Roller-Sloth

[trough]

My sister and I were talking about Sonic games, of which I'm not a huge fan, and I wondered why they didn't at least choose an ironically slow animal like a sloth, which got me thinking: a sloth on roller-skates is a funny idea, and Sonic isn't the game I wish it was.  Now I have a seed of an idea for a roller-skating sloth game.  I am not a programmer, and I don't know how much I will want to grow this seed, but for now I am making some graphics.

Here is a roller-skate:

Now that I have made it I think I'd have to be better and quicker at drawing and animating before attempting this scale,
but this could be used as an icon.  I am afraid of drawing the knot on the laces, but I'll give it a try and post what happens. The boot is not laced to the top, but it could be if you think that would look better.

Edit:

Tried to clean it up and colored the laces at Ambivorous's suggestion.

[Ambivorous]

I am here to confirm that I indeed suggested colourful laces. It was me.
I felt obliged to make an edit, but really this is just utterly amazing. Beautiful work. 10/10.



My edit does one majorly important thing: removes the silly, blank, first frame. Seriously, what was up with that?
I darkened your laces slightly in places, because I thought it might help with readability, but really it's much of a muchness.

Please make more stuff and I look forward to your sloth skating game.

[rocifier]

Wow this is perfect. The only thing I'm worried about is that the scale is too large for an actual game. Once you factor in the size of the entire character. Unless you are designing 1:1 for high res which is a little crazy that you are doing pixel art for in that case. I suppose you might get away with 1:2 it's hard to tell as of yet

[trough]

I am here to confirm that I indeed suggested colourful laces. It was me.
I felt obliged to make an edit, but really this is just utterly amazing. Beautiful work. 10/10.

Thanks!

My edit does one majorly important thing: removes the silly, blank, first frame. Seriously, what was up with that?
I darkened your laces slightly in places, because I thought it might help with readability, but really it's much of a muchness.

The silly blank frame was a result of saving with a background layer in Grafx2.  I guess I should avoid saving GIF's with layers?  I like what you've done with the darkened laces, I gave it a try and I'm happy with it now:

Please make more stuff and I look forward to your sloth skating game.

I hope you don't raise your hopes too high for that 

Wow this is perfect. The only thing I'm worried about is that the scale is too large for an actual game. Once you factor in the size of the entire character. Unless you are designing 1:1 for high res which is a little crazy that you are doing pixel art for in that case. I suppose you might get away with 1:2 it's hard to tell as of yet

I agree, it is way too big.  A boot this size would make the sloth of SF3:3S proportions. Spoiler

My drawing and animation skills aren't up for that yet, so I'll keep this big skate for something like an inventory icon.  I'm going to try to tackle the sloth sprite in 32x32 I think.

I've started a sloth sprite, but I'm not happy with the proportions, the arms, the skates, the lack of chest fur, and my main worry: he is not very cute or abstractly iconic like Sonic or Mario or Quote.  I guess I am worried he is a boring design?

I mean, I think the reason Deviant Art is full of sonic drawings owes something to Sonic's solid character design.  He's more abstract, thus instantly recognizable and easier for kids to draw; and he has a personality.

A regular sloth's personalty might be slow and boring, but this is not a regular sloth.  This is a sloth who dares to don skates.  (A real sloth probably can't stand up on his own without hanging on to something, but I'll stretch it here.)

[rocifier]

Try drawing him a bit larger and in a pose something like this. Sonic has "attitude". Giving the sloth long legs would also emphasise he's a skating sloth. He really needs to be quite stylised with an emphasis on his unique traits.

Spoiler

[Ambivorous]

I agree. You sloth definitely needs more personality.
I looked up some rollerskating pictures to use as reference to find a nice, dynamic-looking pose to use and found this.



As stupid as this example is, I have designed a character that looks like a sloth, but with a very unfitting personality. In rollerskates.
I also spiced things up with some colour. Brown is slightly more exciting than grey (as a blue hedgehog with bright red shoes is more exciting than brown), and colourful wheels and laces are attractive.

Try drawing some dynamic, skating poses (as stickmen on paper with a pencil) and pick one that works for the attitude you want your sloth to have. Over exaggerate some sloth like features, stick in some bright colours and away you go. You can also give your sloth an item of clothing to make it appear more humanoid and help the player relate more.
I didn't really go very stylised, but if you exaggerate your sloth features enough it will become stylised.

Good luck.