E-Man's Sprite R & D

[E-Man]

OK then, Ton! Fair enough! I went ahead and fixed up the Star the best I could. Which variation should I go with?



Forgive me for this somewhat impolite statement, but I honestly can't see the difference between #FEFEFE and #FFFFFF. Then again, could it just be my screen?


Also, even though I acknowledge that not everyone will stick to my animation timing, I just want to leave them on the sheet to give some people a general idea on how it should be animated (of course, they are also free to experiment). You see, the reason why I'm taking various precautions (i.e. recommending animation timings, using #FEFEFE instead of #FFFFFF) to help the users use my sprites more efficiently is due to experiences in my past. I'm not going to go over too many details, but I came from Lemmy's Land and Smack Jeeves before coming here. For the case of the former, almost all the comics were shoddy, while the case of the latter has eight out of every ten sprite comics having generally mediocre quality. What I've seen amateurs do to those sprites (i.e. improper scaling, half-decent recolors) made me face palm and look away. Even a former friend of mine was guilty of this when he didn't know about MS Paint's transparency feature well enough. I edited a Paratroopa to create his fan character for him to use in the sprite comic we used to work on, but due to him not realizing that the tips of the wings were #FFFFFF, they ended up losing their color. Even though I'm sure it still won't make a difference, I feel better about myself by jumping through hoops to give everyone else an easier time using my sprites...... Yeah... Sorry if that explanation took longer than it needed to.

Anyway, I think I could manage to shorten the lot of the final thoughts, but the users I credited will remain. Also, the other reason why I asked for Ton to look over my layout was that i was hoping he would give me some pointers on how to give my sheets more character. If you look at his sheets, many of them have interesting final thoughts and sprite gags.

http://www.spriters-resource.com/custom_...eet/17871/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/custom_...eet/17361/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/snes/sm...eet/12961/
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_bo...heet/1087/

I realize that his final thoughts are not that long and his sprite gags are funnier, but you get what I was trying to do, right? Since Ton does sheets like these before, I was hoping he could give me some pointers to create sheets with a touch of charm and humor.

[E-Man]

What? No feedback? Aw well, no big deal. Considering that newer spriters are a bigger priority, it's not a big deal to me.

Anyway, I did some more work on my Goomba sprite sheet. What do you think? Also, if you could give me comments on my previous reply to the thread, I would like that.



This time, I decided to give the Goomba an animation for talking. Is it just me, or is there something funny about the body shape when I rotate it? I wouldn't mind if someone fixes it up a bit.

[Virt]

The body shape is fine for the most part (other than the jaw) but the foot movement is the most jarring thing for me.

[Gors]

regardless of your sprite quality, i think you are full of fingers. I mean, it's ok to thak people and organize the sheet but adding that amount of info is not necessary. It's even tiresome to look, and you dont need to write an essay to thank people who helped. Just a 'Thanks to: (username)' would suffice.

in the end your sprite is fun but otherwise you let out a really amateurish aura all over it because of the insecureness in all those details and the unrelated and space-eating sprite gag. Those serve of no purpose at all, increases the filesize and well, its not at all funny to even worth the space. stop being so worrisome for a change.

[E-Man]

You're right, Gors. I worry too much over everything. I was just trying to be helpful and unique, but I ended up with a shoddy layout. You see, I had a rough past and that made me insecure over the years. Ever since I had trouble with that least two users who acted spiteful against me, I worked very hard to be the positive opposite they were and not try to grow an ego. I guess I was trying too hard, huh?

Anyway, I went into my sprite sheet layout and maybe this ought to do the trick!



Forgive me if pieces of what made my old layout look shoddy remain. I can't resist to add a personal touch to my sheets and I don't want it to end up looking like this kind of layout.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/ds/mari...eet/21461/

By the way, I went ahead and did some more progress on my lovely Goomba sheet! Feel free to suggest anymore changes.




Talking (edit)


Walking

[Virt]

The walking looks more like just sliding feet instead of actually stepping.

[Kelvin]

in practicality you'd have frames ranging from crunched to stretched and the animation would simply follow a pattern through them, that in mind I'd say its an okay animation.
you could ease it a bit more at the end or you could have the spring be a bit more resistant, which I think would be your best bet, it'd save you a tone of frames and not look as silly.

he said not to make it wobble too much. They don't wobble in mario games because the principle of a spring is that the more 'rigid' it is, the quicker it returns to the original position, and thus the force generated by the elastic potential is greater, making Mario jump farther and higher. If the spring wobbles too much like a slinky then it means it doesn't have a bigger capacity of returning to its original state and thus its elastic potential is smaller, which translates to weak force.

Yay, physics lesson! No joke, I found that useful.

Also, for the star, it looks like the light is coming from the left, if I'm correct, so shouldn't most of the backside on the fourth frame be shaded?



Just a quick rough edit, but yeah, you get the idea. The lower row is the edited, the upper is the original. Maybe not that much shadow, but yeah, you can't tell if the light is moving or what in the original.

[E-Man]

Hmmm… I never thought the light would go like that. Since the Star is rounded like a Star from Super Mario 64, I throughout what I had would be good….. Aw well! I can tell that you know sprites better than I do, so I decided to apply your version to my sprites, which you can find in the completed sheet through this link. Thank you for the help!

http://www.vg-resource.com/showthread.ph...#pid530854

Anyway, Trollerskates, I can see what you mean by the sliding. You'd be surprised how hard it is to convincingly animate a character walking when the character only has feet to move around with. I looked into it, but this is the best I could do.

[Kelvin]

Ah, yeah I didn't take the shape into account, so I put too much shading on. But I still think more of that frame should be darkened than the original.

As for the goomba, his facial movement seems kinda rigid, and his body doesn't go up and down at all. Adding a little bounce would go a long way with that.

[E-Man]

Oh, I thought that your shading for the Star was correct. Maybe the two of use can work together on that if Ton thinks the Star looks funny to him.

Anyway, I took your advice into consideration, so how about something like this?

[Kelvin]

Yes, that looks way better. As for the star, I tried making it look rounder, but at that size, it's a difficult thing to pull off. It either looks really weird or the same as what I had before. I dunno, I'll see what I can do, but no promises. Sorry.

[Virt]

For the Goomba, he has really awkward stepping. Make his feet go back farther.

[E-Man]

Hmmm… Okay, Trollerskates. How about something like this?



Anyway, I recently created some more poses for my Goomba sheet. While the "looking up" pose looks nice, I'm not sure about the "sit" pose. The soles of the feet seem to blend with the stalk and I can't seem to find a good way to deal with it. Should i just keep it out of my mind?



Also, I created a running animation for the Goomba.

[Kelvin]

He needs to have a sort of fluttering motion like when Luigi jumps. You know how just before they chase you in Mario 64, they hop up and flutter their legs? I think you should have that.

[E-Man]

You mean at the start of the animation? I will add a surprised jump, but this run animation is for any situation the Goomba has to run (i.e. in a race, Bowser on his tail for stealing his coins).

Besides, I still need to add a charge animation.