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[Bree]

Thanks for the tips! Here are the Innamorati sprites resized.

30 pixels tall:

20 pixels tall:

And the originals, at a height of 50 pixels:

How do these look, Malec?

[Alec S.]

I think the 30 pixel ones should work.   

[Lynx]

Insert Phoenix Wright animation.  "Objection!  The 20-pixels tall sprites are actually 55 pixels tall!"

[Bree]

Are they really? That's weird- I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I'm using Photobucket as a host; you would think it would retain its original size, but who knows? I just labeled each version by the size Photoshop gave me.

In the meantime, I've got the next character design up. Say hello to Capitano Spavento della Vall'Inferna... or just Il Capitano for short.

I'm currently working on the first sprite version of Il Dottore, so I should have that up soon as well.

[ChevyRay]

Fantastic! The latest is my favorite so far

[aeiowu]

i have an urge to throw these in illustrator and vectorize them for you...

[Inanimate]

I thought the Lovers didn't wear masks?

[Bree]

i have an urge to throw these in illustrator and vectorize them for you...

Why? Not trying to sound rude, I'm just curious.

I thought the Lovers didn't wear masks?

It seems to vary from source to source; some said they traditionally don't, but others, including the theatre class that I was involved with, said otherwise. It's kind of frustrating if you're trying to stay true to the material, but on the other hand you have a lot more possibilities to work with.

Fantastic! The latest is my favorite so far

Me too! Although I bet that whichever one I design next will end up being my new favorite; I tend to do that with my work.

And here's what the sprite version of Il Dottore looks like:

[Lynx]

No idea, I just host my own pictures on my webserver so I never deal with photo hosting services.   The pictures and the game idea are awesome, anyway, I was just curious why you were describing them as 20 pixels high etc.

[aeiowu]

i have an urge to throw these in illustrator and vectorize them for you...

Why? Not trying to sound rude, I'm just curious.

I just think the style of the drawings (not the sprites so much) lends itself to clean, smooth bezier curvey-ness. Lots of flat, solid shapes for shading and the silhouettes are curvy like that too. It'd be fairly easy to vector them and it'd clean up the strokes to a beautiful shine. Plus, sometimes it's satisfying to zombie out with the pen tool...

[FishyBoy]

This is a really awesome concept. Like a roleplaying game that's actually about playing roles,  not all of this combat and grinding nonsense.

[JasonPickering]

you might want to look into Dokapon Journey. its a PS2/Wii/DS game. its a roleplaying game combined with a mario party flair, where everyone is running around fighting monsters and saving cities, but taking turns and rolling dice. It might help out.

I like the art, but had a few questions.
1. is it hotseat multiplayer or online.
2. will you have character A.I.

also will it be set in the real world, or on a stage?

[Bree]

I've heard about Dokapon Journey- mostly that's an insanely fun party game- so I'll definitely check it out. As for the roleplaying... I'm not sure how much stats are going to play out in this. I think we could have some very basic ones (Health, money, etc.), and then use those to indicate what the character's needs are (Pantalone has a slowly draining money meter that somehow depletes his health if he doesn't keep earning cash, maybe?).

Right now, the game is going to be hotseat multiplayer, and will only be playable by humans. The way that we're currently designing the game, it would be nigh-impossible to create an AI program that was convincing enough to simulate a real person. Besides, like stage improv, it's always more fun with other people than just by yourself. I don't know if we'd be able to do online, but if Malec's up for it, we could work it in after the initial release- I'd personally like to see a TIGSource production of Commedia Dell'arte.

As for the game stage... I haven't really decided yet. I'm going to start designing the game world itself once I'm done designing the characters, and I'm not sure which way to go. On the one hand, the stage would be a nice way to tie the whole game together, and would be a lot of fun to design (makes me think of the Paper Mario games). On the other hand, you would need a fairly large stage for gameplay- larger than most stages, in any case. Maybe it could be a theatre in the round, with the borders defined by the audience spaces... There! That's what we'll do. And then the props will be designed after an ancient Italian village square, for authenticity's sake.

[Inanimate]

Dynamite Headdy had a good way to make a gigantic 'stage' world. You could investigate that. 

[The-Imp]

The pixelled characters are adorable, I mean like, one of the cutest things I've seen all week.

I mean really.
Why did you make them so freaking cute?

[Alec S.]

Theo, I love all the art so far!   

I'm currently working on the game's fundamentals such as player interaction, contextual menus, and player interaction with contextual menus.   

[Bree]

Kickass! After I finish Capitano's sprite, I'll start working on menu designs. Do you have any set dimensions yet?

Dynamite Headdy had a good way to make a gigantic 'stage' world. You could investigate that. 

Just checked out a video of the first stage- it's really cute how they made all of the scrolling backgrounds look like set pieces. I especially liked the first boss reveal with the backdrop falling down, so that you could see some teensy stagehands pulling on a new one as you fought. Thanks for the recommendation!

[Fuzz]

Stagehands are a must.

[Bree]

Stagehands are a must.

...We'll see- first things first, we start with the bare necessities. Speaking of which, it's time to unveil the Il Capitano sprite:

And here are all the sprites completed so far, just for fun:



Another think I had: I've been using Pencil for some hand-drawn animations, so I might end up using that for the more detailed/complex stuff- I know we're definitely going to have a Street Fighter parody as one of our "lattzi" minigames, to give you one example. The more complex stuff will look more like the concept pieces I've been drafting (hence the reason I didn't go straight into pixeling each character). I'll just need to figure out how to export and keep standard sizes- it also seems to lack GIF exporting on PCs, but all of the frames are there individually.

[Fuzz]

It isn't too hard to make Pencil animations into GIFs if you export each frame individually and then import them into Gimp.