low-res Swordman.

[Bollie]

Making a swordman for a small game.

Which of these is the best?
Any tips? How would i go about making it more unique at such a small resolution?

[MysteryMeat]

Hard to say without knowing what kind of background it's gonna be on. Think you could post a mockup?

[Bollie]

Drew a quick mockup to see how it might look

[BadMoodTaylor]

I like the middle one or the left one if it he is hiding in the dark.

I wouldn't have gotten that was a sword if it wasn't in the title.  Looks like a blue flame to me, especially with his armor reflecting the light.  But the reflection does look good.

Think for that low-res it is good enough—maybe try making him 'more unique', as you put it, during the animation process?

[MysteryMeat]

Some edits I did off of badtaylor's suggestion, I made the darker one fulldark for a stealth sprite and extended the sword inward witha more plasma-knifey look, since it appears to be glowing.

[Bollie]

Made the run and idle animations.


The idle looks a bit choppy, but there aren't much pixels to make it smoother.

[MysteryMeat]

Why not have him shift stance for the idle, like lift the sword up?

[Bollie]

Ok, i made the sword be held up in the idle animation and added 2 frames to make it more fluid. Also added transition animation between run and idle.

How does it look now?

[BadMoodTaylor]

The movement of the reflection on the shoulder of the idle is distracting—it may be logical but the eye catches that it goes from 3 vertical pixels to a right angle.

Although I'm not sure if this will work for this situation, when needing to animate movement less than a pixel you can usually use colors to do so.

[SlimEddie]

I love how detailed, fluid and cool it looks for such ammount of pixels, and I also love the sword colors! Keep it up like that!