Before I start, know that I'm not actively trying to put down the group of people using this template. I'm trying to help you guys, believe it or not. Now let's get into this thing.
This will actually serve as a decent spriting tutorial on its own, even if you aren't familiar with Breeze.
Breeze Sucks, a look at modern templates by your friend Despain
What is a Template?
Professional 2D games don't use character sprite templates, at least not in the way that we do. The purpose of templates, as we use them in RPG Maker, is to make spriting easier and faster for us. We don't each have a team of professional pixel artists who are able to pump out a few hundred high-quality sprites. As such, we work on template bases to ensure consistency and increase the speed of our productivity. But this is generally common knowledge.
What a template has become is something slightly different. Today, you see a lot of people posting their templates on this forum, which is both good and bad. I definitely encourage it, because even if it's horrible, working from scratch will really help a pixel artist improve. But at the same time, a lot of these people are creating templates for the wrong reasons. After the popularity of Showkaizer's work, there was a sudden jump in the people who made their own spriting bases. Unfortunately, a lot of these people did it because they wanted to be famous and garbage like that, evident by the amount of people who created and "released" poorly-sprited templates without any sign of accepting criticism on them.
I'm not necessarily saying that Breeze falls into that category. Green Raven is a solid spriter. It's the "revolution" that has put it into that category. Breeze is not so much a spriting template now, as it is an object of popularity. And because of that, it disappoints me to see it being used so often when it encourages poor spriting practices.
That's right, the Breeze template, at least in its popular usage in the "Breeze Revolution", teaches early spriters bad habits.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Before I start, I want to clarify that I'm not really saying that it's impossble to make anything good on Breeze, just that it's difficult when using the standards imposed by the "Breeze Revolution". I'm going to start off with the template itself.
Cute. On its own, it's actually not very bad. I want to look at the individual sprites, though, since they are what really makes or breaks a template.
These sprites were made by Gir, Green Raven and Wumpi (left to right).
They clearly (to me, at least) get better as they go, in left-to-right order. There's a big difference between the first two, both of which are included on the BR's website (which bothers me that such low-quality sprites are accepted with other ones. A coherent style cannot be made with so much inconsistency among the individual graphics). The middle sprite is pretty much the perfect example of the common Breeze style that I am talking about in this article, and the majority of Breeze sprites in the BR are very similar to it. It's not exactly badly-made on its own, but the color selection is so horrible that it's absolutely lifeless. Wumpi's isn't perfect either, but it demonstrates a good knowledge of color, which the other two lack. I'm not going to go into detail for each of the sprites here; I just wanted to show the differences between some of these.
Why do I include a good sprite like Wumpi's if I'm trying to make the claim that "Breeze sucks"? Because it's not entirely what I'm getting at. The popular usage of Breeze sucks. Like all templates, Breeze can (and should, as all templates should) be recolored and edited to rock (which I'll actually be doing through most of the article).
The Form
Really, it's not that bad. I have a few small criticisms about the structure of the template itself, but they're not very devastating. Despite the highly-cartoony style of the template, anatomy should still be paid attention to. A lot of people casually pass of poor anatomy as "style", and this is a very bad habit to get into. I have a few major complaints about the form of the template (note that I'm only really working off of the front idle frame, there are probably other issues in the animations and side-views that I'm not doing to delve into).
For reference, here's the image again:
I've taken the liberties to address some of these issues in a very quick edit.
Ignore the giant spot on the head, I actually don't like how that turned out. The rest is a decent example of what I was trying to do.
The big differences are visible in the feet and crotch areas, and along the chin, as I tried to address the problems that I pointed out above. The feet make him seem a little off-balance now, but at the same time the tapering effect makes them look more like actual legs rather than stumps, and it preserves the cuteness of the original idea. I significantly smoothed out the chin area, which actually was only a couple pixels difference on each side. The crotch I added might be a bit large, but I think that is only because of what I did with the colors (which I'm not exactly happy with, I was trying to get the most use out of the colors that were already used. I think that there were too many colors to begin with and I forced myself to use all of them) and the crotch area is much less confusing and helps separate the torso from the legs.
