THE FIGHTERS RESOURCE - Official Thread

[TheMario360]

For crouching, I'm sure you should be able to do that from the foot positions you're holding already. Also the fingers on the third frame look weird perspective-wise. Just make 4 small nubs or something to represent the tips of the fingers and forget about showing the top side of the hand.

Is this any better?

If not, would you provide an example?

[TheShyGuy]

Heres what I did real quick:


Yours is on top.

Instead of pulling the legs and feet in, I let them out a bit. I also noticed that your animated crouch looked like he had to rotate his hips, which looks weird. For mine, the hips only rotate down, the front leg points out towards the screen/viewer, and the back leg points to the right when it rotates. Basically everything rotated using the same orientation as they were in idle.

I also messed with the both hand's fingers. The further one are just nubs or w/e and I didn't try to show the top of the hand. Previously, both fingers looked like they shrunk on the third frame. Also, how about forgetting about showing fingers at all? I dunno, it's your choice.

-Sorry if this was a bad explanation.

[Rosencrantz]

oh okay we're doing this again



okay





animation breaks a bunch of rules (the motion blur goes past the 64x64 limit, was planning on doing more than 4 frames, not to mention some wonky animatey proportionatey things, etc), I'll fix eventually

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

THE BLESSED DAY HAS COME

ROSENCRANTZ IS BACK IN THE GAME

333

okay with a bit more seriousness
i think the animation is a little quick to be readable. it took me a few loops to tell where the punching arm was coming from and where the other arm was in the meantime. but i really like the motion! you've got great buildup for it and it looks like a good >punch

also that idle pose is sexy

god just take me already

[TheMario360]

Heres what I did real quick:


Yours is on top.

Instead of pulling the legs and feet in, I let them out a bit. I also noticed that your animated crouch looked like he had to rotate his hips, which looks weird. For mine, the hips only rotate down, the front leg points out towards the screen/viewer, and the back leg points to the right when it rotates. Basically everything rotated using the same orientation as they were in idle.

I also messed with the both hand's fingers. The further one are just nubs or w/e and I didn't try to show the top of the hand. Previously, both fingers looked like they shrunk on the third frame. Also, how about forgetting about showing fingers at all? I dunno, it's your choice.

-Sorry if this was a bad explanation.

I would like for fingers to be shown.

[E-Man]

Right then! Here is the first version of my sprite for the game!



Believe me, though, it is rather hard to sprite in a certain style with a ridged palette. Also, I was reminded why I don't like spriting with outlines.

Obviously, I'm sure there are several errors here and there, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind helping me refine the sprite to something a little more awesome for the game. Otherwise, I'll see about planning some animations for him.

Anyway, for the case of the E-Man summon, I would like him to be part of a group of assists that are randomly called to the field when a certain action is done (whether it be an item pickup that summons characters or when an event is reached is what I can't decide on). His special ability is using Star Rod magic to cause a random event to happen to the fighters. It can range from providing health and attack boosts to causing direct damage and (rarely) instant KOs. Sometimes, though, using E-Man would backfire and nothing would happen at all… I'm not sure if this kind of asset has been done for the game yet, but what do yo think?

Also, maybe it would be possible if we could apply an amenity system to the game to shake things up? For example, characters (whether they be fighters or assists) who share good amenity work very great together and provide additional benefits (although they probably won't put up much of a fight if pitted against each other). As for characters who share poor amenity, they are often prone to not work so great together (even going as far as doing a little "friendly fire") and damage is boosted if they are fighting against each other.

[TheMario360]

Right then! Here is the first version of my sprite for the game!



Believe me, though, it is rather hard to sprite in a certain style with a ridged palette. Also, I was reminded why I don't like spriting with outlines.

The style for the game is very simplistic. also, the outlines should be the darkest color on the pallet.

[E-Man]

Hmm… Not exactly sure how more simple I need to go with this sprite, but I get what you're saying. As for not using the black on the palette, I hardly ever use black outlines anymore because they don't look so good. With the palette I was forced to use, I took colors from it that hue shifted the best with the colors available and applied them to make a more lively outline.

Still, I can see where you are going with this and I'll be sure to change the outline once I get any other suggestions.

[TheMario360]

Hmm… Not exactly sure how more simple I need to go with this sprite, but I get what you're saying. As for not using the black on the palette, I hardly ever use black outlines anymore because they don't look so good. With the palette I was forced to use, I took colors from it that hue shifted the best with the colors available and applied them to make a more lively outline.

