Never-ending ownage

[KaiserFate]

Okay, so I basically worked all day on this image and figured I should show it here on the forums.



At the advice of a couple people here on the forums after my last postings, I decided to finally up the ante a bit and go for more of a Super Nintendo look. I've been studying the snapshots I've taken from various games over the years and now that I have played around enough with pixels just for fun, I finally have the fundamentals in place to understand what in the name of shitsticks the Artists of Old were actually doing.

I tried sticking to three-to-five shades per colour, with an overall fairly limited pallette, and the background was inspired by a few games such as Demon's Crest and some detailed RPG overworld backgrounds.

The animation could be a little more complex but I deliberately wanted to go for a bit of a low-tech feel and also this is for a project that is really more about speed than quality, so I'll cut you all to the chase by saying I could have added in a lot more in-betweens on the Knight's movement.


Hope you guys enjoy it! 

[FRAWG]

The animations seem to be a little to independent of each other, it looks like every body part has a mind of its own...

And the caveman's hair changes color...... odd.

[KaiserFate]

And the caveman's hair changes color...... odd.

He's getting electrecuted, it's just a cartoony effect.

Also not really sure what you mean by how the animations "seem independent of each other"?


Edit: Actually I feel I should point another thing out, for some reason when the knight finishes his first two swordswipes his upper torso jumps forward one pixel. This is a glitch. Because the animation was so complicated, I ended up using three programs to make it: GraphicsGale for drawing and animating the sprites and background, Flash for the main animation, and ImageReady for the final export (Flash 8 couldn't export gifs or many other formats if its life depended on it, so I have to export PNG frames and use IR to turn it into a gif).
For some reason, Flash just buggers up and pushes things around sometimes, and those frames where his torso takes one pixelstep forward and nothing else does is a result of that. You can't see it in Flash either, it only happens after you export. Annoyingly, there appears to be no way to fix it.

[CodeCriminal]

I for one think its really cool, and humorous, especially the animations, they are particularly well done. (not to go against what FRAWG has said just my opinion)

critique:
First thing i noticed is the cave that the "enemies" enter the stage from is rather fake looking and doesnt fit welll with the rest of scene which is rather good. It reminds me of solid jelly that you heat with boiling water, place in a mold the leave in the fridge to set. If it were me, id scrap that part and try again.
When the character (with the sword) is at the last few frames of animation and opens his hand that is not holding the sword, the thumb looks out of place and detached, because of the outline that runs around the thumb and through the hand.. its also rotated toward to ground a little too far, positioning my hand in the same way that was intended i can see that i can get a little over a 90 degree angle between my thumb and index finger and thats only when i dont position my hand flat out.
Finally, there seems to be borderline pillow shading going on in various places, most notably the chest plate, but that might be how it is ment to be I dont know.. considering the main light source is behind the character, you could try doing some back lighting on the various pieces of plate that are missing it (the boots isnt one of them). Since this is supposed to be a Super Nintendo concept where the characters lighting should fit in various lighting conditions you may not want to do that though..

Meh.. Thats all I had to say.. Hope it helped

[KaiserFate]

Thanks for a great crit! All duly noted, I see what you mean about the thumb.
I'll admit I'm pretty new to actually attempting backgrounds at all so I'll be the first to admit I have a long way to go in that department.
And yeah, I did think about the light source and decided on basically what you said: because this is for a fictional full game as opposed to a one-off piece of pixelart, I wanted to have them in your basic "answer-all" lighting rather than tuned to a specific lightsource.

Obviously I'm not that in touch with pixel lingo, but could you tell me what 'pillow shading' is?

[FRAWG]

I for one think its really cool, and humorous, especially the animations, they are particularly well done. (not to go against what FRAWG has said just my opinion)

The animations are good, but i just thought that the movements of the knight were a little bit too unrealistic.... Like how things end up moving positions instead of rotating. It's a difficult thing to do, I understand that, but i think it could be done.

[CodeCriminal]

I for one think its really cool, and humorous, especially the animations, they are particularly well done. (not to go against what FRAWG has said just my opinion)

The animations are good, but i just thought that the movements of the knight were a little bit too unrealistic.... Like how things end up moving positions instead of rotating. It's a difficult thing to do, I understand that, but i think it could be done.

I see what you mean, I do, I just dont think it detracts from the overall piece. Perhaps linking the body parts in a more realistic manner would improve it a great deal however it is a cartoon after all. I suppose we'll have to let KaiserFate decide where he/she wants to take it on that front

[PixelPiledriver]

Cool stuff.

The characters would benefit from a shadow underneath them. Even if it is just the generic round shadow it will help ground them.

The way its shaped and lit, the Knights package is facing straight at the viewer. Its like its staring at me!

I actually enjoy this type of animation. From a programming stand point it makes characters that can have interchangeable parts. From an animation stand point it shaves off a lot of time which is "typically" favorable.

So when does this game release?

oh and Pillow Shading is lighting an object as if the light source is emitted from the viewer. It flattens form visually and either is or approaches symmetrical light and shadow patterns. Though it could have some sort of useful application... i geuss... it is usually best to avoid.

[big brother]

When does the killing stop? When does the red knight shed his helmet and say "enough"?

As Kurtz said in "Heart of Darkness," "The horror! The horror!"

[KaiserFate]

So what would be a good alternative to pillow shading in a universal game setting? Just choosing a light source such as top-right and keeping it consistent for all the sprites? Would make flipping the sprites a bit awkward. I'm quite open to alternative suggestions, this was just practice, really.

Unfortunately the killing doesn't stop. He's spawncamping and simply making these poor players' lives hell!

Now I know what you mean about the segmented look of the knight. I agree that animating it fully frame by frame will look better and that will be an approach I will try next time for sure. The main reason I took this approach was because it's actually for a choose-your-own-adventure type deal, viewers leave suggestions and I make a response moving the story forward. So the philosophy is more "fast and good" than "slow and great"; obviously I'd be taking a wholly different approach if this were a self-contained videogame!

In any case, thanks all for your critique and kind words 

[Ryumaru]

Top down lighting. That way even if you flip, the lighting is still exactly the same.