I’ve got a month of summer left, so I decided I’d make a whole character sprite. Does anyone really do that around here? I remember this one guy made an awesome Mario sprite for Mugen all by himself… but making a whole character sprite is like 200 frames…The following is not a representation of my good work, it’s just for fun and it’s a bitch doing animation. Anyway, here’s what I have so far:
OK start so far…I would like to see the finished result when you add more frames to it…yeah Illustration is one thing but…when it comes to animation it can get tricky in order to get things alligned properly…its a whole new ballgame…timing is very Key, proportions, etc. the more details the more work you gotta deal with- in the end all the hard work is worth it… this of course depending on what type of animation you are doing…what program did you use for this…?
I used photoshop for coloring. I used a huge plastic rubbermaid like box and put a light under it to make my own light box. I want to keep acceptable proportions and not too much detail… every shred of detail I put in, I’ll end up having to animate it.
Have you ever done one yourself?
animation…
yea there were a few I worked on in school…the lip sync, walking sequences, head rotations, running sequences…2d animation was fun- but the time given to do assignments were quite strict- deadlines were critical…especially on Large projects you are split into teams- …and many all nighters were done I think every animator goes through it at some point…Ha and the light box from the rubber maid is a classic memory…lol… good times…gooood times.
Dude, that’s not a sprite, it’s too big. This here is pure anime. I wouldn’t work with 3 frames, ever. The minimum frame cound a serious stance needs is 7 frames per cycle. I think you should actually work with smaller sprites because they’re not as hard as drawing a full sized figure like I see here.
Best example of myself I have to offer is this Evil Ryu edited to Brain Digger CvS style.
Well…the reason it’s huge… is because I’m tired of this low res bullshit from Capcom and SNK…well SNK has bad hardware so they really couldn’t do anything about it and Capcom likes recycling their sprites, but really, big sprites are cool. Guilty Gear’s a big step in the right direction, I want to see more big sprites like that… I don’t think it makes it anymore difficult if you draw a small sprite compared to a big one. Think about it, if gaming companies drew big first…then they’d have to recycle their old sprites less. I guess that’s a bit off topic. As for only three frames of animation… I just want to get this thing done. As soon as I get it done, then I’ll worry about adding more fluid animation… I’m the kind of guy who starts more projects then finishes… and I’m scared of that.
godrifle, I suggest doing a little research into what exactly sprite animation is. What you have there is waaayyyyy too big to be even a high res sprite. The resolution of a TV is much lower than that of a computer screen, so that’s why when you see game sprites on a computer screen they are like this tall:
O O
>
___/
|
|
/
/ \
It is true that it is easier to draw larger, but as far as how the hardware handles the drawings, it is really more about pixel art, not full illustrating. Check out some of the threads in the image mishmash section. There are a lot of people in there that know a lot about sprites.
EDIT: Wow, my little stick figure man really got mangled after I hit submit…
why would drawing big mean recycling sprites less? I don’t see the logic behind that statement. Please elaborate?
if Arc System Works recycled their GGX sprites for another 4 games (to date, they’ve been used in GGX, GGXX, GGXX#Reloaded, & GGXX Isuka), I think ppl would be sick of seeing the same old sprites too.
big sprites have larger file sizes, and therefore take up more space in the CD, takes up more space in memory, and also increases load times.
GGXX animation < SF3 animation, btw. They don’t have as many frames (possibly to compensate for the file size of the sprite set), so the animation is choppier than the lower-res SF3.
Chainwhore, there’s nothing wrong about resizing a picture so the hardware can handle. I imagine you’d have to edit the pixels for the eyes or maybe add more lines… but it shouldn’t be that bad…
Rook,
When I say drawing bigger mean recycling less… It means that the developer is prepared for tomorrow’s hardware. Take Capcom Vs SNK2’s Morrigan for example… It was recycled from Darkstalkers, and I hope everyone agrees with me that she’s got the lowest quality of sprites in that game. Now if Capcom had made bigger sprites when they were making Darkstalkers and just resized them for Darkstalkers, they could recycle and still have the sprites be up to date with CVS2. Arc System Works reusing their sprites for 4 games, yeah they’re still getting away with that, heh… Of course sprites get old, no matter what resolution they are at, and companies shouldn’t always recycle their stuff, but when they do, I see no problem with taking higher resolution. Tomorrow’s hardware will have bigger space on mediums and better hardware to support such high resolution sprites. And yeah, I agree that SF3 has the best animation.
Actually, the main problem with Morrigan’s sprite wasn’t that the size is off, it’s that she’s shaded in a different style altogether. DS characters don’t have that much when it comes to shading, plus they have a black outline around the character. Morrigan looked like she was a cardboard cutout compared to the other characters.
Sprites are usually created for a specific display resolution - resizing any sprite would practically mean redrawing it. Even if you had a large sprite and reduced its size (dimensions) in PS with the setting set to “nearest neighbour,” you may not get the sprite to look good because the pixels may run into one another, resulting in things like unclear facial features or unwanted details. You’d still have to go in and touch it up again.
I disagree, it seems to me that if Morrigan’s sprite was any larger, the sprite would have become too… pixelated. It looks like Capcom just smoothed the character sprite out to make the pixels look less obvious. Shading should not have determined the quality of the sprite as much as the sprite’s size.
Shrinking large sprites, like I said, yes you’d have to touch it up, but you’d still have a large sprite ready for tomorrow’s hardware.
…Chiou’s got nothing on Kagura.
-
That is not a sprite.
-
Osaka > the entire Azumanga Daioh cast.
As an animator
I think this sucks. Your only moving the upper body. Try watching yourself in the mirror. You will notice that almost everything you do requires you entire body to move or turn during the action. If you really were an animation student and had appird yourself… YOU WOULD NOT HAVE MADE THIS MISTAKE! I understand that this is only a “sprite”, but there is no excuss for poor animation. Same thing goes for Brain Digger. Except he almost hits it right. I think his Ryu neeeds to be on the balls of his feet a little and that will make it easier to show movement from the knees down. Either way there needs to be movement down there as well. Right now his thighs are shrinking into his knee caps. Godrifle needs to work on anatomy and proportions a bit. Just so you don’t think I have no clue what I’m talking about, here are some links to my animations. These are rough traditional style animations. Meaning I had no tie down or clean-up artist coming in behind me.
http://www.acmeanimation.org/screeningRoom.asp?ucid=116&movie=660
http://www.acmeanimation.org/screeningRoom.asp?ucid=204&movie=1135
http://www.acmeanimation.org/screeningRoom.asp?ucid=211&movie=1163
I’ve had a few problems with these links but they should work. Atleast 1 or 2 will.
I’m not an animation student, this is my first animation and I wanted to go easy on myself. But yeah, I need some anatomy classes… Sounds bad, but I’ve never even taken an art class.
ROFL!
sorry, for some reason I thought you said you had previously said you did animation… my bad^^
Thats pretty good for someone without training. If you really want to improve, I suggest you study disney. Buy the book, the Illusion of life. Its a history of disney animators. It also tells you how to time your animations and how their famous stories were brought to the big screen.