DDP's Sprite Workshop

[DragonDePlatino]

Welcome to my sprite workshop thread! Here, I'll be uploading anything I happen to be working on at the moment. It'll be a good learning experience for you, me, and along the way we might have some fun. If you want to see what I'm currently working on, head to the last page.

Now let's get crackin'!

Taking a break from my Mother 25th Anniversary Edition project, I decided to repolish an older project of mine, Koten. Koten was a Zelda Classic tileset I created as a complete reskin of the original Zelda, intended for use in a program called Zelda Classic. But after I created the tileset, not many people used it due to complaints about clarity. So I took the liberty to redraw the enemies with much more sharpness in mind. I went with a more contrasting shade/midtone/white palette and lowered the amount of anti-aliasing I used. Here are all of the reworked overworld dopes!



And for comparison, here's an image with some of the old designs:

Old Designs

[Neweegee]

It looks a lot nicer than the originals(which weren't really that bad to begin with), but what is that thing with all those legs? An alternate Octorok?

[DragonDePlatino]

It looks a lot nicer than the originals(which weren't really that bad to begin with), but what is that thing with all those legs? An alternate Octorok?

Yeah, it turns out a lot of people have been split on which version is better. A lot of pixel artists have been telling me the anti-aliased version is better and everyone else has been saying "it's too pixellated". Ultimately, I just went with the majority opinion, whether I agree or not.

Oh yeah, and that alternate Octorock...There are actually 4 octoroks in the original Legend of Zelda. There are strong/weak, fast/slow and every combination thereof. Just for fun, I made a unique 6-legged sprite for the fast-moving varieties. Oh, and while I'm at it, here are the dungeon dopes! (palettes not yet applied, of course)

[DragonDePlatino]

Has anyone here ever heard of Super Mario World Redrawn?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone did a project like this for Earthbound, and updated all the graphics?!? Just the other day I toyed with the idea and drew up my own Ness sprite. Here, I was aiming for more realistic proportions and shading while still adhering to the game’s animation and size restrictions. I have 16 colors to work with, but by carefully recycling colors I only ended up using 8.



Theoretically, these would work in-game but all the palettes would have to be redone like in Super Mario World Redrawn. So after I finish my M25 and Koten projects, I might start a project using an art style like this. But would anyone even be interested in playing Earthbound in this style? By the way, I'm using Ness' official art as my guide here.

[Koh]

The coloring an dsuch looks good. The only thing that bugs me is Ness'/Ninten's jittering hat. Does it really need to do that? Also, you might want to make the back of his head and sideburns black on those sprites; it looks like he's balding.

[BullockDS]

Looking neat, although yeah the hat kinda throws me off. Also, IIRC his "south/down" walking animation didn't have his hat flip in the original game.

[DragonDePlatino]

OK then! There are quite a few changes here. First off, you'll notice I added Ness' pajama and diamondized sprites. I also gave Ness a bit more hair and made his north-walking sprite symmetrical to prevent flipping. I also played with the contrast and added in a new color to anti-alias his pajamas.

So far, I'm really happy with the palette except for the yellow. It's aggravating me to no end! On my monitor, it's indiscernible from white even after I calibrated my monitor and double-checked the yellow's RGB values. If I try pushing it towards orange it blends with Ness's skin and if I desaturating it then the highlights look dull. It looks just fine on my phone, though.

[E-Man]

I don't know why, but the proportions of the head and body bug me a bit. I'm used to seeing Ness with a larger head and a smaller body.

[DragonDePlatino]

I don't know why, but the proportions of the head and body bug me a bit. I'm used to seeing Ness with a larger head and a smaller body.

Yeah, but lots of games have gone through proportion changes before so I don't think people would mind. Just look at games like Final Fantasy VI, Pokemon Black and Animal Crossing: New Leaf!

On another note I really should be getting back to my other projects but I was just dying to draw a battle sprite. So here's a crackalackin' Kraken and his bionic buddy!



Wow...I really surprised myself with how well these came out. I know they're not perfect but dang, I've never drawn anything that good before.

[Ton]

Love this! Kraken looks awesome!

[DragonDePlatino]

Even though Kraken came out well, I can't help but not feel entirely happy with it. Maybe it's because I drew it quickly without properly defining the style? To help things, I decided to take a few steps back and restart with the first enemy in the game. Here's a Runaway Dog using Kraken's palette! I had to add a color to help shade the beige, so that leaves me with 5 palette slots...Maybe I'll be able to pull off all the enemies in the game with a single palette and really aggressive hue-shifting?



See dog run! Run dog run! Run away dog! Ness has bat! Oh no, dog! Dog is dead.

[DragonDePlatino]

Experimenting with more Earthbound sprites...



As you can see, over the past 2 weeks my style has drastically changed. I was originally going for a realistic style, but ultimately I went with something simpler to capture the personality of the original sprites. I'm not sure about the animation frames, though. They look a little stiff to me. Any suggestions?

[Ton]

I think Paula's hair on the side needs some work. She looks like she has huge bald patches. Maybe some hair for in front of where here ear would be?

[DragonDePlatino]

Ah-ha! It serms that pulling off hairlines is shaping up to be a problem of mine. I'll make a note to look at some refs later.



Here's a less bald Paula!

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

something to keep in mind with people who have short hair--they tend to have visible sideburns. you've actually got that just fine in the 3/4ths-view sprites, but not with the profile-view sprites. also, most peoples' ears take up more visible space from a profile view due to the way their ears are shaped.

try something like what i've done on the right: