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[Derek]

Incredible.  I love your artwork!

[Melly]

I don't believe you're human.

[Lurk]

A loading/preloader screen I'm working on right now. I'm trying to find a quick way to start the game, while still loading the rest of the assets(some of them are not needed until later- the well done screen, the characters besides the blue samurai and geisha etc), I'm running benchmark tests to make sure it doesn't affect framerate. Maybe I'll have semi-static cutscenes a la ninja gaiden nes while it loads, but at this point, everything I have to be careful not to overbloat the thing.



and here's my wip sheet for the blue samurai. Almost done on this one.


First sketch for the green armored samurai. The gameplay for this one is all new.


More to come, as soon as I take care of some visually unappealing code

[Oddball]

I love all your work Lurk, and this is no exception. Sorry I've not got anything more constructive to say, but I cannot find fault with any of it. So... Yeah.. Awesome stuff.

[Dan MacDonald]

Love this.

I still don't understand how you can have such good concept design skills and animation skills and painting skills. Are you self taught?

[Lurk]

I've reworked my opening screen so it was more like the old 90's arcades(I'm a huge fan of the Alpha Denshi corp).

I've also started integrating some sound effects and revamped my main game screen

It shows more action now without the bars that I originally put there for my psp tests(to reduce draw). Now that I don't care about that, I can make bigger sprites

like the oni samurai. His gameplay is pretty different from the first game. I'm also beginning to polish the geisha(like I'm doing for the blue samurai). I'm going to integrate every asset in the game in a semi-sketch state, to see what size exe I'm looking at (also for pre-loading purposes for flash).

so here are some of the backgrounds(without the animated parts). All in all, I'm planning for around 14 action sequences + 2 bonus stages(bath house and hell).

Dan- Yes, I'm not very good in a structured/class like environment, so I had to learn things by myself. The hardest thing for me was programming, but it's also the most rewarding part, when I manage to get it right.

[moi]

AWESEOM 

[alspal]

Looking good
Except for the "press space", I don't like that button

[KennEH!]

Sweet baby Jesus I can't believe I missed this topic, great stuff. Can't wait to see more.

[J. R. Hill]

This game is so beautiful, I can barely express it dude.

My only gripe is that the outlines of these sprites has some artifacts from an anti-aliased edge.  The quick fix would be to give the sprites outlines (I think flash allows you to "stroke" it ) but I don't think it would fit with your aesthetic very well.  The not-so-quick fix is to manually clean them up, and (from what I gather about flash, at least) the hardest would be to preserve the levels of transparency around the edges.

[Lurk]

JrHill- Don'y worry, all the sprites currently in the game have only been roughly cleaned using a simple generic magic wand setup. Then I applied an indexed palette to see an approximate size for preloading. The final version I'm going to clean up by hand and only have a 1 pixel darker outline.

[SidM]

How much time do you spend to do one of these? They're gorgeous!

[Jonathan]

That is some beautifully wacky art you've got there.

[increpare]

The animations look a little funky to my eyes (though I understand that you have technical constraints), and there's something about the intricacy of the fan (?) icon that makes me feel a little uneasy, but yeah you have such sumptuous rendering skills it's very much inspiring : )

[Lurk]

Increpare- You're referring to the running version on my website(about the animations)? Yes, I'm using 6-7 keyframes, with some slight sliding effects in flash. That's an old version though, with very sketchy and sometimes not interpolating keyframes(for example, the torso region is very buggy on the blue samurai, especially since I've been experimenting with it since the beginning, when I was using anime studio). Usually, the way I work, I throw sketches really fast, to have a global idea of the work before me, then I take my time rendering the various pieces by alternating back and forth between them. That prevents me from overdoing it on one picture, only to discover I have 60+ left to do in a short amount of time(experience  ).

For example, the backgrounds took about 15-20 minutes to do (each), in sketch mode. But the final ones will take longer. I even used parts of the original game background as a color basis on one of the early layers to go faster.


This is the final look I'm aiming for concerning the characters. I want them to look something in between snk arcade games from the 90's and this http://www.arco-iris.com/George/images/utagawa_47_ronin.jpg (exaggerated poses and facial expressions, flowing clothes etc). You can compare this (90% done) with the earlier screengrab, to see the progress.


I'll have a giant sprite sheet with all my wip characters done soon. I've made some nice progress on the first kensai(dev name SamB0). There's still work left, like adding a secondary color(probably inside the sleves) and a motif to his clothes, but ingame he's a pretty cool character.


 

[J. R. Hill]

It's like candy for my eyes.

[siegarettes]

damn. this is fine work you have here. i always liked your original, it had lots of style and great art. it was a bit hard to play cuz of the limited animation, at least for me. its was still fantastic though.

this one is a great improvement on the original. looking forward to your progress.
amazing things come out from this community and its compos.

[Dan MacDonald]

Love the armored samurai, and I love your edits to the sam in the brown kimono. Just oozes character now.

[Dan MacDonald]

Thread! I command you to live! ARIZE!!!  have more amazing samurai art!

[Lurk]

 
It's alive
I'm organizing the art right now, updating some of the concepts with better color schemes(better readability in the heat of combat). The blue samurai really was the hardest one to work with, since he was produced through different processes I tried along the way (anime studio, flash etc) and was in effect a protoype character. I'm liking the way he's turning out though. I'm also trying a few new techniques to have more detail, like fake screentones on the pants using real scanned japanese patterns. There's still a lot of work to be done, but like a boat in a bottle, little by little, it's taking shape.