Best sprites / animations

[Koh]

I dunno, at that resolution, that seems pretty fair. Animating sprites that big is no easy task, mind you, but because they also take up so much space, they need more frames for smoothness.

[Kriven]

I think I saw something once posted to a MUGEN forum (this was years ago...) where some Capcom employees had shared how the art was created for their fighting games, and it looked like they actually draw black-and-white frames by hand, scan them in, and then trace the image with pixels to get the sprites to look right.

[miyabi95_]

Her sprites look well-made for sure, rotoscoped or not. Kinda weird how she's the only fighting game character I've ever seen whose idle animation moves the camera though xD.

[Gors]

That's a capoeira ginga, it's great to see it represented in sprite form

[SNKPlaymoreFan]

Braid - I enjoy the painted style and Tim's animations. The various effects of the world are also nice, they're quite subtle but they're also affected by the flow of time and involve the entire level in time manipulation (rather than only characters and items).



Dustforce - I really love this aesthetic and the character's animations. Honestly, one of the reasons I keep playing this and trying to get better is simply because of how cool it looks, especially when you pull off stuff really smoothly.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOe3GKOAP-I (so you can see the animation)

Metal Slug - One that everyone knows, basically all of the Metal Slug games look amazing. Both the sprites and the animations are just great.





Are those from metal slug defense?
If they are please show me how to open .obm files

[Goemar]

One of my favorite sprites have to be the original Rayman. It's cool how the majority of everything was made up of separate pieces.
Such a shame we only have two rips on the site, because the graphics are amazing and nobody else has tried ripping from it.


Most Amiga games by Pysgnosis had beautiful sprites. Notably Shadow of the Beast and especially Agony.

An overlooked classic starring the owl from the company's own logo. Just look at that wing animation.

Agony looked beautiful. Always thought the wing bent a bit too right-angle-y but I guess that's being picky. It's a shame Amiga games seem to have been left in the dust.

---

Some of my favourites from the NES have to be Moon Crystal and Little Samson (which have to be seen in motion to appreciate).

However other favourites include Dark Stalkers.



(Just look at that shaking jaw and trembling hair - beautiful).

R-Type



Just for it's beautiful design.

Joust.



For just it's tiny detail.

And obviously Metal Slug

 

Because it's just freakin' sprite sex.

[daemoth]

Grand Knight History: holy shit that game looks good.

As an example, here what the body of a knight look likes in the ram:

Spoiler

Whos responsible for this awesomness Vanilla ware is making? George Kamitani. Look him up, his art is one of the best i have ever seen.
Its probably just me but, games with 2d sprites can look so much better than with models and textures.

[DarkGrievous7145]

I can agree, there.

I do also like the idea of pre-rendering models to create 2d sprites, though. The models have to already look good, however. I actually like isometric more than the typical 3D perspective. Sadly, it probably wouldn't work well in most 3D games, which is why 2D games tend to use it, instead.

I had much more to say, but decided it was worthless.

[miyabi95_]

exactly why i have my eyes on the odin sphere remake =w=

[AkumaTh]

I like how Freedom Planet did the sprite work for their characters.

Spoiler

But I love SNK's Garou: Mark of the Wolves sprites. They look so frikkin awesome!

Spoiler

Even the backgrounds...

[Koh]

The animations for Freedom Planet are definitely smooth, but just opening up the spoiler box shows the problem with outlineless styles like that, lol. The one on the far right completely blends in with the forum background XD;

[daemoth]

Hmm, the new game from VanillaWare is in a "modern" setting:


Where do you want to start? 

[miyabi95_]

Most 2D Dragonball games have really great sprites. Even the first Famicom action-RPG had a quirky and cute style.

[Yaronos]

Most 2D Dragonball games have really great sprites. Even the first Famicom action-RPG had a quirky and cute style.

Agree. Extreme Butoden's Sprites are wonderfull.