The cute style is preserved and possibly enhanced, while I was able to improve on some anatomical aspects.
The Palette
My biggest problem with the "Breeze Revolution" is by far the horrendous color palettes that they encourage. The BR website goes as far as to have these color palettes and suggest that people use them. Now don't get me wrong, I think that a unified palette is amazing, as consistency is one of the biggest things that I value in a spriting project. The only problem is that these are consistently bad.
Let's look at that average BR sprite again.
As I said, this is a perfect example of what most of these BR sprites look like, in terms of style, color, etc. Here are some more so you get the idea.
At first glance it doesn't look so bad. They're cute and colorful, and it almost works. But at the same time, the palettes are incredibly flat. FLAT. FLAT. FLAT. And that means boring. In some games the style might work, but attributing a poor color palette to an entire template is detrimental to the spriters working with it. I really don't want to go into the details here, but there are a number of tutorials online (such as this one) that would explain in detail why these color palettes are so flat, and would help you develop a better one. In fact, that page has a lot of great information that pretty much speaks for itself and is worth looking at.
I know people are going to try and argue against me here, citing that the flat colors are part of Breeze's style, or its charm. And unfortunately, I can say that you're wrong. "It's the style" is never an excuse for poor art. This is one of those mistakes that the BR is teaching new spriters, and will seriously prevent them from moving on to something better.
One look at Wumpi's sprite, which I posted above, will prove this. It retains the cute charm of the Breeze, yet because it uses its own palette, doesn't look nearly as flat and boring as the typical BR sprite. I've tried to fix some of this again in my own example:
Like the other, it's a very quick edit that I'm not entirely happy with, but it proves my point. Here I took my previous edit further and changed the colors to a palette that I use myself. With the color change (and the change in how the colors are used), I think that I let the potential of the Breeze style really take a step forward, as there is now a much clearer emphasis on the cartoony/cel-shaded style of the sprite. At the same time, it's much easier on the eyes, as there is a comfortable contrast between the colors where the sprite doesn't look nearly as dull (the sprite seems flatter in some areas, like the face, but more dynamic in others, as my emphasis is on preserving the cartoon style).
I've taken this a step further and recreated the example sprite itself:
One of the biggest issues I have with the BR is that the hair for the majority of their sprites has a very serious lack of details. I didn't touch much on this issue in the article, because this really has to do with the individual sprites rather than the template itself, but it's such a common occurance (look at the above examples that I liked), that I had to talk about it briefly. The Breeze template has a very large head, which is great for expressions. At the same time, it has a lot of room to make the most out of these hair styles, and most of the sprites simply don't take advantage of that. In fact, the way in which they shade the hair makes the sprite seem even more flat. I clearly fix this in my version of the sprite.
Don't give up!
The purpose of this article isn't to sit here and insult you. I'm not telling anybody to stop, and I'm not trying to put an end to your "Breeze Revolution". In fact, it's just the opposite. I support original graphics, but I support high-quality original graphics. I don't want people to settle for graphics that are good enough and frankly, that's exactly what I think the "Breeze Revolution" is all about. These people are settling for whatever sprites they can get, with the idea that "as long as we have a lot, it will be popular", and unfortunately, it's working.
These guys are forgetting about quality, and they are forgetting to push themselves to create something really special. They're forgetting about making the best graphics that they can make.
And when you forget to do that, you lose why you started spriting in the first place. You get results that very closely resemble the Breeze itself: sloppy and flat.
This will actually serve as a decent spriting tutorial on its own, even if you aren't familiar with Breeze.
Breeze Sucks, a look at modern templates by your friend Despain
What is a Template?
Professional 2D games don't use character sprite templates, at least not in the way that we do. The purpose of templates, as we use them in RPG Maker, is to make spriting easier and faster for us. We don't each have a team of professional pixel artists who are able to pump out a few hundred high-quality sprites. As such, we work on template bases to ensure consistency and increase the speed of our productivity. But this is generally common knowledge.
