GR#128 - Battlescar - Sideview Gameart & Animation

[PypeBros]

Also pretty keen if anyone has suggestions on how to make the "slash" thing look better?
I just want to start with a basic one for now but later will have some variants for fire damage, frost damage etc.

It looks fine to me the way it currently is. The only odd thing is the guy's hair sticking upwards in the last frame.

Now feel like it just needs more frames after the strike to smooth it out and bring it back to the ready stance.

#true.

alternate frames for 2 hit combo where sword slash is opposite direction

or make him spin, and strike in that direction again so that he's exploiting his own momentum rather than fighting against it

[Grimsane]

>

nice progress on the animations, I went and made a slightly more subdued variation on the palette bringing it slightly back, my light edit was quite bright and high contrast, it was a quick approximation and suggestion, also my LCD's eco-setting was on conserve at the time so in hindsight my monitor was a bit dim when i chose them, but a suggestion if palette swapping isn't too difficult, or sprite sheet swapping for that matter, it might be a cool idea to have a few variations on the sprite sheet colour scheme, one for daylight, one darker for interior and you could go as far as doing others with colour hints for mood/atmosphere, ie a warm red-orange tinge if you were in a volcanic cave, or you could have a very neutral value range and have additive or subtractive lighting

one reason I am making a point to do this colour edit is because it could become problematic, when you want to have bright objects in your scene there isn't much brighter you can go relative to the player palette, but it's all depending on the mood you want for your game, I think your subdued darker tones had some merit but felt they were a bit too dull, the bright edit i made was mainly to illustrate, but if you chose colours like that you'd have a more vibrant bright gameboy advance style graphical tone. just thought I'd point that out, it's upto you what mood and overall value range you want to go with. also depends how much you want the character to pop from backgrounds etc, and yeah colours aren't the easiest topic when you get into all the subtleties even before addressing the technical aspects

[Decroded]

thanks for the help.
ive been told before i might need various palettes like you suggest so ill probably end up doing that.
m working in photoshop though and dont know how to use limited palettes properly so the way ive been doing colour replace is by eyedrop a pixel, change the colour then buck fill (no contiguous) and its done.
this has worked fine on still images with not many layers but its a pain with an animation.
do i need to learn to work with indexed colours u think?
or should i just make the change to graphicsgale?


now ive detailed the shield and added some more frames after the attack since this is the delay before you can attack again (got the idea from SOTN).
i feel like it needs 1 more frame before it goes back to the idle stance but i also feel like im wasting a large amount of time on all these frames when i could just simplify and go for a more arcade style look.

i havent added a strip this time because i dont know how to do this without making a separate image and copying and pasting each frame in it - anyopne know how to automate photoshop to create a sprite strip? this would help me when importing to the game as well.


x2

[tim]

In Photoshop, go to image > mode > indexed colors.
And look in the help, you'll find a way to manage your palette.

[Decroded]

Hi thanks but when I do that I lose all my layers, which instantly destroys my animation.
Am I doing something wrong? Can you animate without layers or something?
I really like the layers though because it lets me see the layer underneath at 25% so i can sketch the next frame kind of like using paper.
Plus, I don't know if its considered NPA or whatever but I'm not pro enough to work without layers even with mockups and tile creation since I want to do things like reuse the same tile sections but make some variations with some plants on it or something so layers help alot with that, as well as making separate layers for fore, mid and background.


Anyway here's the first enemy which is an orc, based off a pencil sketch from a friend.
There will be a few different versions of him with various armour and weapons but this was just a quick job to show the sketch artist.
The stance is a bit awkard but there are more sketches coming soon and he will be moving around and attacking pretty soon.


And here is a progress of some mockup art I started the other day.
Colours are off in early images since I was only drawing on a TV (in bed with broken foot and no mouse!!).
I'm using reference and learning technique from that pixel artist I think his name is Hank but I can't find his site to post the reference (saved copy http://i1126.photobucket.com/albums/l615/Decrosion/hank.png)
Really after some feedback about this scene, the colours, the process, the forms I feel can really use some improvement but I just don't know what exactly I should be doing.
I know the background mountains are horrible I want to completely change the background but still havent decided what I can do with it.

[Lazycow]

Super-nice style. But I miss these marvelous green hills in the latest mockup. I hope you want to bring them back in, they added a better mood to the picture, I think.

For the running animation: If you redo it, you could probably force him to make smaller steps, seems like he stretches his legs a bit too far.

[Decroded]

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate any crits and ideas.

Here is the draft for the new run cycle since the old one was crap (please crit if u see how i can improve before i start detailing):

Its only 8 frames at this stage, not sure if i need more frames or not?
I'm trying to convey a bit feeling of weight in having to carry weapons and items.
This versions seems ok for when the hero's weapons are not drawn but i feel the arms are swinging way too much with sword and shield drawn.
Any suggestions what to do with the arms?
I could shuffle them back and foward instead of swinging, really not sure TBH.


Added the hills back into the mockup progress and started making a cave entrance:

[Seiseki]

One thing I noticed with your second sword slash is that it looks more like he's punching someone in the chest rather than swinging a sword.
First of the arm and sword needs to rotate more, second the sword should follow the arm, not be in perfect sync with it if you understand what I mean.

[Lazycow]

Ahhh! Green hills! 

-
Ok, an 8 frame running animation - I cannot resist... The running frames are very dynamic, really great. But now, I would like to increase his step length again, that's too short. Also, I made the bouncing stronger by 1 pixel. I could probably tweak it a bit more, but I am out of time for today. (raw edit on the legs)

[PypeBros]

I really love how you made his run cycle look very athletic! +1 for shoulder move.
Is he going to pack his weapon on his back before running and only walk when ready to strike ?

The geometrical shapes you used for your mountain area work really well.
I'm eager to see that tree leaves polished. The drafted shape looks interesting, but I'd have no clue how I'd finalize something like that so ... I wait and hope to see

Green hills imho nicely fill the screen. I'm less sure about the rocky formation we see in the background. There might be something in the perspective or in the size similarity that make me think it should look different, but I can't tell how different yet.