Ok, I see I didn't really reply to bluecarrot16 in my last message.
My desire for separate layers in part has to do with layering assets, but also to make it easier for someone else to work on the animations more later. I think of it as having the "source" to the final sprite.
Having tools to help automate things like spritesheet creation or taking things like hats and hair and putting them in the correct position is extremely important, but personally I sometimes find these to be unreasonably restrictive. A certain piece of headgear might be labelled "female only" and then I can't put it on a male sheet in the generator just to get an idea for how it looks and make modifications afterwards, so I find that I tend to just use the Gimp anyway.
@BenCreating: good point about separate layers for new assets may be more of a hassle for creating new assets (or adopting existing ones). I was thinking that it would be ideal if it wasn't available just for base assets, but also for things like clothing, but perhaps that's false. Let me elaborate though.
What I personally look for is modularity and adaptability. I'm not a pixel artist, and modifying art for my specific purpose is easier if it's modular. Example: I made a "carry" animation from the walk cycle but with the arms raised. That was a bit of a hassle because I had to cut out the existing arms first and figure out what the torso should look like with the arms removed. It would have been easier if the arms had been on a separate layer to begin with. Having the arms separated also makes it easier to quickly make a mockup for a new animation, because you can just cut up the arms and move pixels around without worrying about fixing up the torso. Obviously, if all animations anyone could ever want were available by a proper pixel artist, that's not an issue, but realistically that's not going to happen.
I guess what I'd really like is something like an "open source library of pixel art", which to me means having not just the final sprites, but also to different layers the original author (may have) used to build the final sprite so that I can build on their work more easily.
From that perspective, I guess it's not so important to have arms on separate layers for each and every asset, as long as I have an easy way to tell the computer how to stack different layers and to tell it what pixels belong to the arms and which don't, so that I can layer a weapon (say) in front of the torso but behind the arm. I want to worry about what pixels go into my weapon, not what pixels I need to cut out in every frame to make it show up properly.
So for me personally, having arms, legs, heads and torsos available as separate layers from the base sprite would be really useful. Having it for cloting I would find nice, but optional and is probably impractical at best.
What I really like, and hadn't appreciated that I missed until now, are the coloured guides ElizaWy has on her new animations. Having those, perhaps in addition to some really basic clothing options (basic single colour ramp shading, no fluff or fine details) that show how things should animate would really help with making tweaks or additions.
Now, bluecarrot16 makes a good point about existing assets and new animations. It'd be a shame if it all had to be redone (probably not going to happen), but at the same time there are no assets available for things like the jump and running animations (this one: https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-runcycle-and-diagonal-walkcycle) partly because they're not part of the standard set and no one seems interested enough to add those in. So we're now getting to the situation where the extra animations are not useful because there are no clothing assets that work with them (and adjusting existing assets is a bit of a pain) and there's little point in making clothing assets work with those animations, because they're not standard or used as much.
One more thought to finish this novel off on. It's true that there can be multiple LPC characters that will work with the LPC tiles (in fact, there already are: https://opengameart.org/content/one-more-lpc-alternate-character; I thought there was more from this set, but perhaps not) and as such there is no reason not to have a "1.0" and "2.0" version. I will also say that having a set of more basic animations for enemy/NPC sprites and a more richly animated set of animations intended for player characters is not unreasonable. On the other hand, dividing resources (available artist time) over multiple sets rather than having a single good set is not good, and it's probably better to have one set with better variety. I guess I'm not sure what I think about that.
I have a few LPC character stuff that I've been working on in various stages of completion.
I merged the "unified spritesheet" with some of the extra animations, specifically the existing "grab" animation, the "run" animation and the "jump" animation. I've done some work on fitting shoes/trousers/shirts on those too. I'm not much of a pixel artist, let alone an animator, so it takes me a while to get something that looks ok, but I can certainly post those as a starting point to proceed from (they're not fully done; I keep thinking I'll have more time to work on it but things keep coming up). I also have a "carry" and "push" animation based on the normal walk cycle. The "grab" animation can work as a transition to the "push" animation.
