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2D Art

looking for feedback on public domain monochrome sprites

gaymoo
Saturday, April 16, 2022 - 20:53

hello friends, first time poster long time lurker

would these fall under the trivial or unusable categary?

i made them during down time at work to try and learn pixel art. what do you think i could do to improve?

(the sprites i post in this thread are public domain)

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glitchart
joined 3 years 2 months ago
Saturday, April 16, 2022 - 21:18

I love monochrome art, it is really hard to do monochrome art properly but when you achieve that it stimulates imagination. I like those designs very much! I see expression and movement on the designs!

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 9 months ago
Saturday, April 16, 2022 - 21:38
MedicineStorm's picture

certainly usable. Especially submitted as the whole set.

--Medicine Storm

 

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Saturday, April 16, 2022 - 21:43

thanks glitchart :)

@MedicineStorm even if they don't have animation?

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 1 month ago
Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 09:00
Ragnar Random's picture

i would say there is some stuff in here, even unanimated, that i would find useful for making derivatives.

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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 9 months ago
Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 09:33
MedicineStorm's picture

If the concern is about the "trivial submission" rule, I cannot imagine a reasonable person being able to produce these in just a few minutes, animated or not. There is no risk of that.

These strike me as sort of shadow-demon cryptid Pokemon creatures. Intriguing.

--Medicine Storm

 

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Chasersgaming
joined 10 years 8 months ago
Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 11:04
Chasersgaming's picture

Animations are nice, but you don't have to have them, someone from the community could create animations if they wanted and maybe share them. But theses are great as they are! :)

Text adventure:

As you attempt to leave the cave a mysterious creature appears from nowhere. His dragon like wings stretched across the entrance, blocking your exit. He howls and you feel his windswsept breath upon your face whilst gazing at his long teeth and drooling mouth. As you look down you notice the creature is holding something betwwen his talons.

Fight (F) of Run (R) ????

Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis | 

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 15:37

thanks friends :)

made 3 more animals

and two more plants

this time around i tried to stick to 32 by 32 for the animals, im not sure about the results. critique is welcome :)

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bzt
joined 3 years 11 months ago
Sunday, April 17, 2022 - 16:09
bzt's picture

Nice! I like them!

@gaymoo: "what do you think i could do to improve?"

How about adding some gradients? Something like the characters 176 - 178 in the old Latin 1 ASCII table? It would be great to use those for shadows to add some "depth", maybe? Or to represent different materials like in this submission?

Cheers,
bzt

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Wednesday, April 20, 2022 - 22:57

thanks BZT :)

i think i might try making tiles in that style, but for now i wnat to keep the little guys mostly textureless

made a few more

unortunely i think these ones turned out too unreadable

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 1 month ago
Thursday, April 21, 2022 - 03:55
Ragnar Random's picture

i like em!

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Thursday, April 21, 2022 - 18:16

thanks ;)

made a few more

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 1 month ago
Friday, April 22, 2022 - 12:04
Ragnar Random's picture

are you gonna put them in a submission?

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Friday, April 22, 2022 - 19:36

just submitted the animal sprites

 

edit made a few more and managed to shrink all of the random sized ones

made six more. do you notice bad habits forming, stuff to avoid?

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 1 month ago
Saturday, April 30, 2022 - 03:51
Ragnar Random's picture

not really. they all read pretty well and have the fun vibe. keep it up!

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astro11
joined 3 years 6 months ago
Saturday, April 30, 2022 - 04:16

Wow, I love these!

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Saturday, April 30, 2022 - 12:46

thanks friends, here is a look at the process. the sketch is made with the krita pixel brush set to 5 pixels wide and with pressure sensitivity for width enabled. once a basic shape is made i use the standard pixel brush

 

i feel like my sprites lose a lot when moving from the sketch stage to the finished form

anyway here is the current second collection

does submitting the sprites as a single sheet make the submission less useful? also is it better to post them with a white background or a transparent one?

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 1 month ago
Sunday, May 1, 2022 - 05:55
Ragnar Random's picture

submitting the sprites as a single sheet makes them more useful in my opinion

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Sunday, May 1, 2022 - 20:37

what i meant is if i should cut them up and zip them up? and if so should they be with white background or transperent?