What a template has become is something slightly different. Today, you see a lot of people posting their templates on this forum, which is both good and bad. I definitely encourage it, because even if it's horrible, working from scratch will really help a pixel artist improve. But at the same time, a lot of these people are creating templates for the wrong reasons. After the popularity of Showkaizer's work, there was a sudden jump in the people who made their own spriting bases. Unfortunately, a lot of these people did it because they wanted to be famous and garbage like that, evident by the amount of people who created and "released" poorly-sprited templates without any sign of accepting criticism on them.
I'm not necessarily saying that Breeze falls into that category. Green Raven is a solid spriter. It's the "revolution" that has put it into that category. Breeze is not so much a spriting template now, as it is an object of popularity. And because of that, it disappoints me to see it being used so often when it encourages poor spriting practices.
That's right, the Breeze template, at least in its popular usage in the "Breeze Revolution", teaches early spriters bad habits.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Before I start, I want to clarify that I'm not really saying that it's impossble to make anything good on Breeze, just that it's difficult when using the standards imposed by the "Breeze Revolution". I'm going to start off with the template itself.
Cute. On its own, it's actually not very bad. I want to look at the individual sprites, though, since they are what really makes or breaks a template.
These sprites were made by Gir, Green Raven and Wumpi (left to right).
They clearly (to me, at least) get better as they go, in left-to-right order. There's a big difference between the first two, both of which are included on the BR's website (which bothers me that such low-quality sprites are accepted with other ones. A coherent style cannot be made with so much inconsistency among the individual graphics). The middle sprite is pretty much the perfect example of the common Breeze style that I am talking about in this article, and the majority of Breeze sprites in the BR are very similar to it. It's not exactly badly-made on its own, but the color selection is so horrible that it's absolutely lifeless. Wumpi's isn't perfect either, but it demonstrates a good knowledge of color, which the other two lack. I'm not going to go into detail for each of the sprites here; I just wanted to show the differences between some of these.
Why do I include a good sprite like Wumpi's if I'm trying to make the claim that "Breeze sucks"? Because it's not entirely what I'm getting at. The popular usage of Breeze sucks. Like all templates, Breeze can (and should, as all templates should) be recolored and edited to rock (which I'll actually be doing through most of the article).
The Form
Really, it's not that bad. I have a few small criticisms about the structure of the template itself, but they're not very devastating. Despite the highly-cartoony style of the template, anatomy should still be paid attention to. A lot of people casually pass of poor anatomy as "style", and this is a very bad habit to get into. I have a few major complaints about the form of the template (note that I'm only really working off of the front idle frame, there are probably other issues in the animations and side-views that I'm not doing to delve into).
For reference, here's the image again:
- The crotch area is an eyesore.
Take alook at the area where the legs connect with the body. The connection there is pretty confusing, and as a matter of fact it looks (to me) like he has a little erect penis pointing up towards his navel. I'm not exactly sure what was going on here, whether the line is intended to be abs or a belly button or what. The single pixel of light directly above the line between the legs adds to the confusion. This isn't what a crotch should look like; the human body doesn't just split into two legs. - The stubby feet make little sense.
Continuing on the last point, the current legs look pretty much like an extension of the torso with a split between them, as though someone took a pair of scissors and cleanly cut a line halfway up the middle of the trunk. And while stubby feet are cute, it looks as though the legs simply stop when they get to the bottom. Even with the cartoon style, this looks awkward on an actual character. - The cheeks and chin are very jagged.
This one is harder to see in the blown-up image when we're looking at the pixels, but when the image is smaller this is an annoying little problem. The head is significantly larger than the body, which isn't a problem in and of itself due to the style, but the way the chin and cheeks are formed looks very bumpy when viewing it from a distance. This is a result of the attempt at making the chin very flat and soft, but unfortunately the exact opposite occurs. - Very poor usage of the colors.
For the most part, my gripe on the colors will be handled in the next section, but the template her doesn't make full use of the colors available to it. The entire lightest shade is only used in one spot on the forehead, for example, and the body and chest area is left completely blank.
I've taken the liberties to address some of these issues in a very quick edit.
Ignore the giant spot on the head, I actually don't like how that turned out. The rest is a decent example of what I was trying to do.
