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[kevglass]

Hey all,

I've written quite a few games in the past but I've always had to beg, borrow (never steal ) art for them. I thought it was about time I learnt enough to be able to produce my own art. My programmer art has always been pretty bad but I'm trying really hard to get good enough now. With a view to that I've been producing sprites for my potential next project, Crusaders of Yore. I was hoping for some feedback (is this the right place to post this?) from the experienced artists around here

Here's what I've got so far, animations are walk, attack and intermittent idle (will played now again just to give motion).


























You can play the prototype if that helps for background, it's a turn based roguelike side scrolling thingy..

Flash: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1668516/shots/Crusader/as3/index.html
HTML5: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1668516/shots/Crusader/www/index.html

It's a bit bugged here and there. Press I for inventory.

Feedback and suggestions appreciated,

Cheers,

Kev

[Siro]

I'm no experienced artist but I want to let you know that I like it.

[xrabohrok]

That is a lot better than you are giving yourself credit for, you've managed to fit a lot of style into 96 squared pixels.  Keep it up!

[Daid]

Another programmer looking into pixel art here.

So, let me say, you're starting off very good! The art looks really good. But the walking animations look... awkward. Cannot really nail it, the first one has the shield that stays at the same location which looks unnatural, and the feet only move up and down. It looks more like he is dancing than walking.

[C.D Buckmaster]

Looks pretty good, although I think Daid is right about the walking animations, they probably need more horizontal movement.

[iffi]

Yeah, it looks like they're stepping in place (or dancing, as Daid said). The feet need to actually move back and forth if they're going to look more natural, like what you did in the last one (the dog's walking animation looks more natural than the others' IMO). Other than that it looks a lot better than you say, certainly better than anything I've done.

[kevglass]

Thanks for the feedback folks, very nice. I agree with the feet, I'll look to update them all with an extra pixel of horizontal motion asap. I've just added one more to the collection, a dark mage. Kudos to artists everywhere - this is really hard work.



Cheers,

Kev

[Theophilus]

i'm not good at art so take this with discretion


but the bat flapping animation... i would keep the body in one place and try to make the wings look more flappy. right now it kind of looks like bat-pullups. which is cool, i guess.

[CEDE]

Your sprites look good and I really enjoyed the game (I tried the HTML5 version).

Also I am not sure about the comment to change the bat. Your sprite seems to follow what there movements do in nature, so changing it would be for aesthetic reasons.

[kevglass]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, the bat flapping was an intentional decision. I felt the flat down would cause lift (such an engineer) hence the bat should move up a bit - I'll try it out the other way too.

Here's the last few - probably should get to coding now:









Feedback appreciated as always!

Cheers,

Kev

[Daid]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, the bat flapping was an intentional decision. I felt the flat down would cause lift (such an engineer) hence the bat should move up a bit - I'll try it out the other way too.

Actually, the flapping causes trust, and the wing shape causes lift (engineer with an airplane hobby)


This is your best walking animation so far. (for a sprite with feet)
I think

Still looks like dancing.

[poe]

I'm interested as to why the guy with the chest is shaking his head no, mimics?

[Kingel]

You're off to a good start. A few things I'd recommend:

Working against a neutral background is a good idea. This prevents the background color from influencing the choice of colors in the sprite. An almost gray blue tone will look gray against a more saturated blue, which means that you might end up with more blue in the sprites than intended.

I think more contrast would be nice to make the sprites pop out a little more. Desaturating the darker colors is also a good idea. Less saturation overall also means that it's easier to draw attention to certain elements by saving the saturated colors for things you wish to emphasize. I'd also recommend limiting yourself to only a handful of colors per sprite. This makes the palette more manageable and the sprites easier to edit.

Something you can do for a bit more variation in the sprites is to vary the hue of the colors as you go from light to dark. I tend to go with yellow tints for the highlights (sunlight) and blue tints for the shadows (light reflected from the sky), but you can vary this to match the lighting in the environment (although using complementary colors is probably a good idea). You can also try to reuse colors from other sprites to add slight hue variations that way.

Here's an edit:



Hope that's useful.

[kevglass]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

The guy with the box is actually a merchant that will sell your stuff in the dungeon. He's looking around rather than shaking his head, I guess that animation is running a bit quick.

@Arachne - thanks so much for those tips, really really cool. I'll try applying then asap!

I'm going to go and start a devlog I think.

Thanks again so much folks!

Cheers,

Kev

[kevglass]

Hmm, just tried out the lighting using the sprites above as a basis, problem is when they're blown up 3x3 per pixel the lighting seems to become noisy.

Cheers,

Kev

[Kevin]

I think that you can address that by emphasizing shadow and de-emphasizing highlights just a tiny bit. I did an edit based on Arachne's to show what I mean:


They look pretty similar at x1 zoom (if anything, mine is a bit less readable), but at higher levels, the shadows 'pop' a bit more, and the harshness of the highlights is reduced.

I agree 100% with everything Arachne mentioned. I'd say proper contrast, hue variation and the use of a neutral canvas are, like, the three big rules for making pretty pixels.

[kevglass]

I played with some shading based on your feedback. I found the yellow tones a bit garish and with the lack of light source it looked odd. So I've softened it all down:




Any better?

Cheers,

Kev

[bftd]

some of these (especially the orc and the robed sorcerer) remind me of Warcraft I in a very sweet way.



(now that i brought that up, somebody really needs to make a game capturing that aesthetic)