The VG Resource

First, I am no spriter;I'm a programmer. That said, I have been working on a Zelda II remake for a few weeks(you may or may not have seen the thread in Creativity). I wanted something based upon the original concept art for Zelda II(not the manual cartoon BS). I also wanted something that wasn't Minish Cap and wasn't quite Lttp.

I decided to look at the Mana franchise. I wanted something easy to work with so my choices boiled down to Secret of Mana or Sword of Mana as a base to work from. I chose Sword of Mana. Even though it lacks animation frames compared to Secret of Mana, the sprites look a little more natural rather than anime as far as the body movement is concerned.

Anyway, my palette is probably junk. I tried working with Sword of Mana and LttP palettes. I am trying to get the palette near LttP as i will probably make custom tiles as well to suit the new size of Link.

Just looking for some clean up help, I guess, is what I am getting at. I am not looking to make a AAA game nor am I a decent spriter so I don't need perfection. However, it would be nice to get some movement on the hair, better shading, and better physics on the hat.

Well, I think you got the stances correct, but the animations could use a bit of work, You don't have to make it completely perfect, but some of the things you I think you should do is:

1. Fix the shading in some areas(make sure the lighting is all pointing the same way)
2. Round out the sprites where they're too sharp
3. Remove some unneeded colors(Look closely at the hair on the 3 frame)
4. Make sure the animations connect closely(try animating them to see how they link)
5. Fix the face on the ocarina animation.
6. Remove some pillow shading
<--This is what the walk should look like after all of these changes.

The palette doesn't seem bad to me, so I don't think you'll need to change it.

(11-07-2013, 02:33 PM)Neweegee Wrote: [ -> ]Well, I think you got the stances correct, but the animations could use a bit of work, You don't have to make it completely perfect, but some of the things you I think you should do is:

1. Fix the shading in some areas(make sure the lighting is all pointing the same way)
2. Round out the sprites where they're too sharp
3. Remove some unneeded colors(Look closely at the hair on the 3 frame)
4. Make sure the animations connect closely(try animating them to see how they link)
5. Fix the face on the ocarina animation.
6. Remove some pillow shading
<--This is what the walk should look like after all of these changes.

The palette doesn't seem bad to me, so I don't think you'll need to change it.

Thanks, man. I'll get on that shading and such. While your walk cycle looks great, it feels too..exaggerated? Probably not the correct word. Sword of Mana (and my remake as well) has two types of movement: walking(what you and I have tried) and full running. The walking speed isn't really too slow but it isn't as fast as to match with your walking frames. I could probably just work with the arms to make it seem less like he is fast walking.

I haven't started work yet on the running frames although running(Boots from ZeldaII reworked)is in my engine already.

But, I will get to work on fixing my shading. I always have had issues with that both with sprites and real drawings.

The palette isn't perfect. I can barely tell there's a second green shade, but that's about it - I'd add more contrast.