RPG Template

[Joseph]

_^.

[8bitty]

nonono joseph! you've a) ruined the perspective b) taken away it's character

Atnas, that last base is great. no crits.

[Joseph]

I thought maybe making him taller would ruin the perspective, but I figured it was either making him taller and a bit more normal in my eyes, or  finding a way to pull his legs closer without breaking his pelvis.  in his, he just looks like a short guy looking down.

taking away the character?  I'm assuming you mean the next highlight.  it's just to point out the highlights on his body, I'm not trying to redesign his character.

[Ian]

I'm very confused about the progression of this piece.  Before planning a perspective perhaps decide what kind of style your tiles are going to have.  Your original perspective could definitely operate in a world constructed similarly.  I personally prefer the earlier versions over the newer ones.  And I think Joseph's edit is stronger than the current version which utterly lacks highlights (one crit on his edit tho: there's too much highlighting on the legs as in most lighting situations most of the light would come from the sky (ie the sun) and the top of the body would be much better lit then the legs).  I suppose I'm just dropping in to add a dissenting voice that says I just don't like the direction this piece is going in. But, since these are largely stylistic choices it is up to you to make the final call, so if you truly prefer the new, go for it.  Don't feel the need to adjust to everyone's edits. If they compromise your vision feel free to not follow them.

[Fingerfoods]

The current piece is better than Joseph's boob warrior (sorry, that's just what he looks like in your edit ) - skin highlights need to be very light so that the character doesn't look wet or greased up and I think you'll find that most pixel artists define skin by shadow. Also, a head-on perspective can work, definitely, but it's less dynamic. Stylistically I like Atnas's current sprite more, I say keep it, it's much better than the old ones.

[Atnas]

It looks fine against the green background, but isn't faring all too well against the gray(oops, the gray background in the preview was more blue - looks fine now). I've noticed this on a lot of sprites, how do I fix it?  I'm trying to think of things, the two I can come up with are to make a solid dark outline, or adjust the saturation of the lighter parts of the outline. Is the second one how it's supposed to be handled.

EDIT: This is what I meant.

Of course, I'm not the one writing the story for this game, so I don't know if there's a slate background planned out or not, but it's always good to have your bases covered.

I added a buffer shade mainly to darken the legs without being ridiculous. Good move?

----

Brod: I'm not feeling that foot edit. Having the feet angled apart allows for a more sturdy look and is somewhat beneficial to the perspective, so I feel compelled to show the heel.

Joseph: I'm veering away from how realistic I was making it before, for simplicity's sake and in hopes of a more catchy visual style. The template's legs are short for perspective, so probably if they're too short, then for dramatized perspective. I don't believe in highlighting skin. Whenever I see it in pixel art or even in cartoons (for some reason a lot of anime, when it's movie time, decide to add a snazzy highlight layer to all the characters) I want to look away. I don't see skin being highlighted at all in real life, rather I see a higher contrast between the base tone and the shadow when someone is in harsh sunlight. Skin isn't very reflective. Of course, it's relative to the range of color you allow to be each singular "tone". I'm thinking in terms of cel-shading, so that may be my own blindness.

8bitty: Thanks. 

Ian: Same thing as to Joseph in that highlights are... Wrong. Thanks for the advice, however. 

Rave: Thanks. My (very) first template for this, which I don't have uploaded, was completely straight on and looked like something Hogarth would have drawn. It also used something like 14 shades and was completely smooth. Basically it was a painting of a godlike figure. I thought it would be better to have something more stylized and dynamic, as you put it, so thanks. 

Great to hear peoples' opinions on this.

[tocky]

It works better against the green, because red and green are complimentary, you get contrast because they are more or less the negative versions of one another. If your game's backgrounds are gonna tend to be blue-gray, you might want to shift your skintone to be more orange than red. Get some background from your writer on what the game's tone will need.

First->second  fixes pixel-placement problems with the outline, ->third is just colours.

[big brother]

It never ceases to surprise me how many posts are dedicated to RPG templates. Independently, they usually look like baby mice!

Definitely regard Tocky's post. The volumetrics will help render any character in this scale convincingly. Subtle shading on the template itself will not.

[Atnas]

There's also a strange line defining the pelvic bone or something. It's distracting and not very realistic.

Well hopefully there aren't any nude characters. The line is to help me with the curve of the body when I sprite outfits, and it also helps the perspective - the bottom half of it looks entirely wrong without it.

big brother: While I don't necessarily like the idea of a template to begin with, as it usually adds otherwise unnecessary work, the majority of the people on the team happen to come from an RPG Maker background and are used to having templates for a game, regardless of their need. It's a step they feel is important. The benefits are kind of a downside, as although it will make it easier, the characters will also have a tendency to look like one another, although I'll try my damnedest to make them all unique.

Thanks for the post, tocky, I'll try to fix it, and if it turns out there will be blue backgrounds, I'll definitely do a more drastic color change.

[Atnas]

Not much changed, I did it back in May and I liked it, so that's done with I hope. Shading is really weak but I tweak it for skin colors, and the palette for the game is pretty bright. Template is more for proportion rather than form. Kind of like a poseable manikin whatchamacallit I always wanted when I was a littler kid. Gets the proportions down but it's up to you to fill in the details. 


Here's a sprite I did just yesterday, not an original character because I figured I'd rather try and go from an image to a sprite and see how many details I could fit in without having to take the time to design one up first. Managed to get them all in. Two purples can be consolidated that I know of, but I'm a newbie with colors so I have a hard time picking a nice in-between.

Probably most of the colors can be fused. Oh well. 

Eyes look at the camera rather than in perspective because I was playing Minish Cap and I kind of liked how the characters were looking up at the screen instead of at what they were doing. It was either a mistake or a nice touch. Either way. :]

I'm reminded of Pokemon by this, I think it's the simplification and eyes.

I see something off in the example that I hadn't noticed before, but I'll wait for you guys to see if it's obvious.

doo doo doo~

(whatchamacallit is in the spell-check dictionary but poseable is not ._.)