First Hand-Made Sprite From Scratch (INCLUDES ANIMATION AS WELL)

[pl3]

Hey guys,

Just joined the forum tonight. I've been getting in to game development lately, and am really interested in the idea of making a fun 2d platformer rpg (not like maplestory, since ms is boring as heck).

I know it's gonna be a ton of work to draw sprites myself, but I have a good bit of drawing history, and I figured I'd at least try making a custom sprite. It seemed like a lot of fun, and so now I've finished my first ever tonight.

I'm fairly happy with the results, but I'm still trying to get better at drawing and animation too, so this is far from perfect. Feedback for suggestions and improvement is highly appreciated in every aspect, including coloring, animation, drawing, etc.

[[robo9]]

ms is boring as heck).

>:U

Also, Id suggest placing a few more transition frames in between the kick and the wind up (I guess that's what it would be called, idk), because it seems rather jumpy as he goes from facing and preparing the kick and then goes into the apex of the kick, without there being much animation of the actual kick itself. Im sorry if my grammar and what not is a little off, its about 3 AM where Im at.

[pl3]

Yea, that's a good point. I'll probably take the frames I already made and go ahead and add them in. I originally took them out, because I wasn't sure if they were necessary.

[triptych]

No comment on this other than that it's not pixel art and should be in creativity

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

the thing is, it's a sprite but not pixel art so to speak. so i'm not sure if it's such a good idea to move this to creativity.
as for the animation, it's a bit choppy: i think you could change some of the frames so they fit keypoints, consquently making the animation smooth.

[x0_000]

One of the problems is that the body and head don't have any movement, it just suddenly jumps from him facing forward to sideways. His body should have a noticeable twist motion. Another thing is that when you kick, usually the foot that's on the ground stays where it is, yours moves to the left when the kick is delivered.

You should get a program that supports layers or has some level of support for animations, and don't focus too much on the details of each frame, that's a use of time better spent getting the motions and timing down.

[Shawn]

No comment on this other than that it's not pixel art and should be in creativity

the thing is, it's a sprite but not pixel art so to speak. so i'm not sure if it's such a good idea to move this to creativity.

literally just leave it here

[pl3]

Thanks a lot x0_000, I was being really lazy, and as you can see I just copied and pasted the head for 3 of the frames. I guess I should practice working on fluid animation more. Thanks for the tips.

[des]

I can say with certainty that you moving in the right direction pl3, but if you want to make PIXEL art, you have to get the clarity of your artwork down to the pixel level:

in paint, using "save as monochrome bitmap" i converted your drawings to outlines:

from here you can use "right click-resize" to make your sprites proportionally smaller, and then clean up the outlines with the pencil tool.
a good rule of thumb is "the less colors the better"
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy...sheet/9100
if you can make your 4 color sprite a 3 color sprite by using the same color in more than one place without losing any clarity, then do it, but if you notice it hard to make out the pants from the shirt etc, you should probably keep the color.
Sprites are low color because back then they had to fit on kb of data for games, so they had to be a small number of colors in order for the system to process them.
once you master low color sprites, you can splurge and make stuff like this: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/1...3ghe3a.png

[pl3]

Wow, thanks so much des! What a helpful post! When I get some time, i'm gonna work on cleaning the sprites up first, and then coloring with minimal colors. I'm probably gonna make something more creative though, because this was boring. If anyone has suggestions for a fun sprite to draft then clean up, please post.

[Gors]

also, before you do something more elaborated, have in mind some drawing and animation basics: pay attention to the frames and check out if the limbs didn't get longer or thicker, and if each frame is anatomically possible (in your animation, check out the last frame and notice how big the arms got; that shouldn't happen)