Castlevania!

[Kamoe]

Hey there ppl! Hope that the topic is not that confusing.

Basically what I intend to do, is to "re-sprite" castlevania characters, which are either not in the "newer" games or actually don't fit into the overall palette.

To give an example: Harmony of Despair
Lots of Castlevania characters, though some have the same "old" look like Simon or Richter

So anyway, I'm a big castlevania fan and was working on a game with similar gameplay (metroidvania...duh). So now I've decided to do something "cool" for Castlevania fans

Anyway, I need some constructive critics (USEFUL ONES PLS), feel free to comment!

That's the plan:

Simon Belmont

I wanted to start chronologically...but still decided to remake the old sprite. This will be the first character I'll be making for Castlevania

Animations

Sprite Sheet

Richter Belmont

W.I.P.

Will be the second one

Leon Belmont

W.I.P.

alpha

Trevor Belmont

W.I.P.

alpha

Juste Belmont

W.I.P.

alpha

Sprite sheets will be updated as soon as I create new animations. Feel free to C+C

PS: Cool spoiler function ! Spoiler, in spoiler, in spoiler....SPOILERCEPTION !

[Lexou Duck]

wow, these are pretty good, a nice change from most sprite topics
also i love castlevania


for simon's run cycle, you should make the head and body move more, it's not just the legs and arms
(btw i pretty much hate the redesign they did on him, but whatever)

for richter, there's almost no contrast on the white parts shading and the hair

and for trevor, be careful of the shades you use, one can easily confuse the boots with the back of the cape, for instance
when it's all in shades of brown, you need to be creative so everything can be readible

Overall, i like these, but you can omit some details, because most of these characters have very complex designs, and pixelart can't handle all the detail without making it look cluttered


keep it up !

[Gors]

yeah, I suggest you to simplify on the sprites. Sprites aren't meant to mimic the official art 100%, so you can drop some of the details in order to make the sprite readable and better.

[Kamoe]

First of all, thanks for the replies !

I wanted to make the body and head move too, but I've encountered the actual castlevania animations... they're like ALL pretty stiff when it comes to body movements. (does not mean that I won't try it )

Richter...yeah I see what you mean, but I can't seem to get the right colors ...


Trevor, Juste and Leon are all alpha sprites, I'll re-sprite them anyway. Maybe they'll look a bit different. Something like this other version of Trevor:


I'll reduce the level of details, though some of them have to be remained :/...that's what castlevania is

Thx again for the replies, I hope that I'll get some more

[Gors]

I know, some of the details must remain. Castlevania's sprites are a little cluttered anyway, but since they often come with in-game portraits and/or box artworks, the readability is increased a little.

[Lexou Duck]

I did this edit of richter, cause i noticed there were lots of light source problems, banding and stuff, so i changed the shading and some colors

[OverlordNext]

it looks a bit bad on contrast? these look cool thoug! good luck on making all complete!

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Is it me or are these splices? I think I can recognize various elements from different sprites in most of these.
I'll re-iterate on keeping the designs simple and re-balancing the contrast, plus avoiding very small pixel clusters.

[Cobalt Blue]

readbility is always king. when it comes to small sprites, of course.

[Ton]

What they said. Look at some things, like Simon's boots, for instance, and you can see what isn't important to the sprite. Try to do too much detail really bogs down the sprite.
That said, Simon's hair needs to flow while he runs. I look forward to more from this project.

[Kamoe]

@Tae Kwon Doug: Luckily I sprite those characters off the official artworks, so the readability should be there, though I'll reduce the level of details, since some sprites simply won't work the other way

@Lexou Duck: Thx, I took you advice and re-edited my sprite, changed some light sources and some colors (I had a closer look at the artwork again...duh) and this came out:

(I'm too lazy to remove the background )
Hope that this time, I've hit the "more or less" correct colors and shading.

@SupaBuddie: Thx mate ! Yeah well, contrast seems to be my main problem :/

@Chris2Balls: Nope, not Splices. At least not as soon as I start to sprite the full sheets. The "stand" sprites were the only ones that were spliced, but it was only for the recognition of the characters.
As you can see, the Simon, Richter, Juste and Trevor sprites are different. Leon is a BIG W.I.P. so I still don't know how he will turn out at the end
Though lots of stuff may resemble the original caslevania characters. Why? Well simply, because there aren't many options and variations due to the small sprites ... But still, I try my best in making them more individual

@Cobalt Blue: True dat! That's why I try to leave the most unnecessary parts away and sprite only the main recognizable ones (from now on, at least)

@Tonberry2k: Yeah well, the problem is that I "need" those details on Simon...nearly ALL of them :/... it's a big difference to see the sprites in this topic, without a background, to the actual ingame background. I tested those with a Castlevania background and it looked OK (the problem is > only OK)
Still trying to figure out what the main problem is.
The hair...it IS actually moving, though I know what you mean. I'll have to fix the hair anyway, so I'll give it a shot !

____________________________________________________________
UPDATES:

So I finally made a somewhat interesting "stand" animation:

I took the idea from 2 sources:
- Simon Belmont (original 8-Bit sprite)
- Richter Belmont (CotN "stand"-animation)

Both of these gave me only the idea how it could look OR be animated...though it looks funny due to the level of the details... I'll have to take a look at the ingame version of that

PS: Yeah the hair isn't moving, I noticed that, after I made the GIF... I'll change that too!

[Ton]

Awesome. That was something I forgot to put in my post. Different idles definitely make the project look better and less edit-y.

[Orbit]

His left (our right) knee looks as if it's inflating. His arms look a bit weird too, but I'm not really an expert on animation so I don't really know how you'd fix that.

[Gors]

maybe it's because one arm is moving more than the other, which makes that an uneven idle animation.

[PrettyNier]

The only thing I can suggest is to try and get rid of the black outline around the sprites; it has a negative effect on the depth of the sprite and it's always bothered me that they put those on in the later games. Alucard from Symphony didn't have one (it was a transparent layer, so the outline that you see from that sprite sheet was normally invisible, except during spell effects like Dark Metamorphosis) and Juste only had a bright blue one because of the readability issues the Gameboy Advance had.

Similarly, while the shading is pretty good for the most part and the colors aren't offensively bad, they could stand to be more interesting; in addition to removing the outline it might help to increase the contrast between shades and shift the hues a little bit more to create more interesting combinations.

Also, don't ever use neutral gray in combination with saturated colors. Tint the gray tones to something colored.

this is good. restrain the front arms movement a little bit more, or increase the movement from the back arm slightly and it'll be even better.