AuthorTopic: Making Castlevania Style sprites  (Read 24604 times)

Offline Vercingetorix

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Making Castlevania Style sprites

on: May 22, 2009, 11:37:23 am
Hi, I've browsed around this forum a bit but never actually signed up untill now - It seems to me alot of you guys really know what your doing when it comes to pixel art so i was just wondering if anyone would be willing to give me a little guidance on a game project i recently started. I'm hoping to create a platform game that is  in a similar vein as Castlevania and one thing that i would really like to do is make the character sprites in my game reminiscent of the DS castlevania games, by that i mean i'd  like to keep the character fairly realistic in proportion -  as opposed to for example a stylised chibi-ish character, but at the same time i don't wont my sprites to be too large.

So I'm just curious as too how some of you might approach creating and even animating sprites around the same size as the DS castlevania Games (the main character/Hero that is), Currently the approach i'm experimenting with is to create a basic stick figure using 3pixel wide lines and then tweak untiill i get somethinng i'm happy with.

Any advice you can offer would be much appreciated, and some examples would be even better - But thats perphaps asking a bit much though?
thanks

 
« Last Edit: May 22, 2009, 11:39:16 am by Vercingetorix »

Offline huZba

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #1 on: May 22, 2009, 05:28:56 pm
Post your things on the pixel art section. People will get an idea of your skill level and give you help based on that. It might be that you will have to forget the castlevania things for a while to make the best of your study.
Pixel, have fun and enjoy!

Offline crab2selout.png

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #2 on: May 23, 2009, 12:29:15 am
A while back, someone posted some legacy of kain sprites they wanted to resemble the Castlevania style. You might find some of the critiques helpful
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=7912.0

Offline Vercingetorix

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #3 on: May 23, 2009, 01:39:33 am


OK here is some stuff i've done, pretty much all of which are unfinished. Below the Black line are some old stuff that i started awhile ago and just thought i'd put in to help give an idea of where i'm at - although you can probably tell i'm a complete newbie at this. Above them are some starts i made  for Castlevania size sprites, you've probably noticed they are headless this is something i am having trouble with at the moment I can build what i think is a decent body but then when it comes to the head...i don't know where to start. Ignore the colours when i was making them i didn't pay much attention to it - since i'm colour blind i normally just grab a light and a dark colour that look slightly similar and use one for a base and one for shadow (of course i plan on paying more attention to colour down the track though)

Thanks for your responses so far
« Last Edit: May 24, 2009, 01:21:00 pm by Vercingetorix »

Offline Reo

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #4 on: May 24, 2009, 12:56:27 pm
I think you have uploaded a .bmp to photobucket, when you do this photobucket screws with the quality of the image.
For pixelart you should go with .gif or .png's!

Offline Vercingetorix

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #5 on: May 24, 2009, 01:28:41 pm
Well what do yah know, i didn't realise there was a slight loss in qulaity when uploading BMP files with photobucket i'll have to remember that for next time - I've now Reuploaded the image as a Gif, Thanks for pointing it out to me.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #6 on: May 24, 2009, 07:23:51 pm
the DS games are full of bad art. If you want to learn the style they degenerated from look for SOTN sprites.

Offline Shrike

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #7 on: May 28, 2009, 03:15:49 pm
the DS games are full of bad art. If you want to learn the style they degenerated from look for SOTN sprites.

Seconded heavily.  Symphony of the Night is the best CastleVania game ever.  I was stunned by the artwork and music, and the plotline was pretty neat as well.  The DS games are failed attempts at mimicking SOTN on the DS, though Order of Eck-whatever is the better game of the three and succeeded most at being difficult and cool, like SOTN.  My brother (A newfound hardcore CastleVania fan) just bought a Ps1 off eBay and bought SOTN, and we were both stunned.  Has there been a mockup frenzy/CC/CC Challenge for SOTN yet?  I hope I didn't miss it...   :(

Offline Vercingetorix

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #8 on: May 28, 2009, 05:14:06 pm
Just the other day i decided to download SoTN on my Xbox 360, at first i didn't really think it was all that great but i'm currently up to the inverted castle and my opinions gradually changing - the regular baddies certainly seem alot more alive than any of the DS titles - can't really say the same for the bosses though.The area designs are exceptionally good and quite intricate but there were some I found just painfull to look at - in my opinion the clocktower looked horrid.   

as an aside I'm afraid you wont find me calling SoTN the BEST Castlevania game  - My first encounter with castlevania was with the Belmont's and i have a personal preference for the ol' whip weilding clan of vampire hunters - I really wish they'd throw another Belmont in lead role again, they seem to be rather elusive lately and practically going extinct.




Offline Ben2theEdge

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Re: Making Castlevania Style sprites

Reply #9 on: May 28, 2009, 06:52:06 pm
In general Castlevania is a very mixed bag. Environments especially are usually quite ugly and look like they took five different tilesets and cobbled them all together. Actually I think the prettiest Castlevania was Dracula X on Super Nintendo but I'm probably alone in that sentiment :-[

Anyway...

http://www.spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/cvsotn/alucard.png
http://www.spriters-resource.com/ds/cstlevniadawnofsorrow/somacruz.png

You said you were having trouble with the heads; Here's Alucard from SOTN and one of the better sprites from the DS games (SOTN is still far more skillfully made though). The Castlevania artists don't even bother trying to render faces at such a small scale; the characters' faces are just a few flesh-colored pixels surrounded by hair. I would say this is the best way to go at this scale since any facial details you could cram in there would look pretty weird. You seemed to be off to a pretty good start with the guy on the top left, just remember that you are drawing a head, not a face, and focus on lighting and volume as opposed to little details.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2009, 06:53:58 pm by Ben2theEdge »
I mild from suffer dislexia.