifting everything to be closer to together (read, lower contrast) is actually a solution to that problem, or that it is even a problem (about 90% of the time my pants dont match the sidewalk, or the buildings around me. Just saying.)

If you would care to elaborate on HOW the character doesnt fit, if the assumption I jumped too in interpenetrating your post was incorrect, by all means let me know, I do want to make everything in this game feel congruent, Im just not convinced making the bricks the incorrect color to match a pre-conceived pallet is the correct approach. Mind you, yellow/green bricks is kind of counter intuitive to me to, and wasn't in my paradigm before.

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