The Resource WIP thread 2

[Rhino]

EDIT: You can find these (and others) in my resource thread! Link is in my sig.

(I hope it's okay to post this here- I wasn't really sure if it needs a topic in Resource Support instead...)

I'm thinking about making some edits of the rtp to make it easier for recolours/parallaxing. Namely taking items off shelves and splitting details (e.g. carpet borders) and that sort of thing.

I just wanted to know if anyone would be interested in this? (/if it's been done before.)

An example I made of Inside_B

Thanks!

 

[jjbones123]

Hello again everyone!

I really do apologies for taking so long to reply, i'll make a long story short and say that i've had stuff going on that hasn't allowed me much free time to play around with sprites. Better late than never I suppose. Regardless, I would like to thank people for their feedback.

@Sharm Yeah, you're probably right. My friends agree that I have a habit of obsessing/overthinking over small things and I feel bad asking them for feedback all the time. xD Its interesting that you like E the most, because the feet on E are honestly my least favorite. But you're right; the feet are more appealing facing sideways as that is tradition with most sprites. I initially made the "duck feet" (can't unsee now) as a combination of the feet both partly facing to the sides like most sprite characters but also partly facing forward because well, that's how feet work. But it doesn't seem to have worked.

You said you liked the wide stance of the original and honestly, it happened by accident; that was just me trying to draw a body. But I thought about it and I've started to really like the idea. So I tried different things to try and make him look more "plump" and then I thought: "What if I give him the stumpy legs, like in the original sprite" and I personally think it kinda works.

@Thetra I tried some different shades of reds, browns and blues and found that I liked the jacket being a darker shade of brown. I tried to make his stance a little less stiff and similar to the original I also brought the cap down a pixel so it's covering more of his hair and made it one pixel taller on top.

As for the hair over one eye, that was actually something I wanted to avoid and one of the reasons I chose to update the project to MV. The character (and other characters in the game) express themselves using their eyes: their pupils move around the eyes and the eyes themselves change to show emotion. The hanging hair bothered me because it got in the way of the eyes and it was hard to distinguish the eyeball from the outline of the hair and as a result, the character couldn't emote properly.

In conclusion, thank you for the feedback, I personally think it's made a big improvement.

 

[Pine Towers]

Please don't mind the absence of eyebrows.

Should I go with hard or soft outline? Charset use hard outline (as can be seen in previous posts in this thread), but this one is for a static cutscene.

Spoiler

I'm leaning over hard outline for ease of spriting, but soft outline just seems so nice...

 

[Sharm]

Depends a lot on what you're using it with. In general I personally prefer colored outlines.

 

[Pine Towers]

Yeah, @Sharm , I thought your answer would be the most reasonable one. I'll make the whole scene to see what fits better. Thanks.

 

[Chaos17]

Working on the next HUD

 

[Nirwanda]

Looks really cool and professional, chaos.
Making a custom tileset for a contest game. Any advice?

 

[Sharm]

Hmm, this is going to be tricky. You've got a really good start but it's all feeling a bit rough and unfinished, like you've skipped the refine stage. The reason seems to be a lack of consistency. The tree canopy, for example, is high contrast with a highlight and shadow that aren't incorporated into the shape and texture of the object being shaded, while the trunk has good shading but poor contrast, even the shadow is darker than the outline. The grass has high texture and no sense of form and no outline while the boxes have no texture and highly defined form with big black outlines. Any one of these styles can work for you, you just need to pick one.

 

[Nirwanda]

Thank you so much for the top notch feedback Sharm!
It does leave me with some questions, though.
About the tree canopy: How would I go about incorporating the shadow and highlight into the shape of the object? Besides the shadow being darker than the outline in the trunk is there anything else wrong with the shading of it?
About the grass: What do you mean by no form?
Yeah consistency is difficult for me.
So the styles would be:
1- High contrast (I assume that the highlight and shadow not being incorporated are a flaw and not part of the style).
2- Poor contrast(but I should make outlines darker).
3- No outline.
4- Strong outline.
I assume 3 or 4 should be combined with 1 and 2.
Honestly, I'm a little lost with this style and consistancy thing, any tips to keep the style consistant?
Thanks again

 

[Sharm]

@Nirwanda See, this is why it's tricky, I can see that stuff is wrong but expressing just exactly what and suggesting possible solutions without just telling you to do it my way is difficult.

