Castle Paradox

[Myroc]

The first character's name is Sir Amlor, a Paladin, followed by Etanus, his good-hearted thief friend.

I would like to hear what you guys (the pros) think of it.
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[Calehay]

I'm no pro, but here's a few attempts at an edit:




They've lost a bit of their Final Fantasy Flair, but I think they touch on a bit of the things I think are the problems with your sprites.

When you're working with sprites this size, you really have to pay attention to how you use black. In my edits, I tried to make the main points in black. You have to suggest things more than draw them in.

Another edit I did was take this eyes up and forward one pixel. This one is arguable, but I think it reads better there.

In my Etanus edit, I made the hair stick out one pixel away from the face. i think if it's all on the same line, it feels strangely flat.

I did edits on the arms furthest away from us, but I don't think they work too well. (It's part of the reason I don't like FF1 sprites that much. It's hard to tell exactly how they wanted the body to be positioned.)

I also have no idea what's on Amlor's head, so I just made it hair. If it's supposed to be a helmet, then palette swaps and rethinking of the shape is a must.

To help with Amlor's armor, I added a few speculars just to show that he was wearing something shiny. I kind of f'ed up the shoulder armor though.

Another major thing I did was move everyone's leg back one pixel. They looked a bit unbalanced before.

But other than that, I think these are a good start.

And next time, when you post from imageshack, use the direct link to image and put it in img tags. This forum has a zoom in function by left clicking the picture, but the way you have the linked now, they send us to imageshack.
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Calehay

[Moogle1]

If you're not planning on making your game NES-ish, increase the number of colors. If you are, you're using too many.

Either way, these look a little too much like FF1's sprites for my tastes...
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Newbie_Power]

Fighter here looks like he's outlined in black, but he's actually not. Those are transparent pixels, because the NES Final Fantasy games had battles that completely took place on black backgrounds.

Examples of very detailed NES sprites.

Note that this site has black outlined sprites. Ignore them. They put those outlines there themselves.

Even within NES limitations, Square was actually good at putting detail, despite such a simple style.

By the way, the limitations the NES sprites (in-battle) are:

- No outlines. The "black outlines" are actually transparent put on a black background. This is even more apparent when you go into FF1's menu and see your characters on blue menu backgrounds.

- 3 colors + transparency for each 8x8 block.

For walkabouts, they *do* use black outlines, but at the loss of color detail. For some 16x16 sprites, they change the palette for different 8x8 blocks to get different colors. IIRC the Thief in FF1 did this, and it's likely many classes in FF3j did this as well.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Myroc]

The thing on Amlor's head his actually his hair. Hes got messy hair, the bright yellow piece is a dip in the hair.

I actually didnt notice that Etanus' hair was on the same line. Great thanks for noticing.

As for the rest, thanks a lot for the editing! That made it pretty much better than what i made.

Edit: I think without the outlines it would look sort of flat, but thanks anyway
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[Newbie_Power]

If you're trying to avoid having an NES replica (thus thinking having no outlines makes things look flat, even on a black background), then why look at NES sprites? Go for SNES style sprites (FF4-5), or look at some of the remakes (NOT the PSP remakes).
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Myroc]

Im not trying to avoid a NES replica persay, im just trying to make a hero sprite that looks atleast half good. I kinda new to sprite art but im pretty proud of what i (and you) have done
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[Myroc]

Well, here we go again. I've made some enemies for the RPG. I figured it would be unneccesary to make a completely new thread for this. (Thread rename anybody)




I bet you are thinking "What the h-ll is that?". Its a formian, basically its a centaur, but with an ant instead of a horse. This does (unlike my heroes) feture shading, so it looks more 3D.

Comments anyone?

PS: No edits
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[Blue Pixel]

the shading on that one is really nice. keep up the good work.
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[Myroc]

I have a queen to the formians also, but its not as pretty as they are (which is a reason to why im not posting it here). Dont know what went wrong really, ill see if i can edit it, and then post it here.
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[Calehay]

Again, I suggest that you take into consideration how you're using black. It's making everything look messy.

Now these are going to completely clash with your Hero Sprites if you truly are trying to do it in an NES style palette. You can't shade one thing and not shade the other or there won't be consistency.

On the topic of shading, I don't think you've clearly defined where the light is coming from. It's a difficult thing to do, but doing it will help everything look much better.

Also, what are with the bands of darker shade on the legs? Find out where the light is hitting the object and start from there.

I suggest reworking the chest area. It looks more as if we are looking at the chest straight on instead of the 3/4 view of everything else.

Only the back right leg actually looks bent. The others don't seem to suggest it.

The ant seems to be holding the sword so highly that his hand is on the blade. I wouldn't suggest that battle techinque.

The last segment of the ant (abdomen) looks horribly misshapen. Considering the perspective, it actually looks disjointed from the body. This is true for most of your linework. I would suggest looking up this tutorial:

http://www.spriteart.com/tutorials/01_lines.html

So, basically, clean up the lines, define a lightsource, then shade it accordingly.
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Calehay

[Myroc]

Actually i have shaded my heroes.
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[Calehay]

[Newbie_Power]

the_dude has incredibly low standards for quality (it annoys me when he praises my work without any explanation.)

Look at the NES sprites again. They have no shading whatsoever, but you can tell what they look like because the "linework" (transparent lines) and color separation define the characters. If you can make that look good, then proper shading will only make it look better.

Right now, your heroes look far too simple. They have no unique silhouettes and their clothing/armor is boring and unimaginative. Even real life medieval armor has a special look to it to spice it up.

Let's look at FF1 Fighter again:



Fighter's defining features are obviously his hair and the upper armor he has. His hair gives Fighter a unique silhouette that your sprites are desperately lacking.



Now here's a sprite that still has no shading whatsoever, but has far more detail than FF1's version of Fighter.

FF3j's Fighter retains a silhouette thanks to his hair and the shoulder pads making him look tougher, but now he has extra features that make him look interesting. Instead of his clothes being big red pieces, his armor now has a triangular ends going over his legs, allowing his legs to be seen, suggesting that his armor is made out of leather. The shoulder pads re-inforce this, as they no longer have highlights, but the white is used to decorate the shoulder pads and give it shape that curves over the arms, making him look much better. Finally, his boots are so much cooler than either of your characters', because they actually have a shape, as well as white parts of the boot for extra detail, showing that his boot is more complex than just a piece of leather.

And this was all done without shading at all.

So what is the point of all of this?

Make sure you get the line art looking good *first*, then shade it for the sake of polishing and defining shape.

We'll worry about shading some other time (which I see some problems with, by the way. You haven't accomplished a 3D look yet.).
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Myroc]