La-Quien Tales

So... maybe, after all these years... maybe, I'll finally do what I came to this community for. Bring my story into a game. This is just a tentative experiment to make a sprite of Valis. I'm still limited by my art skills, not just in quality, but production time. Still, I don't think it's all that terrible. Mostly hand drawn, but I used Captain America & The Avengers Hawkeye sprite for scale and proportions. So yeah, it's tiny, but that's intentional.

valis-sprite-ip_0.png

He doesn't have his pauldron, sword, or coat here because those will be separate pieces bound in game. This will allow players to select one of three looks (Surcoat, Tunic, or no outerwear at all). More importantly, it will actually speed things up when I work on his brother since I won't have to redraw as much.

I'll post the tunic and coat later on, have to turn my attention to homework for now.

1695963988586.png

DC
 
@DCurrent
in the past 2 days i have gone down the animation rabbit-hole trying to find ways to generate art faster
in reguards to making multiple costume options, spriter seems to have very good tools for making optional costumes for sprites with what seems to be a very helpful work-flow... you will need the pro version of the program tho

i also shared this with Danno earlier:

similar to spriter , and the 3d rotating thing seems impressive.

these next links i will post them as code, since i don't want to saturate the reply with a bunch of video boxes:
Code: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDWfroMBrZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzrpmeHcXVI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k043OByAG-4
consistent characters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7_ta3RHijQ
ai animation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPqJUrfKuqs
mocap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGUAe51uAAo
 
16-bit Fighter said:
Good idea to pick up colors from another sprite!
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Thanks, but I'm not sure what you mean. The colors are just for separation purposes. I only used the Hawkeye sprite as a proportional guide. :)

16-bit Fighter said:
But what is your priority? Do you still want to make your Fatal Fury game?
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Underlying priority has always been my original property. That's why I came to the community to begin with. Fatal Fury is a side project.

DC
 
DCurrent said:
Thanks, but I'm not sure what you mean. The colors are just for separation purposes. I only used the Hawkeye sprite as a proportional guide. :)
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My bad, I thought they were the same colors! 😅
Indeed, your sprites have more shades than Hawkeye's. It's maybe a lot of shades in comparison with the little size. Have ever you tried less for this sprite?
 
16-bit Fighter said:
My bad, I thought they were the same colors! 😅
Indeed, your sprites have more shades than Hawkeye's. It's maybe a lot of shades in comparison with the little size. Have ever you tried less for this sprite?
Click to expand...

Not as much as it looks like. As you can see, I still use black outlines, and I only have one more color in the legs than the Hawkeye sprite. Besides, why would I limit myself? Fewer shades doesn't really speed up production any, and we have full 8bit color per sprite (255 colors) compared to the 4bit (15 colors) they had to work with. I'm not going to waste color for no reason, but why not take advantage of the power we have to add better shading and smart palettes?

Just look at what @O Ilusionista has done in his Avengers game. The base sprites look like they lost a fight with Rainbow Dash, but that lets him have an amazing variety of looks per character.

DC
 
Continuing on my earlier post, I completed the sword, pauldron, and sheath. I've also finished up the tunic and surcoats. In game, this gives you three clothing options for Valis. Surcoat is the default, but you can pick a tunic or no outerwear at all. Here's a few samples with smart palette and some in game color choices, blown up to 300%.

Again, this is just a design phase. I may go another way with making his sprites, if I commit to it at all. I'm looking at a couple of different tools, options, and sizes.


valis-sprite-ip-ex-0.pngvalis-sprite-ip-ex-1.pngvalis-sprite-ip-ex-2.pngvalis-sprite-ip-ex-3.png


valis-sprite-ip-ex-4.pngvalis-sprite-ip-ex-5.pngvalis-sprite-ip-ex-6.pngvalis-sprite-ip-ex-7.png

Any feedback is welcome,
DC
 
The clothing option would be such an amazing feature when it comes to characters wearing designs. 🤩 Love the trick like you did with Hanzo's clothing parts from your World Heroes mod.
 