I guess the things that I would like to see from the LPC bases fall in two categories: additional animations, and additional flexibility so it's easier to derive new sprites from them.
Number one on my wish-list and what I would really like to see and what I think would vastly improve the usability of the whole collection are separated layers for the different animations: head, torso, front arm, back arm, front leg, back leg. By ordering layers properly it becomes much easier to build up a complicated sprite. No need for special cut-outs for weapons, just layer them properly. No headache where the cutout of one item of clothing doesn't play nice with another item and you need to fiddle with the order (I can't remember what I had that issue with; might have been capes but it was a couple of years ago). It'll also be easier to make small changes to the animation, or build new animations by starting with moving body parts around.
This isn't particularly hard to do (I've done part of it anyway), but it is tedious.
What I would like next is a clearly documented set of instructions. Things like: what frame does the head bob on? How many pixels? What is the intended framerate for each animation? What frames are identical between different frames? What frames are simply mirrored? What things are there to look out for? Right now that is scattered in many different places.
Third on my wish-list is a more universal approach between the different bases. I think male and female heads are different? It's really silly to have a male and female version for the same headgear, even though it's easy to automate it. I find hands and feet similarly annoying. Is it possible to get at least hands and feet the same across the different bases, at least barbarian/male/female/pregnant/skeleton so they can all use the same weapon and footwear sprites?
Then we get to additional animations.
I like the idea of "lumberjack"/"chop", "farming", "smithing" animations (I guess a sideways and a forward two-handed smash as with an axe or a hammer could cover the first and the latter). Improved running/jumping animations would be neat as well.
Obviously I have a use for grab/push/carry animations, but I could also use a "pull" animation. The grab animation can serve as a transition to the "push" and "carry" animations, although the latter is a bit jerky. I use the third or fourth frame of the "cast" animation as a sleep "animation" (it's only a single frame, so...) There's probably something I forgot to add.
Oh, yes: swimming and sitting (mentioned above).
There are a few sets of "facial expressions" around that let you change the nose or mouth, or emote the eyes. I find none of them very convenient and satisfactory to use.
It would be neat of some of the more elaborate hair pieces were less static and things like braids actually swayed. Oh, and I've wanted a comically huge and long beard for ages (I suppose "Santa Claus beard" would be an adequate description, although "Panoramix" is a better one for those who know what I mean).
Finally: it's cool that work is already being done to extend the child bases to a full set of animations. I always figured they could be used to make dwarves as well, but I only ever got to the one frame as a proof-of-concept to myself.
Anyway, that's a long wall of text. Would it be convenient to organise what everyone is suggesting/working on and see who is willing to do what and in which order? I don't have a budget to spend on commissioning things, and as mentioned I'm not much of an artist and have limited time, but I'm willing to help as I can.
Vague plans, certainly. I'm not much of a pixelartist though and between work, family and other interests, not to mention actually working on my game, time is limited. :(
Revisiting the Wartotaur is high on my wish list though. After that... not sure. Are there any particular ones I might have missed?
I know the palette swaps are easy to replicate (and arguably should be done on the fly in the game rather than in an image editor), but it's convenient to not have to do them - especially since not all ramps in the LPC palette swap well.
It would be really good to try to sanitise the LPC palette, but getting all the artwork modified for it would be a nightmare.
I tend to use the attached one, which is the one from the LPC style guide with the yellow ramp at the bottom added by me (I think this was used in some gold assets that I wanted to use that couldn't convert properly without it). Having said that, the frog-man I just uploaded uses a different palette because the colour ramp in the base artwork that I used to derive the other frames from doesn't map to any of the LPC ramps.
The palette suffers from having several nearly-but-not-quite the same colours, too many browns, inconsistent blues and no nice vibrant reds. I've been thinking of trying to fix it, but with my skill level, that'd take me a good while.
