Pixelate a sketch
Friday, November 30, 2012 - 04:24
Hi!
I drawn myself some sketch for a sprite, and I want to make sprites from them. The problem is that my pixel art skill is under the ground. Can someone help me doing this? :)
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Care to show us what you've got? There are definitely people here who can help you.
Sure, I'll add it as an attachment
What is the goal resolution?
Or
How big do you want your pixels?
See attached for test.
This size is optimal. About the colors, some more darker color would be better, like black armor and the other parts would be dark blue. Sorry, I forgot to write down the colors in the last post
Ok How is this for the color?
How's the pixel placement and style? Just want to make sure it works before I go through all of these.
Also, what liscense do you intend to release your draft sheet under?
The style and the colors are ok. I want to release it as royalty-free, don't even have to add credits. You can also modify it, or do anythong that you want
Oh.. just noticed. Is the sword exposed or is it in a scabbard? What color should scabbard be?
The sword is in a scabbard, when he strikes, as you can see on the drawing, just then he pulls out his sword. The scabbard is brown
Give me about 24 hours. I work nights weekends so I'll be sleeping most of the day.
Okay, just do as you can :) I'm not rushing, I can wait. Take your time
Progress so far.
Please double check things as I go. I often reuse part of sprites when constructing frames. So if something seems off let me know so it doesn't get duplicated elsewhere.
Going to be making some tweaks. Ran it through as an animated gif to test, and its not quite looking right for animation.
I think more frames makes running a bit more smooth. Someone let me know if this sucks.
I really like the initiative you've taken on this, and you're off to a good start. Still, I think that you might want to step back for a moment and examine the character before diving full tilt into animation. I think you can get the pixels to do more for you than they are now. Currently, there are a few issues:
banding/pillow shading: this is essentially when you have your colors sort of band along the contours of an outline. It doesn't usually do much to convey depth, and because of the pixel placement it can cause lines to be percieved in an image. The best resource on this that I know of is here, though it does ramble some: http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=8110.0
Generally, it's a good idea to step back and think about where your light is coming from, and how specifically it would fall across the character.
Colors: your colors are a bit lacking in contrast, and the ramps are straight--that is, the blue follows a straight gradient from light blue to dark blue without any variation in hue or saturation. It's often a good idea to add some variation in that, since real life solids are affected by multiple light sources, which often have different colors).
I made an edit that incorporates some of this (in a standing pose just because it's easier to deal with)
This is kind of unwieldy--not necessarily the easiest to animate, and it's got some other issues too. But I think it illustrates some of what I was saying, anyway (mostly on the shading side, less on the colors).
Cool, it won't be a problem to change the colors from here. I'll use the pallet you just supplied in the image in your post :D
Sure, use it if you'd like. But you might want to do some more tweaking and playing around with it, since I didn't spend much/any time optimizing it. Plus, it's fun =D
Animation frames using the discussed coloring technique on the hat only as proof of concept. Night shift tonight. I'll have updates over the next 12 hours. Goal is to complete by morning.
It's looking good! I think you definitely improved on my version of the hat, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you tackle the rest.
Shoulder fixed, Pants highlighted, boots recolored.
Animation test
Haha Oops second frame got a chunk of his arm cut off.
Arm corrected in second step.
New Animation test
I really like how this is turning out, Great job!
So here's the question getting into the rest of the sprite sheet. When drawing the sword and slashing should I animate this from the perspective that he stops and slashes, slashing from the run, or should I just seperate the the bottom half from the animation to allow the game designer to use the sprite's upper body as an overlay?
Not sure what the best practices would be. Attached is the concept of the draw and slash.
Still need an answer to the above :(
Here is the Double Slash concept. I know it wasn't part of the original hand drawn sheet, but I though it was cool :D
I think it would be good, if you seperate the parts. Even if it not working, it is easy to put the parts together.
I think there should be an another frame between stretching the front leg. Now IMO it's a bit too immediate. (I hope you got what I want to tell you :P )
It could seem a bit jump because of how slow the frames are going. I'll try speeding them up and see what it turns out and see if another frame needs to be added for the leading legs.
I tried out with faster speed, and yes, you were right. It doesn't need another frame.
One thing I might suggest is making the back leg darker in the run animation. Just removing the brightest shade can make it a lot easier to distinguish which leg is which, which improves readability a lot.