The VG Resource

Now that I'm out of school, I'll have a bit more free time on my hands for some sprite dabbling. I'll probably be starting out very slow at first, and probably not with customs from the start, but hopefully soon, as I have a bunch of ideas for stuff already. Of course, some of the stuff might be retarded crap I don't intend to submit like recolors I did for a laugh, depending on my mood because I'm such a jerk like that. xD

But before I get to that, I wanted to get some feedback on an edit I did a while back. Long story short, I took a sprite of Knuckles from the Sonic Advance series (courtesy of the sheets up on the site) and edited it to look like Metal Knuckles, also from the SA series.

Take a look here: Two original sprites of Knuckles, as well as one sprite that was actually a frame of Metal Knuckles, and one I edited. Should be easy to tell which I did if you played the game, but if you didn't, guess.



I was wondering if editing a sheet to expand the actions that Metal Knuckles can do would be worthwhile. What do you think? Yes? No?

Also, if someone could let me know how to resize an image in photoshop WITHOUT antialiasing, I'd grovel at your feet. :<

I don't see why it wouldn't be. I did this a looooong time ago but it got wiped out with the rest of my shitty works.

It's kind of a pain, but simultaneously it's kind of fun. That's why I edited it in the first place, to just see if I could do it.

My suggestion would be to resize it in paint then Copy>Paste it into Photoshop.

My mac doesn't have paint, but it's not that big a deal. I can just imageshack it and then access it on the lappy.

Also, since I couldn't resist, he's an example of the "retarded crap" that might end up in this thread occasionally. XD

edit -> preferences -> general -> Image Interpolation: (change to) Nearest Neighbour.

Okay, no actual sprites yet, but I'm weighing my options between two things I could attempt to sprite, one of which being sprites for a fangame sequel to Cocoron that I've been dreaming up... Haha, dream humor. Cocoron... dreams... yeah.

But anyway, I was sketching the other day and came up for an idea for a new villain character, whose name and design I have yet to fully flesh out, but here is a digital sketch I whipped up tonight (pardon me for having very sketchy digital art, I work better transferring traditional to digital, but I have no scanner).



I'm just tossing this sketch out to get any opinions on his design that I can. But first I'll give some notes about what I've been devising his character traits to be like. I'd have written them down, but my handwriting is atrocious enough, and if I had done it on a tablet... trust me, I'm doing you a favor. xD

0. Explanation of Cocoron:
-Cocoron was an NES game not released in the US. The gameplay style was that of action platforming. You made several heroes composed of different heads, bodies and weapons, allowing you to make unique-looking combinations. Different heads and bodies even had different life and weight values, as well as special abilities like flying bodies, changing the gameplay based on what you picked.

-The storyline is simply that you are in a dream world, and your hero characters are representations of you. Many of the worlds and enemies are rather odd, and many of the enemies, including the final boss, are animals or based on animals.

1. Character explanations:
-The character appears as the first major antagonist in the game I plan to make, using magic to force the player into a state that he can't wake up from, forcing him to continue his dream until he can get free from the spell. He is a lackey of another antagonist revealed around the same time, but has his own agenda
-The personality is that of a well-humored, well-mannered, but devious salesman. He is evil at heart, and has big plans for himself despite his loyalties to his employer.

2. Potential Names:
-Ringcat, Ring-Cat, Ring Cat
-Ringtail
-Copycat
-Tail of Stripes
(There are a lot of cat-related names, but he looks nothing like a cat. xD)

3. Sketch Explanations
-The most prominent sketch is of the design I liked the most. The others are just alternate heads and palettes I thought up. The palettes I put little to no thought into.
-The feet sketches show little paws, exaggerated claws and shoes, between which I can't decide. I also can't decide if his suit should be less over-the-top with the frills
-The long neck thing in the upper right corner is an example of an attack I want him to do, where he suddenly turns into a serpent-like form and flies around at the player like a dragon, leaving his coat empty. He then rushes back into it and fills it back up again afterwards.
-The tail rotation with the arrows in the lower left corner shows the way he appears on the scene. His tail spins around in one direction and he appears behind the tail as it spins, if that makes sense.

So that's it, more or less. Just wanted some opinions before I went on to spriting something. To be honest, I'm not in love with the palette, because the blue and the pink harks back a little too much to Tapir from the actual Cocoron game. I've been pondering other palettes, but I have yet to decide on anything.

or um *cough* cheshire cat

Yeah, as I was designing him I figured out that CC was the primary inspiration behind him. xD However, since Cocoron isn't my concept and I hope to do a fangame for it, I'm not that concerned with making subtle (or not so subtle) nods and references to various media. xDDD

Looks like a cross between Cheshire Cat and a marten (those things) to me.
Not that thts a bad thing or something, I actually like that design a lot.

I like the design on the top-right corner. it reminds me of Tim Burton's striped serpents you see in his movies (IE the sandworm from Beetlejuice)

Whoa, cool.

Alright, I'm too tired today to get any actual work done towards sprites, but I will post some ideas for concepts I wanna try and sprite and maybe get some suggestions on what I should do after I wake up from my work-induced coma I'm gonna fall into momentarily. xD

1. More Ringcat
This is something I'm probably gonna do, since he's a pivotal character for my Cocoron 2 idea. I'll probably just get around to posting concepts for his animations, probably no sprites for a while since he's kinda complicated. Expect his appearing and disappearing animations, maybe some laughter, as well as perhaps the animation of his attack he uses to knock the "waking" out of the main hero. But first I'll have to finalize his design...

I like the purple design the most, but should I attempt it with glasses? With pants? Don't know...

2. Cocoron Hero Concepts

As you can see here, the heroes of the original Cocoron were assembled via a head, a body and a weapon (which is not part of linked sheet). In the original game, there were 24 heads and 16 bodies, several categories made to divide up groups of two or so bodies and three or so heads, groups such as Ninja, Robot, Ghost, etc. If I manage to actually figure out how to program the ability to choose and switch body parts, there is room for more than the original limitations of the NES.

Here are some ideas off the top of my head, both for original concepts, and references to other media. Such was done in the original Cocoron, as you can see the Gundam-like character, the Alien series style alien head, and ability to make the titular cyborg of Cyborg 009. Also, in my idea for a sequel to Cocoron, I wanted to make certain heads and certain bodies have special abilities. I also wanted to potentially make two other parts: a melee weapon and a back part, like wings.

-Original Head Ideas-
Sun, Moon, Toaster, Bee, Bull, Apple, Hooded head, Pirate, Cobra, Medusa, Angel, Devil, Eyeball (Just a lot of random ideas I have at the time)

-Original Body Ideas-
Tornado, Plane, Octopus, Snake, Barrel (like a naked guy hiding in a barrel xD), Floating robes, Caveman, Shiva, Tank

-References from other media-
Megaman, Bowser, Slenderman (I've been watching a lot of marble hornets lately xD), various tSR people... you know what, I could make this list a mile long.

The references from other media is meant to be somewhat subdued, though... for example, I wouldn't just make Bowser in the game, but I might make a spikey dragon thing that just happened to have red hair. Another thing is that I need to figure out if I could make the game have the colors customizable.. that might be a LITTLE much. I have no idea how to even begin to do that.

3. I forgot. I'm going into that afformentioned coma now. xD

The only way I know howto code the changing parts ( in mmf Im guessing) is to make rooms with each possible combination. That said there would be an ass load of rooms

For the colors thing, you could have the colors of the body depend on the colors of the head, just like in the first Cocoron (though in that case it was probably due to palette limitations of some kind).

Also, if you get a good style going for Cocoron 2, I'm totally spriting myself in it.
Just saying.