I suppose the first order of business would be to figure out what colours are used by all the different LPC assets, and then collapsing nearly identical colours into single colours. That can all be done automatically with a program, but sorting the resulting colours into sensible ramps is a different story. I never found a way to make that work properly.
Having done all that, the best that could be done is to recommend that people use the "fixed" palette. Generators could optionally auto-convert, of course.
Anyway, that's a topic for a different discussion thread, perhaps.
Ok, I fixed the stray pixels you pointed out, and replaced the leg animation for the sideward frames with your version (the original animation just reused the frames). I wasn't sure at first if that works with how frogs move in reality, but after some consideration, I do like it more. It's not as though this is a real frog either. :)
I also added a variation that has a crown on its head. Now to add a version that doesn't carry a weapon.
Ok, so how much work would it be to make a howling animation for these guys?
I was looking at the howling animation in the original wolf sprite to judge how hard it would be to adapt, and the more I looked at it, the more I realised that I don't really like the howling animation. I can't really put my finger on why though.
@ElizaWy: what are the odds! I was going through LPC stuff a couple of weeks ago when I came across some of your stuff (again). There was a fairly abrupt stop to the assets you posted and I remembered you had mentioned being ill at the time and clicked through to your blog link to see whether you had posted any updates there and found the link was dead. I had wondered what had happened (I had a good friend who was chronically and progressively ill pretty much since I met her and whenever I come across a story of someone who is ill, I'm curious to know if they're doing better). I know, random person on the internet saying stuff, but I'm glad to hear you're actually recovering (somewhat)!
I get what you're saying about the standardisation (or lack thereof) in the LPC palette. It's something we all struggle with. I'd be interested to see what you came up with, if and when you're up to posting that - but your health has to come first, so no pressure.
Ok, I see I didn't really reply to bluecarrot16 in my last message.
My desire for separate layers in part has to do with layering assets, but also to make it easier for someone else to work on the animations more later. I think of it as having the "source" to the final sprite.
Having tools to help automate things like spritesheet creation or taking things like hats and hair and putting them in the correct position is extremely important, but personally I sometimes find these to be unreasonably restrictive. A certain piece of headgear might be labelled "female only" and then I can't put it on a male sheet in the generator just to get an idea for how it looks and make modifications afterwards, so I find that I tend to just use the Gimp anyway.
@BenCreating: good point about separate layers for new assets may be more of a hassle for creating new assets (or adopting existing ones). I was thinking that it would be ideal if it wasn't available just for base assets, but also for things like clothing, but perhaps that's false. Let me elaborate though.
What I personally look for is modularity and adaptability. I'm not a pixel artist, and modifying art for my specific purpose is easier if it's modular. Example: I made a "carry" animation from the walk cycle but with the arms raised. That was a bit of a hassle because I had to cut out the existing arms first and figure out what the torso should look like with the arms removed. It would have been easier if the arms had been on a separate layer to begin with. Having the arms separated also makes it easier to quickly make a mockup for a new animation, because you can just cut up the arms and move pixels around without worrying about fixing up the torso. Obviously, if all animations anyone could ever want were available by a proper pixel artist, that's not an issue, but realistically that's not going to happen.
I guess what I'd really like is something like an "open source library of pixel art", which to me means having not just the final sprites, but also to different layers the original author (may have) used to build the final sprite so that I can build on their work more easily.
From that perspective, I guess it's not so important to have arms on separate layers for each and every asset, as long as I have an easy way to tell the computer how to stack different layers and to tell it what pixels belong to the arms and which don't, so that I can layer a weapon (say) in front of the torso but behind the arm. I want to worry about what pixels go into my weapon, not what pixels I need to cut out in every frame to make it show up properly.
So for me personally, having arms, legs, heads and torsos available as separate layers from the base sprite would be really useful. Having it for cloting I would find nice, but optional and is probably impractical at best.
