Trying to animate, first post

[CCPC Speaker]

Hi everyone !

I'm new on this forum, I've just read the rules so now I'm afraid to post, but I do it anyway.

I discovered it with the work of Bilou some month ago. Starting from that I always wanted to create a little video game ; just a little thing you know, "like jump, jump, run, kill, end of level".

For the little story, I draw mini comics since 2004 and I created a bunch of characters that you can see below


All my attemps to create a pixel character failed, and I just didn't saved them because it was awful. And some weeks ago I retry'd to do something, I imposed to myself a 32x32 and I've done that

4x

It looks okay, I don't really know. Because I'm not a pixel artist (yet ?), I ask myself "Is it a good thing ?" and "How am I going to animate that ?"

I really think my little guy is "not so bad" but I want him to walk like that

(I suck drawing that  )
but I think his legs are too short or something.

Do you pixel-art-genius-guys(/and girls) this original 32x32 sprite can be animated like that or it is reaaly too ambicious ?

Thanks a lot in advance !

[Quake]

Well, for one i think it's good that you can draw stages on pieces of paper, since it'll help a lot, with visualising what will happen.

Never work on white, it makes colours look darker. It also kills your eyes
Also, don't use black outlines.

Anyway, back to your questions.
I don't think it too ambitious, just don't try and put too much detail into the small space, because it'll look clustered and very hard to read what is what.

Hope it helped, i'm a newb xD

-Quake

[Shrike]

I agree with Quake. Although the black outlines and background color choice is purely up to the artist. Black outlines can be a stylistic choice. This project should be perfectly doable, it just depends on how much time you give to it and how much you are devoted to it. I like your character a lot, but there are some cool touches in to concept art that were passed over in to sprite.

I'm really not that good myself, lol. Don't take what i say too seriously.
Ill do a sample animation of the run later if you want me to. Good luck and happy spriting!

[tocky]

Your guy will lose a lot of character if you simplify him so much as that. The sketches are awesome, so you should hang on to those shapes, if you can.

Something like that. I'm using a bunch of shades, because I couldn't figure out how to represent all of the curves and details in just black and white.

[CCPC Speaker]

Thank you so very much for you comments guys; it's so nice from you

Don't worry about the purple background (I mean, if I understood well, you were worried about that ) it's juste because a game engine was using this color (#ff00ff) for transparency. I mean, you already know that.
Same for the black and white thing, I just wanted to make a sprite like my drawing, pure black and pure white nothing more.
And then I looked at the tocky sprite, and OMAGAD ! It's so beautiful, even if it is "something like that". And you're right, it's better with shades ; I drop this idea of pure bliack and white.

I didn't excepted at all that someone would make a sprite of my drawing, I mean not before a long time.

Thanks Shrike too if you have time and energy to waste on a little animation

I think this is all. I just wanted to post another thing I did during the day. I try even smaller, a 16x16 sprite. Before everyone notice it, this sprite is a COPY
I was just unable to figure out how to make a 16x16 character so I took one already made by Mr. Adam Atomic

The orginal sprites


The one I made


But 16x16 sucks, I mean for my character, I prefer working on 32x32

Oh and, if you haven't already noticed, I'm not a native english speaker So pleeease forgive me for all my mistakes.
Thank you so much once again

[Organ_House]

Izzat Raz from Psychonauts? Schweet!! 

Anyway, I can't comment anything particularly helpful since I'm new as well, but I would suggest you try experimenting with colors more. Here's a quick thing I did with the tiny sprite. Composition wise it's pretty bad, but I think the color choices are alright.



Remember color plays an important role in spriting, so keep that in mind when working on your sprites. And 32x32 is a good size to start at, but also try 24x24 sometime, and a little Street Fighter sized as well (actually, the full figure Street Fighter size is probably best to start with if you're coming in from a traditional art background I think.)

[Popstar]

Hi, I like the cartoony style of your drawings and I think it can fit within the 32x32 barrier... I made a little attempt:



All I've done is:

I've reduced the amount of colors to keep it simple
I've resized your drawing so it fits.
Then I've used the garbled little image as a guide for the outlines, while I've used the big image to see which details are what.
Lastly, I've used a tiny bit of antialiasing to get some of the smooth feeling from your drawn lines. (Antialiasing is the grey pixels if you don't happen to know what it is)

As you can see, some features have to be exaggerated a bit, like the hands, or they would just end up looking like black chickenfeet.

Hope you can use this.

EDIT: I tried out the second one as well, this time without antialiasing so you can see the difference.

Cheers.
Pops.