Technique Question - Modular Spriting

[GrooveMan.exe]

Note: I reserve the right to post this here soley because it's a question directly relating to Spriting and Pixel Art; not covered by an existing board or topic. I do not condone haphazard question or request threads to be posted in S&PA

By Modular Spriting I mean large ingame objects made of smaller sprites rotated. The technique is used in the Metal Slug games, the recent Super Robot Wars games, and in some recent Castlevanias.

There are 2 main topics I'd appreciate discussed relating to Sprite Models:

- How do they compare to spriting an object as one unit? Does it increase or decrease the difficulty and/or the time to complete a piece? Does the size of the resuting object become a factor?
- How easily is this kind of spriting method implimented into a game? Having a lot of moving parts may be a hefty load to get animated and interacted with in game. Would assembling and animating outside of the game engine be a viable tactic?

[Proton]

-3D models can help determine things at different angles. Most of the time though, you'd be using models of big objects like, as you have shown, ships and robots and what not. They'd help with background, but like Spriting, you need skill to handle the 3D modeling. It can be harder than spriting, so it's better to use what you're more comfortable with.

-Most of the time, as you have shown, the models are traced over into sprites, so it'd still take a long time. The 3D model can look out of place unless it's all 3D(lie Shadow Complex) or the background is 3D (like Stafy 4). It's best not to combine sprites with models. It's easier to make out of the engine. Try using Graphicsgale or some program that handles .gifs and is easy to sprite with.

[GrooveMan.exe]

I think you might have misunderstood my question. It's not a matter of 3D Models or the representation thereof. But spriting an object using many smaller pieces, and assembling them; over just spriting one object and animating it traditionally.

[Proton]

I think you might have misunderstood my question. It's not a matter of 3D Models or the representation thereof. But spriting an object using many smaller pieces, and assembling them; over just spriting one object and animating it traditionally.

Parts.
It's always easy to put things together and will make useful shortcuts.


And if you do know 3D, that makes it easier.
Angles of arms and legs, joints, etc.
Makes good refs.

[Cobalt Blue]

let me put it this way.

working on a profesional level is highly affected by the time you have to work on your stuff. there's nothing wrong with using modular animations/sprites if that helps you buy time and spent it on something else, or imporve what you already have. on that subject, one must always be aware that there's always an invisible line between the commercial part of pixel art and the artistic part of pixel art.

generally speaking you're literally free to use whatever works to get the final product done, since thats basically the only thing that matters and the only thing that would get you paid for. but artistically speaking, you're usually encouraged to work on that hard, slow part of pixel art because, all in all, its nothing but a display of your skills with the least resources and etc. and for your own artistic pleasure, to say it somehow.

modular spriting surely helps making sprites get done faster and at the same time it does help achieving some smooth, natural animations but it does have its limitations since it relies heavily on what a good programmer can do to keep everything moving the way its meant to be, while regular animations rely purely on the artist's skill.

[Gors]

In my opinion, using modular spriting or common spriting will depend on what you're doing. If it can represent your initial idea without making it look like crap, then it's ok.

If you want an example, just see the expert tugs entries. They were supposed to be game mockups, but I don't think that they are, honestly speaking. Of course, I crapped my pants when I saw such spriting skills, but it didn't scream 'THIS IS A GAME' to me. It's not a bad thing; we're a more artistically-oriented spriting community so it's natural to expect that kind of work.

If that was a real game, though, it would look a lot more rougher, considering that animating huge sprites frame by frame is a pain on the ass and you have a deadline to meet. Obviously you'll want to unite the good and the useful, so here's where modular spriting comes.

- How do they compare to spriting an object as one unit? Does it increase or decrease the difficulty and/or the time to complete a piece? Does the size of the resuting object become a factor?

I think that separing the sprites in small pieces is extremely useful and easy compared to the full spriting. If you want an example, take Joy Mech Fight. It has extremely good-looking animation for a NES game, and each character's sprite sheets doesn't even take the 1/4 of space found in other 8-bit fighting games.

But the main difficulty changes: the hardest part isn't making the pieces, but making them interact decently with lots of coding. Of course, if the programmer is bad, the animations will look like crap and will ruin all the premise of your work. Another downside would be that the characters will commonly look 'disjointed' because of the piece's nature. See Konami/Treasure's games, for example. The robot's arms will usually look like a line of floating balls (Goemon Impact), which might strike out some people as 'weird-looking'.

- How easily is this kind of spriting method implimented into a game? Having a lot of moving parts may be a hefty load to get animated and interacted with in game. Would assembling and animating outside of the game engine be a viable tactic?

I have no idea. But, let's use some common sense here: no one's going to make a single character formed with 50+ small pieces. Programmers will always try to balance the number of pieces and smoothness out so it doesn't turn out exxagerated or lacking.

Also now that you say it, I don't know how people's going to use the Gen 5 Pokémon sprites. Are they willing to animate them, piece by piece? How are they supposed to be animated? By having programmed sprites, it'll be impossible to perfectly recreate the game's animation, and even trying to approach it won't be an easy task.

[DadNier]

hey, just wanna say, those "Super Robot Wars A" sprites are from the PS1 game "Super Robot Wars Alpha" (commonly called "SRW @" by fans), not "Super Robot Wars A" on the Gameboy Advance

[tsr moderation staff]

depending on what kind of feel you're going for it can look really badass. like with super robot wars or metal slug, it doesn't look lazy or anything because they actually do make other frames, it just gives it a unique look which imo works really well. in castlevania it looks a lot less impressive because you can tell it was done out of necessity rather than as a style choice, but that is equally understandable.