@DCurrent

i do have a bit of a feed back question thing, when it comes to character costumes, would it be detrimental to try and do things like clothing and helmets, armor and such as spawnbinded or binded entities?
(you have a base "naked" character and just spawn hats, armor, etc on top)

i was thinking about it in terms of some benefits beyond making it a bit "easier" to create variants of the same character or creature, like the cloth entitites or armor entities getting damaged, some hats falling off after a few hits and so on....
 
oldyz said:
@DCurrent

i do have a bit of a feed back question thing, when it comes to character costumes, would it be detrimental to try and do things like clothing and helmets, armor and such as spawnbinded or binded entities?
Click to expand...

...How exactly did you think the tunic and surcoat were going to work? That I would draw three sprite sets of everything? Those ARE bound pieces. Like @maxman mentioned, I already showed off this technique live years ago. It's nothing new.

This is one of those things where you have to abstract the results from the technique. There is no technical difference between a bind of any sort. Stacking a head on a body is the same as a flame or motion trail effect. The engine does not care. You could make every last pixel its own model if you wanted to.

The detriment is increased complexity, and that you'll have to rethink how you do shadows or reflections. You just balance that against the value add. In my case, the character has a twin brother who wears different accessories, and all the characters can use different weapons. Plus it's just plain easier for me to draw the outerwear after I draw the body. So I get a net time savings from bounding the clothing parts and weapons. Doing the same with his head or feet would be pointless for me, but if you were doing something like a Ryu and Ken headswap, then it would make sense.

You could even overlay parts with separated R, G, and B channels and alpha blending to get 24bit color, but again, what's the point? Unless your sprite is taken from an HD render, you get no value from it.

DC
 
DCurrent said:
Mostly hand drawn, but I used Captain America & The Avengers Hawkeye sprite for scale and proportions
Click to expand...
Oh, that is nice, I liked the result. I was going to talk about the tricky shading that game uses on some tricky shading style on characters leg (there is a big black area there) but I saw that you had removed already:

1696182742076.png

DCurrent said:
The base sprites look like they lost a fight with Rainbow Dash
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hahahah its the magic of Jhfer's smartpal:

1696182821620.png

I liked the result so far, congrats. About the size, you make make some tests with different resolutions, as we discovered that some unique resolutions can make the sprites to look bigger.
 
As most anyone can tell you, the toughest part of any sprite work are cyclic animations. This is especially true for small images since just one pixel offset is a huge adjustment and it can be hard to make nuanced movements.

This is what I have so far for an idle. Only the lower body is done, I'll add upper animation next. I went through several iterations before I settled on this, and finally ended up filming myself as a rotoscope. It's still not 100% what I'd like, but not a total disaster.

valis-sprite-idle-ex-0.gif

DC
 
The Avengers Size sprite worked better than I thought at first, but no matter how much I tweaked it, the idle cycle just isn't what I envision. mainly because (as mentioned above), when sprites are that small, it's impossible for them to have subtle movements and adjustments.

I'm trying out a SOR2 scale, using a blend of CVS shading, and I like it so far. In fact, I was actually able to remove a few colors and not lose any detail. Still a WIP. I need to finish the sheath, tunic, coat, and in game versions of the new palette before I can try to work up an idle cycle.

For scale comparison, Axel is 183cm and 65kg. Valis is 182cm, 90kg. So basically the same size and body type, except Valis doesn't skip core day. :p

1696999956461.png

DC
 
Idle cycle, first draft. Only body movement so far. It's going to be a huge pain getting the upper body/arms to work without it looking jankey, but I'm giving it a go.

valis-sprite-idle-ex-1.gif

DC
 
maxman said:
That looks nice, DC! Your new sprite style reminds me of Guardian Heroes for the movement.
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Thanks @maxman. I know about Guardian Heroes but never played it, so I'll have to take your word. The closest thing I find as pose reference for Valis's movements is Lustro Furia from Crystal of Kings. Then I use CVS Terry for a shading guide.

Here's the next draft. I'm working on the sword arm. The shading needs a lot of retouches, but it's (sort of) coming together. After that, I'll work on the lead hand, and then see about his unarmed stance. That one should be a lot less awkward to draw.


valis-sprite-idle-ex-2.gifvalis-sprite-idle-ex-2-lg.gif

DC
 
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