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[Yama!]

Hello.  I'm Yama, and I am working on a 2D fighter based on Yume Nikki, a semi-obscure Japanese surreal horror/adventure title.  The project has been sailing along at a reasonable pace (the work thus far has mostly been cementing of the game's overall design), but I require an artist to go any further as my only real skills are designing and programming in MUGEN (the engine I'm using to make this).

Sprites are going to be in a chibi-ish style, although I'm not really looking for cute.  I'd like the sprite style to be similar to the sprites from the Touhou Hisoutensoku game. (Ex. http://www.spriters-resource.com/pc_computer/touhou123/sheet/29064)  However, feel free to put your own spin on it; just keep it somewhat similar.

The job will necessitate a lot of work, so I'm creating multiple art positions: character sprite artist (the person or persons doing the character sprites), special effects artist (the person or persons working on effects such as fire effects on fire attacks, for example), a BG artist (the person or persons working on menu and stage backgrounds) and a miscellaneous artist (the person or persons who work on things like the in-battle HUD and menu items).  If you like, you can claim more than one position.

Payment will go on a "name your price" basis.  Since this will be a difficult job, I do not want to seem as if I am offering too much or too little, so I leave it up to you.  Please don't go too overboard, though.

If you would like more information about the project or have any questions, feel free to ask me!  I would be more than happy to answer and all questions.

Thank you for your time.

[Farfin]

No bg artist?

[Yama!]

Oops, I forgot to add that up there.  Thank you for pointing it out.  I'll just edit that in now.

[copernicus]

I've screwed around in MUGEN for years.  MUGEN nowadays can run in multiple resolutions, so what resolution was your game going to run in?  1080P would require rather different graphics than 320x240.  The only 100% original art I've done for MUGEN is HUD/menus, but I have done a bit of sprite editing.  As for as the menus/HUD, is your game running in wide screen or standard?

[Yama!]

It's going to be 320x240.  1080p would be great because I could have beautiful HD graphics, but I think shooting for that would be pushing it a little too far, and this project is already pretty loaded with things that need doing.  And since it's 320x240, standard would probably be best.  Wide screen with that resolution would be a bit strange.

If you can do menu/HUD stuff, that'd be really good, actually.  I don't have anyone working on that right now.  If you're interested, post an example of your previous work with menu and HUD stuff so I can see if you've got what it takes.

[i wanna be the guy]

Sounds pretty interesting, I'll drop you a PM in a bit here

[copernicus]

Here is the screenpack I use in MUGEN.  It's actually a 720 screenpack.  It was the first one I made because most MUGEN 1.0 stuff is in widescreen and I wanted something that was standard.




The screenpack is purely functional.  I went with smaller bars because I wanted to enjoy all the backgrounds I use.

Fighting games have various screenpacks, so what were you looking for as far as design?  How much of the screen do you want the bars to cover?  How large are the characters going to be on the screen, 1/3 height, 1/2 height, 2/3 height?  You said Chibi, but how many heads tall are the characters supposed to be: 2, 3, 4?

[Yama!]

Actually, I'm surprised that the low-res sprites look nice with widescreen.  I may just use widescreen if it looks like that.

But anyway, I'm going to be changing the style around; I apologize for not editing the post, but my decision was fairly recent.  It's not exactly going to be chibi, but it'll be probably 1/3 of the screen, bordering on 1/2, using your measurements.

Here's a poorly done paint mock up of what I want the general shape of the HUD to be: (http://oi56.tinypic.com/vi1bc.jpg)

For the aesthetic design, I have another picture.  (http://uboachan.net/yn/src/1309688731985.jpg)

See that border around the moonrunes at the very top where it says Yume Nikki?  That's essentially how I'd like the lifebars to look, except with the shapes in my mock-up.  The bottom bars should have the thinner looking border directly below the cat heads in the aesthetic design picture.

And finally, one last picture: (http://uboachan.net/fg/src/1293334957778.jpg)

The super meter circles should be the eyeball that appears to the left, directly below the bird thing's lifebar.  The eye will be open when that point of super meter is available, and closed when it isn't.

Sorry for the huge post, but I'm very specific about the design because I want to pay as much tribute as I can to the original game.  I did not include any details about other menu things or the character select, but if you would like, I can draw up a mock version and detail what should be going there too.  That is, assuming that you're on the team and you actually want to do this, ha ha ha.

[copernicus]

In MUGEN the characters and backgrounds can be for any resolution (the engine will scale them to the game's resolution) but the screenpack has to be at the game resolution.  You could mix 240 and 720 content together and it should display everything correctly.  Mugen uses motifs, so you could make both a wide and standard screenpack in separate motifs and the player could just switch it to the one they want to use by editing the mugen.cfg file.  You could even make motifs for different resolutions, if you wanted.

I'm currently unemployed, so I am interested in helping if I can make something you'd be willing to pay for.  If not I could at least make placeholder graphics to give the professionals a better idea of what you want.  Just to get a working prototype of your game up and running, etc.

[Yama!]

If you want the position, I would like to see an example of what you can do with the design.  For example, perhaps you could show me a single part of the lifebar or something?  I would say yes and hire you on the spot since no one else has offered to do lifebars/screenpack art, but at the same time I want to ensure that you can do what I need you to do.

Seeing what you can do in those screenshots, I'm certain that you could at least do some placeholders if your art wasn't good enough to pass for the final version.

[copernicus]

I made a 720 lifebar test.  Your design had round and diagonal lines, so I had to interpret the screenshot you indicated.



If you want the beads to be square, or you want older looking pixel art, let me know.  Also, the yume nikki page had the large blocks for corners, which I attempted to incorporate, but if you don't think it works let me know.

[Yama!]

Looks pretty good, especially for the all over the place instructions that I gave.  Sorry about that, ha ha ha.  Anyway, I like what what's going on here, but there are few things that need a little touching up.

The beads should be square, and I was thinking that rather than have them all bunched up together, you could put a small separating section between them that is similarly colored to the blocks.  Since Yume Nikki has a definitively retro art style (at least I feel that way) I think older looking sprite art would work better.

The large block corners look nice, especially up at the character name, and I think that they should be kept that way.  The blocks at the ends near the character portraits feel...how shall I say it...loose.  I think it may be nice to move them in a slight bit.

All in all, excellent work on this!  I must say, I'm pretty excited to see a physical product relating to the project.  With some slight touching up, it'll become an excellent placeholder.  Thank you very much for helping out!

[copernicus]

Which way would you like the portrait block moved?  Left?  Right?  And for future reference: in what format would like things for your end?  Do you want the raw sprties, an sff file, do you want an edited mugen motif, etc.

[Yama!]

The portrait block should be moved to the right, and raw sprites would be best so that I can get them revised easier.

[copernicus]

Here is a new version that is more blocky:



Should we keep this discussion going in this thread or is there somewhere else that would be more appropriate?

[Yama!]

It doesn't really matter to me.  If you'd like, we can move this to PMs.

About the lifebars, they look pretty good.  I think that the sepatators between the blocks should be small bars rather than balls, though.  To me, they look a little too spaced out.  And I'm thinking that circles should be kept for the portrait circles, since it looked better with circles for the portrait.

[Miguelito]

Umm, if I may have a word, this would indeed be a good time to move to PMs/mails.

It's just talking details about the graphics.

No offense though.