AuthorTopic: [C&C] Knight platformer character  (Read 5229 times)

Offline Lemonhead

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[C&C] Knight platformer character

on: December 15, 2011, 05:36:48 pm
Hi!

I've been lurking around these forums for a while. Never posted. Admired all the great talent that thrive here. Anything I can do pales in comparison. I've been wanting to create art for some games I program, and I'd like to ask for some help on how I can improve my skills. My goal is to eventually be able to create a variation of tiles and models with animations for a 2D side scroller.

Although very generic, I've chosen to start with a knight character.


My initial draft and some shading that I thought at the time was appropriate.


This is where I'm at now. This is as far as I believe I can push it.

Would anyone be so kind as to help me go beyond this?

Thank you.

Offline Charlieton

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #1 on: December 15, 2011, 06:57:10 pm
You have quite an abundance of colours in that sprite, many of which are so similar that you can't make them out anyway. For such a small sprite, the value of each individual pixel is rather high, and you can't afford to waste any. With 26 very similar colors, the sprite becomes very blurry on such a small scale. And we don't want "blurryness", we want readability! And thus I encourage you to limit the colour count to what is strictly necessary, only.
Det skulle vara lätt för mig att säga att jag inte gillar dig, men det gör jag; tror jag

Offline Lemonhead

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #2 on: December 15, 2011, 07:18:55 pm
How many colors would you recommend me having in the 3 respectively color groups instead of the ones I have? And how dark and light should I have at the top and bottom of the ramps? Well, the sword also has a ramp, but I'm not happy with it at all, and was hoping for some tips on how to make the sword sharp looking while still readable on different backgrounds. Preferably without outlining in black.

Edit: When clicking on an image posted on this forum, they are enlarged, but it becomes blurry. Is it possible to have images enlarged on clicks, but not blurred?
« Last Edit: December 15, 2011, 07:23:33 pm by Lemonhead »

Offline Charlieton

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #3 on: December 15, 2011, 07:39:00 pm
The filter that you get on a zoomed-in picture is probably a result of what browser you're using. I think there's been talk about Chrome having problems with the zoom-feature, but I don't know more than that.

I did a sloppy edit where I focused on limiting the colours. I got it to 8 in total.



How light and/or dark your colours should be I leave up to you. If you think there's enough definition in my edit, then you could probably settle with 8 colours, or less. I'm not too happy about it myself, though.
Det skulle vara lätt för mig att säga att jag inte gillar dig, men det gör jag; tror jag

Offline Lemonhead

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #4 on: December 15, 2011, 08:22:50 pm
The zoom-in blur is firefox' fault I guess. kind of annoying, so if anyone knows how to circumvent it, It'd be great. If not, I'll live.


I see what you mean about readability. Your edit is much crisper. Will try to edit my sprite with your tips.

Offline Fickludd

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #5 on: December 15, 2011, 08:28:53 pm
11 color (incl. background) edit:


Since the sprite is so small you need to ditch complex shading to gain readability, having more pixels of the same color clustered together greatly helps here.

What I've done:
- swapped to value neutral background
- simplified shading
- tinted armour towards cold cyan to better separate it from the warm cape/skin/shield/boots
- added stripes/highlights to helmet to create maximal contrast and draw the viewers eye
- some lesser highlights on the armour

Dunno how to make low-res weapons sharp, somebody else help please =)

Offline Charlieton

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #6 on: December 15, 2011, 09:41:10 pm
The zoom-in blur is firefox' fault I guess. kind of annoying, so if anyone knows how to circumvent it, It'd be great. If not, I'll live.
Actually, I'm using Firefox too, and there's no problem. It should work if you have the latest version.

Yeah, I'm unsure of how to fix a sharp-looking sword too.
Det skulle vara lätt för mig att säga att jag inte gillar dig, men det gör jag; tror jag

Offline Lemonhead

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #7 on: December 15, 2011, 11:33:50 pm
Actually, I'm using Firefox too, and there's no problem. It should work if you have the latest version.
Hmm. I'll look into it tomorrow.

I reduced the amount of colors, but for now I've only used colors from the original sprite. I'm not quite happy with them, so I will try to experiment more in cyans and others as suggested. Added an animation to convey that he's in a running stance, and not standing still on both legs. I did not intent him to hold his sword out like that when standing still even though it looks like that might work as well. Please say what's better, and what's worse.




How was your process of picking those colors? They match up really well, but when I look closer on the sprite, the colors doesn't really look like they should work well together. It leads me to think you know something that I just can't see. (please don't just say color theory) For example the cape consists of 3 colors. Red, and orange and a brown. They have almost the same hue, are scaled in lightness, but you have desaturated the brown a lot while kept the saturation on the red and orange high. Why not keep the saturation the same? Is there any rule you follow, or did you just pick them cause they looked right?

Sorry if these are too many questions. I've just never really gotten a grasp on how to pick good colors, and never seem to be able to do it right.

Offline Fickludd

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #8 on: December 16, 2011, 10:28:59 am
Hey that's a good improvement, and nice animation. I like your cape a lot more than mine =)

Ok, my color picking process is very interleaved with actually placing the pixels, and usually I just try ideas for colors until I find something I like.

First I picked the light and dark red for the cape. The light color is closer to yellow (warmer) and the dark one closer to purple (colder). Then I was messing with trying to find a good hand color to make them differ from the armour, and that's when I armour tint to cyan. I think the hands are very important for readability. The brown in the cape is actually simply the brown from the boots, which was just some brown color i happened to like. By having this brown in-between the cape colors i lightness and quite desaturated, the eye will never notice the difference in hue in single pixels and it can be used to soften up the cape as a midshade.

Offline ColonelMustache

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Re: [C&C] Knight platformer character

Reply #9 on: December 16, 2011, 06:50:57 pm
In the walking animation it appears as if he's hopping along on one foot. The front foot doesn't seem to come down. Also to distinguish which leg is which during the animation you could shade one of them darker than the other. The guy looks really cool.