Project DragonBlossom [WIP]

[Arkenova]

Hello Spriter's Resource community, this is your new member Arkenova, speaking and I hath come forth with an original (indie) game idea for a game that falls underneath the WIP title of Project DragonBlossom. As far as you may known, I have been very busy within the last several days just to pull this project together as well as recruiting a team for said project.

I'm no programmer, but I know enough on terms of the artsy and writing ends (well except for level art, I'm not good at that..yet.) However, I have been pulling my end of project work for a good while, so let me surprise you with some concepts I came up so far. *ahem*

All of the concepts developed so far:
Project DragonBlossom Gallery

The spritework so far:
Ayasuka (Main Character), Life Icons and Numbers?

Project Range: Medium (as of now)

Summary of Storyline: It's been 2,000 years has since the Ancient Beings of the Four Winds and the Great Hero has established peace within the lands after stopping a war that was being lead by a mysterious evil to conquer the world who was soon sealed away. In this time of peace, enough was done to establish the grounds for the four kingdoms which all have Leaders, however they are also ruled underneath the Dragon Prince to keep the Kingdoms in check. However when a mysterious evil is revived, it threatens the lands and throws enough havoc to have the Solsai Kingdom press threats of war against the other Kingdoms. To make matters worse, strange happenings have been sighted around all over the kingdoms and in a strange twist of Fate, it's all up to Ayasuka and her allies to save the kingdoms from going to war against each other and stop the evil before it's too late.

Level Concepts are still a WIP but I have a general idea of two Levels according to the storyline: Aer Ruins and Tsuki Forest. Both areas are being worked on for concept for now; screenshots will come in later. (These two levels are going to be revealed as of now since this is prepping up for a demo version first.)

Description of Levels:

Spoiler

Aer Ruins: The first stage of the game. It will be ruins in a forest-jungly forest that could lead up to waterfalls and peaks, oh my. Exploration will be a factor in this and that's not a bad thing right? Oh and another thing, look out for the pratfalls and traps that are abound. While at it, you could see the sunset in the distance of the high peaked mountains.

Tsuki Forest: It's a crisp and clear night as wolves howl in the distance as the rays of the moonlight shines down from above in this hauntingly calm sacred bamboo forest consisting of Eastern shrines and lingering spirits. Climb high enough and you should see the full sight of the blue supermoon above you as you travel. Another thing, mind the royal guards, they're out and abound the place.. Wonder what's going on to get their attention?

Since this is currently a medium-sized project, I will be expecting some help, but not too much or too little; I'm talking about a team consisting of talented people with both technical and aestheic skills in general.

Genre of the Project: We're looking at Action-Adventure RPG Platformer mainly.

For placeholders, we will be using various OSTs and sound effects from other games for a temporarily while. Another thing, in terms of Composers, we're all good on that, I managed to find a good amount on other websites.

If anyone have any questions, comments, concerns or the such, feel free to contact me via PM. Thanks.

[Bombshell93]

remove the parts about artists and programmers,
the continued use of "you" implies we will do said work for / with you, but none of us know you, you've not been here long enough for anyone to trust you / willingly do work for you,
Its essentially a request and having a request on your first post will likely get the thread locked and yourself warned.,
just letting you know to save yourself some trouble.

[Arkenova]

remove the parts about artists and programmers,
the continued use of "you" implies we will do said work for / with you, but none of us know you, you've not been here long enough for anyone to trust you / willingly do work for you,
Its essentially a request and having a request on your first post will likely get the thread locked and yourself warned.,
just letting you know to save yourself some trouble.

Done and doner! Thanks man.

[puggsoy]

Looks pretty good. I'm not sure where "original" comes in, no offense but most of what I can see has been done before, in general. That said you haven't really gone into gameplay and mechanics so it could be a very singular game, it's just the art and story doesn't look too unique.

Anyway good luck with this, if I wasn't as busy as I am I may have liked to help with programming. If possible though, you should add as much information about your vision of the game as possible so people know exactly what they'd be helping with, it'll probably increase your chances of getting someone to help.

[Arkenova]

Looks pretty good. I'm not sure where "original" comes in, no offense but most of what I can see has been done before, in general. That said you haven't really gone into gameplay and mechanics so it could be a very singular game, it's just the art and story doesn't look too unique.

Anyway good luck with this, if I wasn't as busy as I am I may have liked to help with programming. If possible though, you should add as much information about your vision of the game as possible so people know exactly what they'd be helping with, it'll probably increase your chances of getting someone to help.

I will and thanks. I'm more than determined to build up the project, so stay tuned.

[Arkenova]

Update: I don't know if bumps are allowed in topics such as this, but if they are, please tell me. Thank you.

Since, I have gathered more in terms in the project; I'd thought to share with you.

Sprites (both of Ayasuka); there will be future updates.


(One is a major update to the Beta sprite and another is a mugshot (talk?) sprite.)

Music (Previews/Samples)
Short Preview #1: Tsuki Forest Phase 1
Preview #2: Variation - Tsuki Forest Phase 1

Concept Art (Commissioned work done by Blueswirl on dA)


It's not much, but it's steadily growing.

[Previous]

Bumps are fine if they add content.

Those sprites use way too many colours! You should try to increase the contrast between shades and try to merge similar colours togther. That way animations will be easier to make, too.

The mugshot has a pig snout while the sprite's nose looks rather pointy (nose-dots are usually used for pointy noses).

[Arkenova]

Bumps are fine if they add content.

