Soul Code Core - spritework and critique and such

[Ryanide]

Hello everyone. I'm new to RPG maker and partially to spriting in general. I've had some experience with animation and converting images to sprites, but never actually spriting from the ground up.

While I plan to make an original game using RPG maker, I don't yet know how to customise the battle system. For now I'll just be using the default engine but working on the sprites and tilesets, then hopefully I can get to creating the game properly once that's done to some extent.

The story takes place in a futuristic world where technology has fused seamlessly with nature. The characters resemble anthropomorphic robot animals.

UPDATED.

Ginnigan:



Changes: got rid of his green legs and replaced with an orange body like
the rest of him, making him look much more like the civillian he was intended to be and not an assassin. I decided to have him wear a jacket instead of it being part
of his body like before. Also got rid of those elbow spur things. Also now has
a character icon.


Yawn:



Yawn had his colours fiddled with a bit but is otherwise not really changed that much. He doesn't have a character icon because I'm not yet up to making the part where
he is introduced.

Icon for another character who appears during the opening stages of the game. I'm not sure about the shading on this one.


I drew these using Graphics Gale. It took a bit of getting used to working with pixels.

Feel free to share suggestions or give critique.

 

[Jason]

Holy fucking shit rofl on my wofl...

Yeah, I don't use that expression too much, but when I do it's for a good reason, I love these ! Especially the battlers (They are battlers, right ?), you've got very basic shading, yet it really suits the style (Is a major fan of the whole basic shading).

I really want to see you make a game in this style, I'll be paying attention to it !

 

[Ryanide]

Thanks :biggrin:

Yes, I figured the shading might be a bit simple, but I took reference from Pokemon sprites in order to get that shading style. Originally I had problems with outlines (black outlines just look bad on sprites).

The two character portraits are battlers. Ginnigan is a close-combat style fighter who can equip glove or shoe weapons. He's a speedster with poor defenses, wheras Yawn is very much a sturdy cleric style character who can heal and cure status effects while taking a lot of damage himself.

I'll post more characters here once I've done more sprites.

 

[bojjenclon]

Those are simply amazing...

 

[Ulqiorra]

You're new to spriting. My god, we have a prodigy!

My critique, work on the animation. It looks like they're hopping, not walking.
(And trust me I know it can be hard to make them look good in 4 frames ^^)

 

[Jason]

You're new to spriting. My god, we have a prodigy!

My critique, work on the animation. It looks like they're hopping, not walking.
(And trust me I know it can be hard to make them look good in 4 frames ^^)

But they're rabbits, so it adds to the effect, lol.

 

[Ulqiorra]

Rabbits, eh? Didn't know that sorry!

If that's the case, I have no problems with them!

 

[boon]

Prodigy? that's a bit extreme.

In seriousness, these aren't really bad. you've used front-facing lightsource which is bordering on pillow shading. Your palettes are virtually just change in luminosity, not saturation or hue changes.

In retrospective, you really need to make your light areas more yellow and darker areas more blue/purple-gray, and use a defined light-source making sure everything that can cast a shadow - does.

 

[Ulqiorra]

I was kidding, but okay.

Also, what is pillow-shading? Everyone says it, but no one explains it...

 

[Jason]

When you basically start darker around the edges and get lighter as you get into the middle, lol.

 

[boon]

Inq made a great example in his 'Introduction to Pixel Art tutorial.

 

[Ryanide]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I did believe the shading was a bit lacking, but I didn't muck about with hues.
I'll update these until I've found a style that looks good. And I was under the impression that pillow shading wasn't a bad thing.

Oh, and as for the hopping thing, I tried to give them a slight bounce as they walked, similar to the protagonist's walking sprite in Pokemon. Did I overdo it? XD

Only Yawn is a rabbit. Ginnigan is supposed to be somewhat of a stylised a red squirrel.

 

[Jason]

Well it isn't a bad thing when you're shading that pillow, lol... (Oh god that was a bad pun, I'll stop now)

And to be honest, it suits your style, but it is generally a bad thing, especially if you do EVERYTHING pillow shaded, yours just don't look bad because of how simplistic they are, if you added like, 4-5 more shades in (Dayum !), then it'd look terrible.

 

[boon]

Well it isn't a bad thing when you're shading that pillow, lol... (Oh god that was a bad pun, I'll stop now)

you missed the stop point by 4 posts :wink:

And to be honest, it suits your style, but it is generally a bad thing, especially if you do EVERYTHING pillow shaded, yours just don't look bad because of how simplistic they are, if you added like, 4-5 more shades in (Dayum !), then it'd look terrible.

No, really in general pillow shading is terrible. It is extremely frowned upon by pretty much every pro pixel artist.

 

[Ryanide]

Since I stuffed up the palletes of the walking sprites, I'm not going to bother adjusting the shading on those yet.

However, I took the suggestions to heart and am working on recolouring the battler sprites.

Now I wanted the colours to be crisp and bright to go with the story's original artstyle. Making variations of purple shades didn't get the look that I wanted, so I opted for using a different shading style.




It's not meant to be realistic shading, just stylistic. I kinda wanted something that would bring out the crome metal look of the characters, especially the smoother ones like Yawn. I hope this isn't frowned upon either, because I like this look.

 

[silver wind]

Amazing.. and you say you're new to this? o.o
As for the battlers, for some reason I like the previous ones better.

 

[Ryanide]

Well I guess I can't please everyone. ^^'

Anyway, I'll be sticking to this style from now on. It's more as I envisioned it to be, anyway.

Tilesets/NPCs coming soon. I plan to have the first level drafted before I do any more character sprites.

 

[Ryanide]

bumping with updates on the main page.

 

[Ryanide]

:< I feel bad doing so many bumps in a row.

Anyway, more new sprites.


Seeker: Another important character who first appears in the early stages of the game. His role as of yet isn't fully established but he is an anti-hero type character and will
appear as either a recurring boss or an ally depending on which path you choose to take.
While you can't see his body here, his design is based on the mythical nine-tailed foxes in Japanese fables. He has eight 'wings' that float behind him and one tail. By focussing his energy through his tail and into these wings he's capable of flight and very powerful beam style attacks, making him akin to an attacking mage. He has a crystal type alignment.



Maverick: A combat anidroid under the employ of the rebels. He was supposed to guard Ginnigan at the start of the game but the two of of them are soon separated. Maverick attempts to hunt Ginnigan down after surviving an airship crash. He might look gruff but he's quite a nice person especially towards anyone smaller than him (which means almost everyone.) Like Seeker, the player gets to choose whether he becomes friend or foe. Maverick is slow and powerful, and uses his many build-in firearms to deal damage. He has a magnet type alignment.



Rebel Soldier: these guys are all part of the rebel faction. They start out as NPCs and end up mainly filling the role of weak enemies later on. They don't boast any special abilities and only attack with simple weapons. If you choose to go to the rebels for help at a certain point in the game, they mostly dissappear and are replaced by members of the Holy Force. Their alignments are different depending on what colour they are.

 

[006]

These are quite good for your first time pixeling, I started like you too, first editing and mixing sprites and studying before actually diving in. But please fix your light source, your first two sprites are center and your third is right light source and the fourth has a right light source but the walking up has a left side light source.