Still, I can see where you are going with this and I'll be sure to change the outline once I get any other suggestions.

Perhaps I should elaborate. The style your using is fine, but, in terms of the outline, I have made the same mistake before. let me show you a possible edit:



It's not a perfect edit, but, it should give you ideas.

[Iocus]

Ok this was really rushed, so I might have missed a lot of details and such
And I feel some remorse because I don't want to steal your thunder or anything
and it really didn't come out that great

But I made something:


Sorry E-man, but I kinda had to do something from scratch to illustrate the problems in your sprite.

To be honest, I considered working something off it, but... the stance is not very well defined. It's kind of hard what he's supposed to be doing other than, well, standing.

Furthermore, you are forgetting one of the established rules for the style (which are on the first page), and that is, the outlines are almost exclusively black (check everyone else's sprites, do you see any exceptions?)

About the stance, it doesn't seem like you have any forethought on what you're aiming for. In fact, the fact that you didn't acknowledge the outline rule makes me think you didn't use any other sprite as reference. This is a problem.

Now, I chose a pose that I thought would fit you (you could use it for the entrance or something I dunno), and drew at least a simple skeleton prior to getting into the sprite. I think you should consider doing something of this sort in the future. It doesn't kill you to have pose references around, and anatomy references, all the sorts of references you think you might need.

(also his face came out girlier than I expected, sorry about that.)

[E-Man]

Nah, you don't need to be too sorry with me. I can see what you are doing and I can respect that.

Anyway, I didn't realize that it would be a big problem to not use a black outline, but now that I know (mostly in part by Mario360), I'll keep that in mind for the other sprites on this project.

All and all, what you have is a nice piece of work there (although I am not sure about the general shape of the legs and feet). As for the stance, it was actually meant to be part of his idle animation, which is why he is standing there. Basically, part of my process for spiriting is to start out with the most generic pose possible to work it out and refine it into a much better sprite before I went ahead and add more dynamic poses. That way, I would only have to correct the basic structure of one sprite instead of a whole bunch.

[Level 1]

With Iocus's edit, I can actually get a feel of what pose the your character has. Maybe you should guide yourself around it, because not to be rude, I couldn't tell what pose it originally had.

[E-Man]

No, you were not being rude. All you were doing is stating an honest opinion and you did it in a very considerate way.

Basically, even though I said this a post ago, I like to start out with a very simple standing pose when I start out with a sprite sheet. That way, I can show it to the more experienced spriters to see if I need to make any tweaks to the basic structure before I can move onto the animation process. The pose that Iocus used, while very amazing and a typical pose I could see E-Man doing, isn't the kind of pose it would start out with because it is a little more complex than a simple neutral standing pose. As a result, it becomes more difficult for me to create new poses from how the sprite is currently posed.

[Iocus]

In retrospect, it was a pretty terrible idea to use a pose meant for another stance to attempt to say what I wanted to say, but what's done is done. i actually updated it a little

To make myself clear, your sprite suffers from some fundamental anatomical issues, as well as an unstable foundation for dynamism. His legs are at awkward directions, the arm on the right is stubby (seems like he has no hand at all) and the pose that he's trying to convey is not evident. Is he ready for battle? or offering something to someone? it's hard to say. The bridge on the glasses also makes it seem as if he has a Sonic-esque nose, which I presume is not the case (though this is hardly a problem with the body structure, unlike the other things.)

I hope we're not drifting the topic too much...

[TheShyGuy]

As for the stance, it was actually meant to be part of his idle animation, which is why he is standing there. Basically, part of my process for spiriting is to start out with the most generic pose possible to work it out and refine it into a much better sprite before I went ahead and add more dynamic poses.

...

As a result, it becomes more difficult for me to create new poses from how the sprite is currently posed.

Building on what Iocus said about dynamism, what kind of attacks do you think the current pose you were aiming for opens you up to? Does it require an entirely different pose for build up? This is a fighting game so wouldn't it make more sense for idle stances to be more "ready"? From a good idle stance, you can build the other more dynamic poses easily. The idle stance is the pose you build off of, which you said and know. But a generic idle isn't good enough. This way, you can also add a little more personality so it's easier to understand what your character might do.

I hope we're not drifting the topic too much...

No, I'm pretty sure we're fine. This is basically the topic to discuss and work on TFR. Getting feedback on TFR characters in the TFR thread seems pretty much on topic.