Help with swordsman, toony & simple colored.

[madmenyo]

Hi,

I am working on a character to get the style of my game shown. I did a tiny bit of pixel art in the passed and can definably use some help here.

I am making a strategic combat game, it has 16 * 24 tiles on the battle field. I rather not have scrolling (at least on the full HD resolution) but still some details on my sprites (have to distinguish spearman from swordsman for example). I figured that 32*32 is to small since i need multiple units per sprite, up to 8 but they can overlap if it looks good.

Currently i am still deciding to make it isometric or top down with a slight camera angle but i momentarily settled with the top down. It would be nice to draw the sprites in the "right" perspective but it might look still good when viewing the sprites straight from the side.

It would also be awesome to have some faction colors into the sprites but currently i dont think i have the amount of pixels for that i think. Although i can make them about 1,5 times bigger if the overlap looks good.

Anyway, i could use some tips on how to make this "pop" more and some ideas how to get those things i mentioned above implemented in it.






I used a spritesheet by NDraxian0 as a guideline.


Would be nice to have a base and i can change weapons. Or change the armor/tail/mohawk to for other races.

Eventually i need about 100 of sprites so i probably end up having to hire someone but for now i like to have something to play with and get the feeling of the style down.

[Seiseki]

Start by adding in contrasting colors to differ the various parts.
If you look at that sprite sheet, there's red and blue, but also white that helps form the sprite.

Yours is just a dark lump at the moment. Looks like it's a statue made of stone. There's no way to tell what is what.

[madmenyo]

Hi and thanks, but forgive me for my ignorance, but for the character itself in the reference it uses only white, blue and black for the outline. Except for its eyes. I agree the pink/red contrasting color makes it look nice but i barely have area to put it in. I try making my highlight a bit lighter or white and add a contrasting color somehow.

Anyway, still deciding on what perspective i am going for. Now i am leaning more towards a isometric view, because it will look a lot more dynamic.

I am "remaking" a game called Master of magic, but mix up the gameplay a bit and adding some more depth to it. Now i looked up some sprites for it and try to redo them but they look very close. Probably because there is not much room for change except the colors.

Anyway i made some spearman, with and without armor. I am satisfied but i'm not sure i am crossing some copyright laws. I might beef them up some more because currently they stand on a 42 width tile and i can increase that to around 64 if i make my battlefield a bit smaller so most setups won't need scrolling or can view it on original size.

Mine:


Source from original game:


Most drastic change is his leg, its still in a weird position but imo better then the original. I also used less colors and increased the spear length. I have no clue how i am about to make these look like axe or swordsmen but like i said i might beef them up at the cost of some battlefield room.

Now back to the original i started with

[madmenyo]

Struggling to make it look more lively....

-edit-
Worked on the other style, pretty satisfied with the result. Don't think i should overlap more since at this size it wont read that well.



Going to work on the battle mechanics now. Any help on improving this is welcome!

[Seiseki]

Hey, that's a great improvement!
As for the pikemen, I think you should start from scratch with an original design, or make it way different.
But your palette is much better than the original.