Frequency: New Title Screen! 22/7

[GrooveMan.exe]

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/1121 ... ronyg0.png[/img]
Meet Airon Shayne, he's the main character for Frequency; my little RMXP project (Link is in my sig. Go check it out. Don't worry, I'll wait). He's currently unarmed, but I can easily edit this so he's wielding other weapons; a variety of instruments that turn into deadly swords, bows, axes and an assortment of other deadly apparatus. Because the game is set in a bright, moden future, and I hate the GRIMDARK that many RPGs seem to have these days; I'm going for a bright, bold style. I may add a black outline, similar to the Mario and Luigi games, so separate the character from potentially busy backgrounds.

The sprite is admittedly an edit, but I've used multiple bases, and resculpted a lot of material, to make it my own. The upshot of this is that the style is very easy to imitate (so that any spriters that are willing to work with me on this aren't stylistically stranded.

I may do more of Airon, but he's going to need a foe to fight...

 

[ZephyrSkye]

So, who made the stuff you edited?

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

Uh, game companies?

I edit from ripped sprites. Editing other peoples custom work is just sick and wrong.
If you really must know, I used the following sheets:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/konami ... _recca.gif
http://www.spriters-resource.com/other/ ... e_ash1.gif
http://www.spriters-resource.com/other/ ... rdsman.png
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/sheets/Misc/Mis ... Hibito.png
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/sheets/Misc/Mis ... hester.gif
http://sdb.drshnaps.com/sheets/Misc/Mis ... OS-MOS.gif

As far as i can remember, that's all of them. May have been more.

 

[ZephyrSkye]

The face just doesn't seem familiar. What game is it form?

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

It's a heavily edited combo of KOS-MOS and Chester. The beanie is custom. You're not familiar  with Tales of the World style, then.

 

[ZephyrSkye]

Nope, but I do have some advice. Desaturate your character a bit. The red is too BAM, you know?

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

"...and I hate the GRIMDARK that many RPGs seem to have these days; I'm going for a bright, bold style."

So in short, nah, I don't think so. =D

 

[Grathea]

As well, it's not the red that's saturated... it's that yellow color in the sleeves.
Speaking of the sleeves, they could use a touch more definition on the upper left forearm in some of the poses. I'd recommend giving it shading to show depth, even if it wouldn't work from a lighting perspective.

 

[ZephyrSkye]

But I'm not just talking about desaturating it that much. Even a little would be good. The way it is, it gives me a headache.

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/7950 ... dlenf8.png[/img]
Improved the shading on the arms, and chose two darker schemes of red and yellow from the same palette. Not feelin' that much, though.

 

[Grathea]

I actually prefer the first red with the second yellow.

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6494 ... dlevs4.png[/img]
Line 1, 2, 3, or the mystery box?

 

[Grathea]

Definitely line 3.

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

Hm. Fair enough then. Not sure what I'll do next; I lack a complete design for an enemy, so I suppose I'll work more on Airon for the time being.

I really shouldn't put it off, but I dun wanna do the tilesets just yet. I need to think of a style that I can use so it's not just LOLRTP. I remember seeing one on the Screenshots thread that's worth investigating, and expanding upon...
Yeah, it was this one, by Calibre:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4107/test2zo3.png
The softening of background objects and the outlining of foreground stuff is pretty rad, although it could be implimented a little better than there. The tilesets would also have a lot of roads and stuff, I guess.

Oh, and just to make an impromptu checklist for myself, I'm pretty sure I need the following in-battle animations:
- Idle
- Moving towards foe
- Retreating from foe
- Defending
- Attack 1
- Attack 2
- Playing instrument (or dancing, if unarmed)
- Riff Attack 1 (Special attack)
- Riff Attack 2
- Hit
- Blocking
- Silenced (Defeated)
- Victory

I think there's a lot of work ahead for me, even if some of it is copy/paste. :V

 

[xinrua]

...WOW!!
Ok i know this is a smudge off topic, but this:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4107/test2zo3.png
looks awsome!!
can you post a tut or some recources of those?
it looks awsome!
Xin, that's Calibre's, IIRC. And if you look in the Screenshot Thread, you'll see that he went into a little detail on it there. Also, please don't spam. ~Gratheo
It looks sorta like a manga/anime charecter sets/tilesets.

EDIT: Thank you Gratheo for the warn....

edit: your doing mighty fine on your Sprite!

 

[ZephyrSkye]

The colors look 2000% better. Thank you for listening.

 

[Calibre]

Yeah, it was this one, by Calibre:

although it could be implimented a little better than there.

Oh realllyyyyy? :P

Let's see what you've got then.  You'll soon find out it is hell! Mwhahaha.

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

It's not so much what you've done, it's where you've done it. For example, because you've made the lamp posts and benches outlined, then I think the trees would look good outlined also. Essentially anything that would be coded for 'impassable' should have an outline, as it's essentially an object (in the literal sense, not the coding sense). This would also go for the connection between the land and walls.

The character sprites have a coloured outline, and then you've put a black outline around that. This makes them look pillowy, and chunkier than need be. It can also make the thickness of the outline look inconsistant. It looks better if you incorporate the black into the outline itself:
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/3181/outlinega7.png[/img]

Using the outlining and shading methods from the Mario and Luigi games would work best, in my opinion.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/resour ... tletut.png

I am curious as to how you went around getting the filter method down. Not intending to steal it or anything, but it's useful knowledge; considering we seem to be leaning towards the same graphical style here.

 

[Calibre]

The problem is because you're trying to convert something clearly pixel based into the opposite the filter depends on which piece you are doing.

The most important aspect in my opinion is the speed of the conversion.  Specifically on the characters.  I don't find it a good trade off to literally resprite black outlines around every in game sprite for 16 frames.  Instead I use a 1 pixel stroke in layer options and set it to centerd. 

Do you know what an action is in photoshop?  Where you record a series of actions and then save it then you play it on batches of images to convert them.  I find this is the only practical way of doing it so you need to get it at something that works for everything.

Autotiles are the hardest because a blur will knock them out of position and they won't match up to background tiles.

A place to start is with BLUR - SMART BLUR but it sure is a pain overall.

Oh I forgot... the black outlines around all foreground images is damn hard.  You have to remake alot of some tilesets OR you have to draw the black lines yourself around everything rather than using stroke which there is no way I'm doing.  But that's the reason I only choose some things and at that stage the black outlines around tileset things was just experimental.

 

[GrooveMan.exe]

Heheh, I've had to do outlining for a ton of sheets before, which I usually use Paint to do. It's pretty fast once you get a good method going (LINE TOOL =D), and there's no fear of anti-aliasing.

That information is interesting though, thank you. Oh, and does Airon look good with an outline? It's not been neatened or AA'd yet, but in principle?