The big differences are visible in the feet and crotch areas, and along the chin, as I tried to address the problems that I pointed out above. The feet make him seem a little off-balance now, but at the same time the tapering effect makes them look more like actual legs rather than stumps, and it preserves the cuteness of the original idea. I significantly smoothed out the chin area, which actually was only a couple pixels difference on each side. The crotch I added might be a bit large, but I think that is only because of what I did with the colors (which I'm not exactly happy with, I was trying to get the most use out of the colors that were already used. I think that there were too many colors to begin with and I forced myself to use all of them) and the crotch area is much less confusing and helps separate the torso from the legs.
The cute style is preserved and possibly enhanced, while I was able to improve on some anatomical aspects.
The Palette
My biggest problem with the "Breeze Revolution" is by far the horrendous color palettes that they encourage. The BR website goes as far as to have these color palettes and suggest that people use them. Now don't get me wrong, I think that a unified palette is amazing, as consistency is one of the biggest things that I value in a spriting project. The only problem is that these are consistently bad.
Let's look at that average BR sprite again.
As I said, this is a perfect example of what most of these BR sprites look like, in terms of style, color, etc. Here are some more so you get the idea.
At first glance it doesn't look so bad. They're cute and colorful, and it almost works. But at the same time, the palettes are incredibly flat. FLAT. FLAT. FLAT. And that means boring. In some games the style might work, but attributing a poor color palette to an entire template is detrimental to the spriters working with it. I really don't want to go into the details here, but there are a number of tutorials online (such as this one) that would explain in detail why these color palettes are so flat, and would help you develop a better one. In fact, that page has a lot of great information that pretty much speaks for itself and is worth looking at.
I know people are going to try and argue against me here, citing that the flat colors are part of Breeze's style, or its charm. And unfortunately, I can say that you're wrong. "It's the style" is never an excuse for poor art. This is one of those mistakes that the BR is teaching new spriters, and will seriously prevent them from moving on to something better.
One look at Wumpi's sprite, which I posted above, will prove this. It retains the cute charm of the Breeze, yet because it uses its own palette, doesn't look nearly as flat and boring as the typical BR sprite. I've tried to fix some of this again in my own example:
Like the other, it's a very quick edit that I'm not entirely happy with, but it proves my point. Here I took my previous edit further and changed the colors to a palette that I use myself. With the color change (and the change in how the colors are used), I think that I let the potential of the Breeze style really take a step forward, as there is now a much clearer emphasis on the cartoony/cel-shaded style of the sprite. At the same time, it's much easier on the eyes, as there is a comfortable contrast between the colors where the sprite doesn't look nearly as dull (the sprite seems flatter in some areas, like the face, but more dynamic in others, as my emphasis is on preserving the cartoon style).
I've taken this a step further and recreated the example sprite itself:
One of the biggest issues I have with the BR is that the hair for the majority of their sprites has a very serious lack of details. I didn't touch much on this issue in the article, because this really has to do with the individual sprites rather than the template itself, but it's such a common occurance (look at the above examples that I liked), that I had to talk about it briefly. The Breeze template has a very large head, which is great for expressions. At the same time, it has a lot of room to make the most out of these hair styles, and most of the sprites simply don't take advantage of that. In fact, the way in which they shade the hair makes the sprite seem even more flat. I clearly fix this in my version of the sprite.
Don't give up!
The purpose of this article isn't to sit here and insult you. I'm not telling anybody to stop, and I'm not trying to put an end to your "Breeze Revolution". In fact, it's just the opposite. I support original graphics, but I support high-quality original graphics. I don't want people to settle for graphics that are good enough and frankly, that's exactly what I think the "Breeze Revolution" is all about. These people are settling for whatever sprites they can get, with the idea that "as long as we have a lot, it will be popular", and unfortunately, it's working.
These guys are forgetting about quality, and they are forgetting to push themselves to create something really special. They're forgetting about making the best graphics that they can make.
And when you forget to do that, you lose why you started spriting in the first place. You get results that very closely resemble the Breeze itself: sloppy and flat.