What I really like, and hadn't appreciated that I missed until now, are the coloured guides ElizaWy has on her new animations. Having those, perhaps in addition to some really basic clothing options (basic single colour ramp shading, no fluff or fine details) that show how things should animate would really help with making tweaks or additions.
Now, bluecarrot16 makes a good point about existing assets and new animations. It'd be a shame if it all had to be redone (probably not going to happen), but at the same time there are no assets available for things like the jump and running animations (this one: https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-runcycle-and-diagonal-walkcycle) partly because they're not part of the standard set and no one seems interested enough to add those in. So we're now getting to the situation where the extra animations are not useful because there are no clothing assets that work with them (and adjusting existing assets is a bit of a pain) and there's little point in making clothing assets work with those animations, because they're not standard or used as much.
One more thought to finish this novel off on. It's true that there can be multiple LPC characters that will work with the LPC tiles (in fact, there already are: https://opengameart.org/content/one-more-lpc-alternate-character; I thought there was more from this set, but perhaps not) and as such there is no reason not to have a "1.0" and "2.0" version. I will also say that having a set of more basic animations for enemy/NPC sprites and a more richly animated set of animations intended for player characters is not unreasonable. On the other hand, dividing resources (available artist time) over multiple sets rather than having a single good set is not good, and it's probably better to have one set with better variety. I guess I'm not sure what I think about that.
I have a few LPC character stuff that I've been working on in various stages of completion.
I merged the "unified spritesheet" with some of the extra animations, specifically the existing "grab" animation, the "run" animation and the "jump" animation. I've done some work on fitting shoes/trousers/shirts on those too. I'm not much of a pixel artist, let alone an animator, so it takes me a while to get something that looks ok, but I can certainly post those as a starting point to proceed from (they're not fully done; I keep thinking I'll have more time to work on it but things keep coming up). I also have a "carry" and "push" animation based on the normal walk cycle. The "grab" animation can work as a transition to the "push" animation.
I guess the things that I would like to see from the LPC bases fall in two categories: additional animations, and additional flexibility so it's easier to derive new sprites from them.
Number one on my wish-list and what I would really like to see and what I think would vastly improve the usability of the whole collection are separated layers for the different animations: head, torso, front arm, back arm, front leg, back leg. By ordering layers properly it becomes much easier to build up a complicated sprite. No need for special cut-outs for weapons, just layer them properly. No headache where the cutout of one item of clothing doesn't play nice with another item and you need to fiddle with the order (I can't remember what I had that issue with; might have been capes but it was a couple of years ago). It'll also be easier to make small changes to the animation, or build new animations by starting with moving body parts around.
This isn't particularly hard to do (I've done part of it anyway), but it is tedious.
What I would like next is a clearly documented set of instructions. Things like: what frame does the head bob on? How many pixels? What is the intended framerate for each animation? What frames are identical between different frames? What frames are simply mirrored? What things are there to look out for? Right now that is scattered in many different places.
Third on my wish-list is a more universal approach between the different bases. I think male and female heads are different? It's really silly to have a male and female version for the same headgear, even though it's easy to automate it. I find hands and feet similarly annoying. Is it possible to get at least hands and feet the same across the different bases, at least barbarian/male/female/pregnant/skeleton so they can all use the same weapon and footwear sprites?
Then we get to additional animations.
I like the idea of "lumberjack"/"chop", "farming", "smithing" animations (I guess a sideways and a forward two-handed smash as with an axe or a hammer could cover the first and the latter). Improved running/jumping animations would be neat as well.
Obviously I have a use for grab/push/carry animations, but I could also use a "pull" animation. The grab animation can serve as a transition to the "push" and "carry" animations, although the latter is a bit jerky. I use the third or fourth frame of the "cast" animation as a sleep "animation" (it's only a single frame, so...) There's probably something I forgot to add.
Oh, yes: swimming and sitting (mentioned above).
