Game portrait stuff

[ErekT]

I've been fiddling with these for the past few days and I need some fresh eyes to tell if what I'm doing looks okay. 

[Mandrill]

Fantastic portraits, not much to criticise. However, I do think that the girls' noses and the guys' foreheads could use some work. Did a quick edit adding shadows and wrinkles.

[ErekT]

Cool thanks  Noses can be tough at this resolution, especially at an angle. You probably noticed three of the noses just go straight down hehe.

So, seems I'm on the right track then? That's a relief. I'll admit I'm not very confident when it comes to drawing closeups of people's faces. Previous efforts have always ended up kinda freaky looking in retrospect

Some tweaks:

EDIT: And did a cop face today.

[Decroded]

Strapped for time so just quickly...

Good to see this project continuing I'm curious if there's any gameplay yet?

The style of the portraits is great, love the colours and rendering.
Definitely some tweaking could be done but first I'm wondering about the characters and how u can spice up these portraits.
It would help to know aome things such as what is their intended use? Are they mainly for dialog boxes?
Will the background be filled or transparent?
Will they be animated/speaking?
Are they for character select and/or will there be different ones for that?
Is there any back-story and personality for these guys and gals?
Are these all playable or some npc and some enemy?
Its good to now if they are protagonist or antagonist in how they are portrayed and how menacing or conniving they should appear.

Considering this kind of info it might be good to consider some uniqueness to each one.
This can be done easily with facial expressions, props, perspective and lighting.
Also i think the shared palette is great but each one can possibly use a splash of a unique colour somewhere.

[ErekT]

Haven't had time to do much with these lately. Some palette and cluster tweaks mostly. But I included the sprites they go with to show what I'm going for a little better:

Good to see this project continuing I'm curious if there's any gameplay yet?

The style of the portraits is great, love the colours and rendering.

Thanks man, I'm happy to hear that

The gameplay is arcade-style Castlevania, with a combat system that leans towards streetfighter-esque fighting. I'm planning to have seven levels as well as a town hub-area where players can upgrade skills, interact with npc's and the like.

The platforming gameplay isn't complete, but it's getting pretty close. Combat needs a lot of work still. Here's a little platform gameplay gif:

It would help to know aome things such as what is their intended use? Are they mainly for dialog boxes?

Yep, that's the idea. Here's a mockup of what I had in mind:

Will the background be filled or transparent?

Filled probably. Looks cleaner I think.

Will they be animated/speaking?

Nah, I like to keep things a bit abstract if possible. I'm hoping I can give just enough visual information to provide players with sort of an anchor and let them make up their own minds from there if that makes sense?  Besides I'm afraid they'd end up looking like a puppet-show if I tried (tho that could look cool in it's own way).

Also i think the shared palette is great but each one can possibly use a splash of a unique colour somewhere.

Yes I should try and bring the portrait colors in line with the monochrome sprite colors.

Is there any back-story and personality for these guys and gals?
Are these all playable or some npc and some enemy?

Oh. Yeh I have a fair idea about their personalities but I haven't tried to put it into words before. Hmm, okay I'll try a short blurb for each of em:

Girl in red: Raised in a reclusive monk society. A bit naive and oblivious of how the outside world works but very competent at kicking ass. Protagonist female version.

Mercenary man: Army-mentality. Hard and rigid. Semi-boss/npc.

Police officer: Not friendly. Regular enemy.

Punk: Big and insane. Leads a street gang that's into mind-frying steroids and cybernetics. Area boss.

Lady in traditional dress: She's head of a group of semi-immortals who prolong life by feeding on the life energy of chi-adepts (like the protagonist). They don't like modern society much and only interact with it when they have to, like luring fresh victims into their lair. Area boss.

[DracoDragon42]

What palette are you using for the sprites, cause it's really cool looking and I want to know.

[Gil]

What palette are you using for the sprites, cause it's really cool looking and I want to know.

Most pixel art is made with custom palettes, I assume this is one. Learning to pick your own colors is a very valuable skill that should be trained too

ErekT: I love the fluidity of your animations, it's as if gravity is actually taking a hold of your characters. What's your workflow like to create those? Regular old keyframe and tweens or are you using references for these? Prince of Persia did the motion capture thing, but I doubt you went that far, right?

[ErekT]

What palette are you using for the sprites, cause it's really cool looking and I want to know.

They're homegrown palettes. I got the inspiration from these threads and just NES coloring in general:

http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=18325.msg162646#msg162646

http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=10056.0

ErekT: I love the fluidity of your animations, it's as if gravity is actually taking a hold of your characters. What's your workflow like to create those? Regular old keyframe and tweens or are you using references for these? Prince of Persia did the motion capture thing, but I doubt you went that far, right?

It's a bit similar. I animate simple 3D meshes in Blender and use the render output for rotoscoping. Nice and fast, and I don't need to worry about keeping proportions right while animating. The thing that takes the most time is actually shading the frames afterwards, even with only 4 colors per sprite.

[Roach]

Very talented, good work.

[Gil]

It's a bit similar. I animate simple 3D meshes in Blender and use the render output for rotoscoping. Nice and fast, and I don't need to worry about keeping proportions right while animating. The thing that takes the most time is actually shading the frames afterwards, even with only 4 colors per sprite.

Ah! So you do use a technique like that! Very cool stuff. I'm personally trying out techniques where the game engine gets access to the 3D models for lighting information, cast shadowing, etc. You could also bake a lot of it I guess, though for dynamic lights, it gets faster to just keep the model on hand I feel. Normal maps I hand pixel.

I'd never considered doing it for fluid animation, that makes a lot of sense actually. Thanks for sharing your workflow