 

like this

 

or like this

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Ragnar Random
joined 4 years 1 month ago
Monday, May 2, 2022 - 02:48
Ragnar Random's picture

yeah i knew what you meant, that was what i meant too! they are better as a sprite sheet than cut up and zipped.

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bzt
joined 3 years 11 months ago
Monday, May 2, 2022 - 08:34
bzt's picture

@gaymoo: "should they be with white background or transperent?"

I'm afraid that latter is not possible for monochrome sprites. You see, monochrome uses 1 bit per pixel, already used to encode black and white, so there's no place to store transparency.

The best you can do is to provide a mask layer too. So you should have two sprite sheets:

  1. "color" layer: 0 black, 1 white
  2. mask layer: 0 use background (transparent), 1 use foreground (a color from the 1st layer)

Here's an example mask in attachment.

Cheers,
bzt

Attachments: 
Preview
bw_transparent.png bw_transparent.png 4.8 Kb [0 download(s)]
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MedicineStorm
joined 12 years 9 months ago
Monday, May 2, 2022 - 09:10
MedicineStorm's picture

@bzt, please don't say stuff like "not possible" when it is not only possible, but easy. Is it possible to have the file saved as monochrome palette? no, probably not, but that isn't what Gaymoo was asking, nor are the files currently stored as an actual monochrome palette anyway. The sprites themselves are still monochrome even if the file's palette wouldn't be. An indexed palette with 1-bit transparency works just fine. The attached is less than half the file size of the original. If gaymoo mentions an interest in the intricacies of marginal gains in storage space and load times of overly-complicated image handling in game engines, then we can discuss more, but otherwise that kind of stuff is off-topic on this thread.

@Gaymoo: eh, for almost any other color set, it may be more useful to have a transparent background, but for black and white assets like these? It is trivial to just select all white (or black?) pixels and convert to transparent, so I would say nah, no need to submit a transparent version. The developer who wants to use it can do that if they need it. It certainly doesn't make it less useful if you choose to do so, though. More variety of useful forms is always better than less. :)

--Medicine Storm

 

Attachments: 
Preview
xtvegkp-1-bit-transparent.png xtvegkp-1-bit-transparent.png 2.6 Kb [1 download(s)]
Preview
xtvegkp-1-bit-transparent-1.png xtvegkp-1-bit-transparent-1.png 7.5 Kb [1 download(s)]
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bzt
joined 3 years 11 months ago
Monday, May 2, 2022 - 12:20
bzt's picture

@MedicineStorm: "please don't say stuff like "not possible""

Well, technically speaking it isn't possible, simply because monochrome has only one bit per pixel (0=black, 1=white). But...

"nor are the files currently stored as an actual monochrome palette anyway"

...is true, these images aren't technically monochrome, you're right about that.

I think the question is, why are these sprites created monochrome in the first place? Was the intent to allow them to be displayed on a monochrome screen/gameconsole/etc.? If so, then monochrome format is necessary (and transparency needs a mask). However if the intent was just to mimic monochrome, then a palette format is acceptable (0=black, 1=white, 2=transparent), but then already more colors are available, so why the black and white restriction?

So @gaymoo, it's up to you: do you want these to be actually monochrome, or is it enough for you if they just look like monochrome? It's a decision only you can make.

Cheers,
bzt

P.S: it is hard to find any resources on monochrome these days, but I've found this about the Windows cursor (which is a truly monochrome icon):

In the way you asked, no. Simply because an Icon is actually two bitmaps: an image (defines the color of the pixels) and a mask (defines which pixels have to be painted and which not, and hence be transparent).

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gaymoo
joined 3 years 1 month ago
Monday, May 2, 2022 - 16:08

i thought by limiting myself to just the sillohuete i would be able to come up with more readable designs. then somewhere along the way i chickened out and added faces

edit

just uploaded the second collection. pack now has 50 critters

also got started on the third collection

lookin at them now i fear my designs might start becoming redundant. hopefully carefully referencing real animals will lessen the problem

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