The tree's dark section is completely ignoring the lighter shadow, when really it should be the same sort of thing, implying not only the shapes of the entire canopy but also the branch and leaves. Same with the highlight. Think more about how light works, use observations to supplement your imagination. How many leaves would the light hit directly? Where would those leaves be? Are there places where the light would hit multiple leaves directly and make them blend into each other? Which places would be completely in shadow? What's casting that shadow and how does that effect the shadows shape? Are there places where multiple shadows interact to make things even darker?

The placement of everything on the trunk seems just fine. You just need to tweak the colors. Having the darkest shadow be significantly lighter than the hole seems wrong. I think that if there's enough light getting in there to make it brown instead of black that it shouldn't be any darker than the edges.

Form is a very difficult thing to explain, at least how I'm meaning it here. Form is what makes something look like itself when there are no details. A lot of things go into this like sillouettes and pattern flow and shading, but I don't know how to teach anyone how to do it. If you didn't define the grass blades it wouldn't look like grass. It's entirely dependent on the details to define it. Look at the pattern from a distance or blurred and you'll see that it feels kind of spikey. Getting this part right took me a lot of time and study to understand that to represent an object in pixels I had to imply it's essence instead of indicating it's features.

To keep style consistent you just need to pick something and do it for everything. If you're doing black outlines, use the black outlines either for everything or make very specific rules for what gets outlined and what doesn't. In fact thinking of it as making rules for yourself is pretty accurate.

 

[Lestroth]

Sorry to bother you all again. I'm still busy with sprites and while it's slowly getting easier, another more technically question arises.

Artistically speaking, do you always have to stay true to forms?

Spoiler: Please take a look at this sprite.

The hair of the one looking down is the template for the rest. This one strand of hair is basically in front of the face, covering the eye, but now I have difficulties to decide how this wisp of hair should be depicted on the right looking sprite, because frankly, I think it looks rather weird to cover the whole face. On the other hand, the hair of the middle sprite - which I yet find best - is simply not how it's supposed to look.

In hopes to find a solution on my own, I took a look on one of the sprites in RM2k3 - Actor4-4, called Craise by default. Surprisingly to me the sprite seems to only use one perspective (the one where the wisp is on the backside, or that's how it looks to me), so that didn't help either.

So, I'd like to ask... which one would you prefer? Left, right, middle? A completely other attempt?

 

[Sharm]

Try going even further forward with the lock, letting the hair peak out inbetween. I like left best of the three. I wouldn't worry too much about not seeing the face. This is a sprite, it's meant to be seen in motion. As long as it's only one side the obstruction isn't going to be on screen for long periods of time without showing other angles.

 

[Lestroth]

@Sharm Thank you for the fast reply!

I'm not quite sure if I understand you correctly. Do you mean I should keep the curly appearance of the middle one? And by peak out in between you mean I should seperate the lock from the back of the head?

I tried to change them and make the hair peak out.

Spoiler: Which one comes closest?

 

[Sharm]

Mmm, no, I meant a bit more like this.

 

[jalaire]

@Lestroth I agree with Sharm that it makes perfect sense for the face to be completely covered at that angle. I actually prefer it that way. Of your original attempts I prefer the far left one. If you really want to have the face peeking out I would go with something similar to Sharm's edit, where the hair isn't too far away from the face but you can still see a little face detail peeking out.

------------

I was hoping I could get some feedback on a walking animation, specifically the hair. is it too much?

 

[Lestroth]

Oh my... Now I know what you mean. Thank you both so much!

Okay, then I will use that shape to work with.

@jalaire I think the animation looks totally great on its own. I don't think it's too much.

 

[Sharm]

I don't think it's too much at all. I love it! I think the animation has lots of personality. Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. (I was certain I'd posted this comment yesterday! Oh well.)

 

[jalaire]

Thank you both! I had been staring at it too long!

 

[Raijinn]

Ok, since one of the moderators told me to repost this...


I'd like some feedback, and how would you feel if you saw this in a game, thanks~!

Don't steal this, I'm begging you.

 

[Lestroth]

I think @mlogan meant to post your message boxes in the Work in Progress thread, over here: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/the-resource-wip-thread-2.39786/

Maybe someone can merge your topic with the existing one.

On topic I'd say it looks prettey good. Personally the "Speaking"/"Message" and "Z/Enter" are a little bit too much. But it all depends on your other assets.