There are a few sets of "facial expressions" around that let you change the nose or mouth, or emote the eyes. I find none of them very convenient and satisfactory to use.
It would be neat of some of the more elaborate hair pieces were less static and things like braids actually swayed. Oh, and I've wanted a comically huge and long beard for ages (I suppose "Santa Claus beard" would be an adequate description, although "Panoramix" is a better one for those who know what I mean).
Finally: it's cool that work is already being done to extend the child bases to a full set of animations. I always figured they could be used to make dwarves as well, but I only ever got to the one frame as a proof-of-concept to myself.
Anyway, that's a long wall of text. Would it be convenient to organise what everyone is suggesting/working on and see who is willing to do what and in which order? I don't have a budget to spend on commissioning things, and as mentioned I'm not much of an artist and have limited time, but I'm willing to help as I can.
Vague plans, certainly. I'm not much of a pixelartist though and between work, family and other interests, not to mention actually working on my game, time is limited. :(
Revisiting the Wartotaur is high on my wish list though. After that... not sure. Are there any particular ones I might have missed?
I know the palette swaps are easy to replicate (and arguably should be done on the fly in the game rather than in an image editor), but it's convenient to not have to do them - especially since not all ramps in the LPC palette swap well.
It would be really good to try to sanitise the LPC palette, but getting all the artwork modified for it would be a nightmare.
I tend to use the attached one, which is the one from the LPC style guide with the yellow ramp at the bottom added by me (I think this was used in some gold assets that I wanted to use that couldn't convert properly without it). Having said that, the frog-man I just uploaded uses a different palette because the colour ramp in the base artwork that I used to derive the other frames from doesn't map to any of the LPC ramps.
The palette suffers from having several nearly-but-not-quite the same colours, too many browns, inconsistent blues and no nice vibrant reds. I've been thinking of trying to fix it, but with my skill level, that'd take me a good while.
I suppose the first order of business would be to figure out what colours are used by all the different LPC assets, and then collapsing nearly identical colours into single colours. That can all be done automatically with a program, but sorting the resulting colours into sensible ramps is a different story. I never found a way to make that work properly.
Having done all that, the best that could be done is to recommend that people use the "fixed" palette. Generators could optionally auto-convert, of course.
Anyway, that's a topic for a different discussion thread, perhaps.
That moment where you think "you know, I reckon I'm doing ok for variety"... and then this drops.
Awesome as usual.
Ok, I fixed the stray pixels you pointed out, and replaced the leg animation for the sideward frames with your version (the original animation just reused the frames). I wasn't sure at first if that works with how frogs move in reality, but after some consideration, I do like it more. It's not as though this is a real frog either. :)
I also added a variation that has a crown on its head. Now to add a version that doesn't carry a weapon.
Ok, so how much work would it be to make a howling animation for these guys?
I was looking at the howling animation in the original wolf sprite to judge how hard it would be to adapt, and the more I looked at it, the more I realised that I don't really like the howling animation. I can't really put my finger on why though.
Neat, guess I'm adding werewolves to my game now. ;)
My first thought was that we already had one of these, but I was probably thinking of this one: https://opengameart.org/content/werewolf-lpc , which is not a complete sheet.
@ElizaWy: what are the odds! I was going through LPC stuff a couple of weeks ago when I came across some of your stuff (again). There was a fairly abrupt stop to the assets you posted and I remembered you had mentioned being ill at the time and clicked through to your blog link to see whether you had posted any updates there and found the link was dead. I had wondered what had happened (I had a good friend who was chronically and progressively ill pretty much since I met her and whenever I come across a story of someone who is ill, I'm curious to know if they're doing better). I know, random person on the internet saying stuff, but I'm glad to hear you're actually recovering (somewhat)!
I get what you're saying about the standardisation (or lack thereof) in the LPC palette. It's something we all struggle with. I'd be interested to see what you came up with, if and when you're up to posting that - but your health has to come first, so no pressure.
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