Untitled RPG Party Card Game

[32]

Decided to start working on my own project a few days a week this year rather than doing freelance full time. Essentially it's an RPG party/drinking card game. Because my friends are always roping me into playing tabletop games or drinking games at parties and they all suck so why not make my own that marries the two 

Artwise I'm basically giving myself free rein to draw whatever I feel like on a given day. There will be a couple of levels with different themes (fantasy, sci-fi, angels and demons, a mixture of any or all of those/whatever doesn't fit.) Doing player characters and enemies at 64x64. Might consider doing bosses and items at higher and lower resolutions respectively but I will need to mock up some card layouts to figure out how much space I'll have available. Essentially with the artwork I'm trying to capture the feeling of old school rpg sprites where everything kind of looks special, think 2d Final Fantasy games. So lots of colours and smoothness.

Critique is appreciated but I can't guarantee I'll update anything, I have a lot of drawings to do so I probably won't be going back to do major changes unless something really strikes a chord. General thoughts on the overall art direction early on would be great while I can still go back and make changes to everything.

Anyway I'll just be updating this thread as I go. Trying to have a good diversity of gender/race/bodytype etc. Honestly they'll probably be mostly bottom heavy women though . Have a small backlog already so here are those.


Player: Thief


Player: Mystic Defender


Player: Warrior


Player: Brawler


Enemy: Mechsuit Seraph


Enemy: Ice Goddess


Enemy: Wood Goblin

_{(I realise I've already used that arm pose 3 times I'll stop I promise)}

[surt]

All quite awesome, just the Mechsuit Seraph reads as being rather lower in colour count than the rest. Maybe the orange and tan are too close? Hard to distinguish at 1x.

[NowvaB]

Cool stuff, 32 I look forward to seeing more!

For critique though, I'd have to say that the warrior looks like a much more modern sprite than the others and I initially saw the mechsuit's legs as being one leg (sorta like a mermaid tail without the fin).
honestly overall these kinda look like they were made by different artist which I guess enhances that old school feel, but I'm not sure if that was what you were going for.

[32]

I'll definitely look into the mechsuit, that was the second one I did so I hadn't really figured out where I was going yet.

They aren't meant to fit together like a set made for a game, hence no real unified palette and somewhat different scales. They're not really intended to look like they're from different artists (though at the same time the idea doesn't really bother me.) I'd be curious to know what you think makes them look like they're from different artists, I have some ideas but it would be nice to hear your thoughts.

[NowvaB]

hmm.. I guess what I mean is that because the sprites look like they were approached so differently, using different techniques, shading style, outline intensity, etc. They seem (to me at least) to appear as if they were made by 2 or 3 artist trying to replicate a single style.

to give some examples the wood goblin's skin looks shaded very pillow-y (don't kill me pls!) with intense highlights while the others have 2 main colors of skin tone and flat-ish shading.
The thief's clothes are very chiseled with a tight palette, the brawler and defender's clothes use more loose palettes with color alterations and the warrior's clothes are just different shades of blue.

sorry, If my explanation didn't make any sense, I'm not very technical when it comes to art vocab.

[32]

Okay thanks for clarifying There are some places where I'll fix up the mentioned issues but a lot of that is just different lighting and materials. They definitely aren't all meant to be able to stand in a room together. Some future ones will definitely have more drastic departures and I think ultimately that will make what ties them together stylistically more obvious than what separates them.

[32]

Just an update for the past couple of weeks. Outer AA will be adjusted to the card colour backgrounds when I get there.

Player: Nomad


Enemy: Mech Spider


Enemy: Fire Demon


Enemy: Fairy


Enemy: Corrupted Hologram


Enemy: Angel Knight

[MysteryMeat]

Corrupted hologram isn't quite selling me on the concept, I'd add something like static effects or strange corruption graphics like those Aurum enemies from Kid Icarus: Uprising. As it is, I get more of a fire/electric demigod vibe!

I do like the slightly-bio look you seem to be going with for mechanized enemies like the spider or the seraph though, you don't often see that kind of trippy colorfulness on inorganic mecha designs!

[32]

Thanks MysteryMeat! I did try some scanlines and such but I wasn't liking it. I'll probably give it another pass later, it doubles as a palette swap for "possessed statue" but I preferred this colour scheme even as is.

[MysteryMeat]

Here, tweaked this out with a few glitch effects I like using from time to time! Cutting bits out to have them float free of it a bit, strips of "screen tearing" effects (left hand finger), and a sort of prettified simulation of rig-breaking glitches (that finger on the right hand) notably!
You can also try things like vcr tape distortion, test-number glitches, or even  that trail effect you see in old fighter games during supermoves laid under the character, like when akuma does his raging demon!