Those sprites use way too many colours! You should try to increase the contrast between shades and try to merge similar colours togther. That way animations will be easier to make, too.

The mugshot has a pig snout while the sprite's nose looks rather pointy (nose-dots are usually used for pointy noses).

Thank you for the advice; you see I'm still rather new at making custom sprites so I'm bound to mess up every now and then. As for the colors, how many should I use at best? 16-bit perhaps?

[Previous]

16-bit isn't a colour count

I could go into a long talk about bits but I'll spare you the trouble, just keep in mind bits usually don't tell you a lot about graphics unless you get really technical and even then, there are bits and bits and.... yea.

For sprites of this size, you should be fine with a maximum two or three shades per colour. However, in cases when shades can be re-used, you should do that. In your sprite, the shoes and hair have many similar shades and some skin tones could be merged with them, too. About 16 colours overall should be a good guideline (though not to be confused with 16-bit), though often enough you'll have to sacrifice detail (for example, grey eyes instead of blue, a completely yellow scarf-piece) but that, too, will make it easiert to make all the different animation frames later.
In any case, you should never need 60+ colours for a such a sprite! You already have a lot of redundant colours (the shoe soles really don't need their own).

[Arkenova]

16-bit isn't a colour count

I could go into a long talk about bits but I'll spare you the trouble, just keep in mind bits usually don't tell you a lot about graphics unless you get really technical and even then, there are bits and bits and.... yea.

For sprites of this size, you should be fine with a maximum two or three shades per colour. However, in cases when shades can be re-used, you should do that. In your sprite, the shoes and hair have many similar shades and some skin tones could be merged with them, too. About 16 colours overall should be a good guideline (though not to be confused with 16-bit), though often enough you'll have to sacrifice detail (for example, grey eyes instead of blue, a completely yellow scarf-piece) but that, too, will make it easiert to make all the different animation frames later.
In any case, you should never need 60+ colours for a such a sprite! You already have a lot of redundant colours (the shoe soles really don't need their own).

I'll be sure to fix it up and yet again, thanks. Every bit of constructive criticism helps!

UPDATE 2/23/13! Oh and here is a nifty journal for those who are curious (besides the story) : http://arkenova.deviantart.com/journal/A...-355864934

[Arkenova]

Okay, we have a load coming.


Beta: 1/2 Done Runcycle


Beta: Complete Runcycle


Beta 2: Ukiagi

Beta 2: Updated Guardian Ryota : I was fixing up some things with his coat and such to differentiate him from another certain monkey.

Temple Area Concept
Concept Sketch 1: Female Dog (Tadao's Friend)

Music
Tsuki Forest Recent Update

Other news: I have another project I'm on (it's called Opale), so progress could be slowed a bit, however it's paid, so that's good news because what this project needs are alot of things, especially in terms of money.

[Gors]

the run cycle looks really poor, it is jumpy and makes no sense at all other than putting a leg in front of the other. Which is a shame because there is an obvious amount of work and effort here. I am busy with stuff at the moment, but I'll try making an edit to help you how to animate.

Animating is hard but once you get its basics, you can apply them in almost anything.

[Arkenova]

@Gorsalad: Yeah, I figured that it was bad somewhat, it looked really jumpy and thanks.

[Arkenova]

Okay, a bit of an update. Now this is beta still however, I took the time to majorly update it to where it involves less of a mess in terms of color scheme by using the same colors here and there. It used to be a whopping 38-palette now reduced to a fair amount of 31-palette. (though I could've deceased it more.) '

As far as I'm concerned, this game may aim to be a 32-bit as it would seem.



That and a beta of a first example of the HUD concept:


What do you guys think?

[Previous]

One very important thing first: White backgrounds. I suggest not to use them. Use some desaturated light green or purple or whatever instead. Especially when you're using white inside the graphics - like you did with the "LV 10" text. That's evil and kills little kittens!
Also, it would be better if you could post them in their native resolution (with one pixel being exactly one pixel) - everyone can then zoom in as they need. That character sprite isn't even evenly scaled, there are 8x9px and 8x8px virtual pixels - if you do scale, you should only use whole-number (integer) factors like 2x or 4x or 7x but not 3.14x and you should always scale both width and height equally to maintain the aspect ratio.

The next thing is colours. You have waaaay to many of them. Especially on the HUD - you're already using 26 (!) colours for the pink petals alone (60 overall). Way too many! You're applying too much anti-aliasing. Instead of making your sprites smooth, it makes them look blurry - and makes the colour count explode! Are you choosing your colours manually? It makes the impression that you're using some soft brushes.
Beside using too many colours, there also is too little contrast. Your shades need to be more different, darker colours should be darker etc, most notably on her green pants and the tip of the shoe. A lot of the shades are barely noticable on the graphic's native resolution.

Regarding "32-bit" - bits are not really a pixel art thing. While "32-bit" can refer to colour depth (for example, RGBA with 8 bits per channel, giving you 4.294.967.296 colours (including alpha, 16777216 if you only look at the RGB part - 24 bits) to choose from), it can also refer to processor architecture (register and bus size), but unless you specify what exactly you mean with "32-bit" regarding sprites, it doesn't mean anything because there is too much it could mean (being saved with 32-bit colour depth, being something that can be displayed on a 32-bit console, using a 32-bit large palette et cetera).

Aside of that, I'd say the icons on the HUD (inside the blue bubbles) are hardly readable. It took me a while to figure out that (in the biggest bubbles) the first was a smile and the second a shield (if that's what they are). The second orange shade blends into the blue too much.