Kelvin Shadewing's Pixels

[Kelvin]

Thanks, Shy! I'll give that a watch when I'm on a better connection.

As for the scale I mentioned earlier, this is what I've been using:


And an older strip I made comparing some of my sprites to others from various games, including some that were made on this forum:


So, you can see what I'm going for, right? Trying to make sprites that fit in with many others with believable size ratios.

[DragonDePlatino]

Ewww you're using feet to measure your characters! DX

But measurement standards aside, I think scaling your characters like that is a neat idea! I did similar a similar project using my own characters three years ago, and it might be fun to revisit a project like that since my art has improved a lot since then.

One thing, though...have you ever tried drawing some pixel art in a larger scale than this? You've got roughly 16x16 scale characters here, but I'd be interested to see how your characters would look with a little more detail. That project I showed you, for example, has sprites in a roughly 48x48 scale.

[Kelvin]

I tried converting it to meters, but when shrunken down to those pixel sizes, they didn't match up, so I stuck with feet. I know, I don't like imperial measures any more than the next guy, but, meh, it's what I grew up with, so it just comes naturally.

As for your project, wow! I would try to do something big like those, but I've just never had the patience, to be honest. I did consider pulling a Koh and remaking all my characters at twice the original resolution, again using Midi as a base while keeping everyone to about the same scale. If I did, though, I'd probably use TFR's simpler shading style, as it looks more cartoony, and seems to work better at that size. I think I have an attempt at using my shading style at that size, but I'm too lazy to scroll back, so I'll just post it here. ^^

[DragonDePlatino]

Oh yeah, that's really nice! And TFR used a roughly 32x32 scale, which is plenty big to show all the details you'd need. And of course, you don't need to animate your characters when you're doing a big chart so it isn't as time-consuming as you'd think.

[Kelvin]

Well, of course, but the chart of all the sprites I've worked on are characters I have animated or plan on animating.

[Kelvin]

Wanted to see how TFR shading worked on my smaller sprites. Whadayall think?

[Level 1]

The pose sorta looks a bit awkward, not like that of a natural fighter's stance, I say that because of the knees, they don't look as if he is ready to act. I'd recommend bending them a bit, and arching the back

[Kelvin]

You're looking at the upward frame. He bounces in place when standing. Check my sig for his full idle anim.

[Kelvin]

These are a couple requests I had from earlier to warm up on a bigger project, and that is this:


I'm working on this dragoness to practice larger characters. So far the biggest sprite I've taken on, and I'm gonna try and animate it. My plan is to break the neck and tail into pieces that'll be rotated with each new pose, and after the pose is assembled, I'll smooth over the lines and shading by hand to make it look seamless, as opposed to sprites that just use floating circles. The legs will also be animated, but I'm considering using the wingless version of the character that sometimes appears.

Notice the sprite of me in front for scale. ^^

[Kelvin]

An update on Tartii. Got her head, neck, and one leg done. The neck segments are made to be rotated and attached, so I'll shade the parts later. The leg is also meant to be rotated in parts, but the back left leg is going to only be used in idle frames. The right hind leg will be my template for walking, and is gonna use even more parts. This is going to be my most complex sprite yet, so wish me luck!

[DragonDePlatino]

Awww! Your first WIP looked so much nicer! This one looks really stiff and the posing isn't that great.

If you're going to be animating this character, try to avoid drawing all of the parts separately. I made that mistake myself when I animated my first quadrapeds, and the results weren't that great. Instead, just animate everything in 3 layers so that nothing overlaps. The foreground layer should have two legs; the middle layer should have the torso, neck and tail; and the back layer should have the other two legs. If the character has an 8-frame walk cycle, you can copy the foreground legs into the back layer and offset them by 4 frames to get your animation. So the foreground layer legs will go 1-24-5-6-7-8 and the background legs will go 5-6-7-8-1-24.

A long time ago I found a really nice tutorial showing how to do this, but after a few minutes of searching it seems I can't find it anymore. I hope you understand what I'm trying to explain.

[Kelvin]

Yeah, I know, the neck doesn't look like you'd expect from the color blobs. But, like I said, I plan on smoothing it by hand when I animate; that's just a rough test to see how the segments fit. Here she is with her neck in its default upright position with the foreground legs and torso colored in.



I'll take your advice on animating the legs. And, yeah, I know what you mean about the frame numbers. Though, if it's alright with you, I'm gonna make a layer for each leg; it's just easier for me to work with that way.

[Kelvin]

DDP was right; the single-piece neck looked way better. So, my new idea is instead of having prebuilt neck pieces that I'll have to fix the outlines and AA on anyway, I'm just gonna make a series of circles and stick them together when working on the pose. This way I can keep a consistent length and still do just about anything with it when I draw over them.

This sprite has given me an idea, though: a pixel-shaded extruded spline renderer that automatically outlines and adds single-color anti-aliasing based on a given palette, with the fill being based on a color pattern. Such a thing wouldn't be able to be made by me for quite some time, but it's definitely an idea I'm going to be saving for the future. The reason why is because I think it'd be cool if a really long body part could be rendered in a game without having to draw tons of frames or break it up into chunks or balls the way some games do, especially for a long tail like Tartii's.

BTW, the mane is supposed to go all the way down to the tail, but I'll get on that later. I'm going to be breaking that into 3 parts, one for the head, one for the neck, and one for the torso.

[Kelvin]

Reshaded my current avatar. I feel like something's still off about it, though. Any ideas? Also, added anti-aliasing anywhere absent (6X ALLITERATION!).

[EDIT]


Added some shadows I missed earlier.

[DragonDePlatino]

Hmm...you may want to avoid double-aliasing some lines here. If you look at the rim of the ear, the original had AA on one side but the new version has AA on both sides of the curve. IMO the latter looks very messy and I often try to avoid it myself. The darkest level of AA (like on the bottom of the chin) also seems a little too close to the color of the outline, which is muddying up your linework. It might be best if you brightened up that AA, darkened the outline or just removed that layer of AA entirely.

Oh, and one last thing...The wing looks a little scrunched in that corner.. Try expanding your canvas to the left, drawing the entire wing then shrinking the canvas back to it's current size.