Raziel Idle Pose

[Mathias]

Oh, it's that soul reaver dude, I thought it was a soldier until now. Correct, I hadn't this thread, just skimmed it a few times prior to today. He's much more recognizable now.

[Mamoruanime]

Most of Jad's critiques still apply. More definition of character is needed, physiological knowhow is also needed.

Don't start an animation just drawing the next frame after this frame and then the next. First keyframe, then draw the paths you need and then animate the in-betweens. Someone more knowledgable like Ptoing or Fool or Conceit on matters of animation will probably chime in when you've got something more than what you have, but I'm just trying to save you some grief early on.

Yeah, I always keyframe- I only did the next frames just to get a feel of how difficult it's going to be to animate him Those will probably not be used at all. It's more of a "Well does this look right while he's moving? Nah... *changes*" sorta thing. Actually it served it's purpose, because after having made those 2 other frames, and gotten more of a 3d mental image of how I want raziel to look, I see that his idle stance's legs are too small, and his body looks sorta goofy in comparison.

Although, after reading through this thread, I replayed Soul Reaver a bit to get an idea of Raziel's idle stance. He doesn't really *hunch* as much as he just moves around a lot... He bobs his legs up and down, and moves his torso side to side. I'll capture that in his final idle pose animation. The biggest difference between my initial idle pose and the original 3d idle is that his arms... are too close to his sides in mine. It looks odd in comparison

[Conzeit]

that is a GREAT improvement with the last Raziel, I really didnt think it could get there. so  for that

Main thing bugging me right now is that the pallete you've chosen makes all the features mushy. Now...I could see two ways to go about this....

1-embrace the mushyness and grab quite a few SR screens, grab the colors that often pop up on good ol Raz, then try to replicate the same atmosphere of misty gritty decay, which at present is not visible at all in your project, and IMO a REALLY BIG defining feature of the original game.

2-seek better contrast and define every shape, check some actual SOTN sprites...they abound now-a-days they're very good at stating just what's necesary and creating good clear volume. PLEAAAASE dont look at AOS POR...OOE...etc...it's a miserable mishmash of clashing styles.

(ps:.....how are you going to do the spectral realm that deforms the BG in 2D? I really cant picture something called SR without that)

[Mamoruanime]

that is a GREAT improvement with the last Raziel, I really didnt think it could get there. so  for that

Main thing bugging me right now is that the pallete you've chosen makes all the features mushy. Now...I could see two ways to go about this....

1-embrace the mushyness and grab quite a few SR screens, grab the colors that often pop up on good ol Raz, then try to replicate the same atmosphere of misty gritty decay, which at present is not visible at all in your project, and IMO a REALLY BIG defining feature of the original game.

2-seek better contrast and define every shape, check some actual SOTN sprites...they abound now-a-days they're very good at stating just what's necesary and creating good clear volume. PLEAAAASE dont look at AOS POR...OOE...etc...it's a miserable mishmash of clashing styles.

(ps:.....how are you going to do the spectral realm that deforms the BG in 2D? I really cant picture something called SR without that)

Yeah the palette is bugging me too lol... The original Raziel texture's color was bad too; sad thing is he's just really dark. I've never been good with color selection, and it's one of the reasons I quit spriting years ago... I'd hate to have to use an outline on him in-game, but it might be needed. I'll show an example of a few ideas I've had-

Raziel Original; No trail, No forced outline (bad)



Raziel - Forced Outline



Raziel - Trail



And finally, Raziel with both the outline and the trail



--

I'm not too terribly fond of the mixmatched styles in the DS Castlevania's, although they got better with PoR. The Raziel shot with the outline reminds me of the DS Castlevania games.

I would probably have to outline every vampire in the game though, just for uniformity. I think it gives it a bit of an ethereal feel, but I don't know.

Also I should mention that the background is just a quick mockup I threw together using textures from Soul Reaver. Doesn't look too different from SotN though.

I'm going to rework his palette quite a bit though to match the original feel but not appear too dark for 2d low res.

Also- the transition to the spectral realm will be easy We're using a vectoring technique, so most of the tiles and stuff will actually be 3d textured objects that will bend and move when you transition. Some simple objects may be fully 3d, and twist and stuff, so it should look decent. The background images however are another story; I need to figure out how exactly we're going to handle those images. May need to make them all extremely multilayered to manipulate everything properly. Either way, I never hold back when it comes to visuals in games, so it should still be neat

[Conzeit]

uhm, if you dont know color choices watch what people who know do. You're realizing your color choices are bad and then decide to add a useless outline? not the way to go.

if you're going to work on the sprite you're much better off knowing already what this sprite will be placed on, otherwise you're gonna be endlessly tweaking the sprite and the background to match eachother....and get so-so results.

Look at Raziel in SR, he might look too dark and ugly if you take him out of the screenshot, but he blends really well with the misty barren landscapes of the game.

SOTN on the other hand....DOES look different from your mockup, the crate that in 3d would stand out because of the mists, here is lost looking like a background element because there's nothing separating it from the BG. if you plan to use the SR textures you're better off emulating it's mists....probably you can pick out the colors of a completely ereased spot, and then apply that as a mask to the textures on photoshop.

The other way would be to try and recreate the same kind of lightness shifts that SOTN had,
http://www.spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/cvsotn/ now-a days Spriter's Resource is chock full of SOTN map references.

[Mamoruanime]

I'm not so much saying my color choices are bad as I'm saying that it's bugging me a bit from it being lighter than the original Raziel texture's color range. The palette I did use was an existing SotN palette. My original palette sucked balls, so I rebuilt the sprite from the ground up, and posted it here (the original made me a bit discouraged). The mockup is simply a texture to tile composite, no clue if I'm going to go with that entirely. There are a lot of spots in SotN where styles clash with the backgrounds; I want to avoid that.

I am going to emulate the mist and fog to make the world more immersing. After all, it is a generally *dead* world, and if I can't capture that with the artistic design of the game, then the users would be missing out on a large chunk of what the games about

I do want to thank you all for the advice you've already given me I've applied a lot of it to the sprite already and I'm building from there.