Sprite Jam - Pirates (Until January 16th)

[SpacePirateCaine]

Arr!

Ahoy there, fellow pixel art enthusiasts. Sorry for the delay getting the new topic up. I was intending to post it last night, but the forums went down for maintenance, and only now have I reconnected. During the down-time I was contemplating what we should have as our next topic. I've been having a tough time coming up with something for a while, so I decided to just say 'Screw it, let's go with pirates'. Everybody loves pirates, right?

Theme:
Make me a sprite of a pirate. Man, woman, pet, whatever strikes your fancy, but they should be a potential terror on the high seas. I'm looking for swashed buckles and dogs of the scurvy variety.

Rules:
I want the sprite to fit the following technical criteria:

• The sprite must fit within 150x150 pixels
• The sprite's color count before transparency should be 32 or less
• Backgrounds and other props may be included, but will not be counted toward the final product. If included, please also include a separate image with only the sprite
• For others to learn from your process, those that wish to include WIP images will be appreciated (Again, not obligatory)

Feel free to make multiple sprites if you feel inspired, I'd love to see a lot of good entries.

I hope this isn't too tough, and I'm looking forward to a good turnout.

Well, then, swabs! All hands on deck!

[Babar]

I'm not entirely satisfied with this- I realise I should have started with a smaller scan and then the shrinking would be less drastic, and halfway through I realised her legs and breasts are weirdly proportioned- but I really can't spend any more time with it (got exams coming up), so I'm going to post it as is (click for the full size):


Sketch, Drawing with outline, and drawing without outline (in preparation for shrinking).


And final, 150x150 sprite (4x).

[ALPHATT]

8 colors + transparecy

[pilferinloot]

How about a pirate-y pegleg parrot?

22 colours + transparency [Much thanks to Sylvr for figuring it out and fixing the white background]

[ThreeOhFour]

Left it on a 150x150 canvas due to laziness. 9 colours for image, 7 colours for the actual sprite itself. The image on the left is what generally counts as my sketch, which I then colour and shade at the same time into the final sprite on the right.



I zoomed it to 2x because it is a tad small.

Edit:

Just for fun, here is the sprite put into a scene, using the same seven colours as the original sprite.



Eyepatch Penny does battle with Zak the Kraken

Again, zoomed in to 2x to make it easier to read. See. Whatever you do to pictures.

[IndieBoy]

I was having fun with the rectangle tool

[buloght]

I played around with pirates for this, first one was like a remake of some pirates from my old pirate game if I were to remake game.

Then I did this but not finished, wanted to make pirate haul stuff from some sunken ship and have pirate captain girl too infront. I was gonna fix anatomy and stuff, still very rough.




edit: btw, that looks like an awesome game ben! Also like babar's very much

[ThreeOhFour]

Thanks

As soon as I saw your name on this thread I thought "Well, I guess we already know who has won this sprite jam" . Excellent sprites!

[bog]

i'd like to work more on this but i'm outta time

[loominous]

A quick entry:

Prior to being mutilated by the technical standards of the early 90s:


Post:


Edit: Some progress pics:



Edit 2: The photoshop file (cs3) in case someone's interested (~500 kb)

[SpacePirateCaine]

Avast, mateys!

Alright, it looks like we saw a pretty good turnout for the competition for this, our first Sprite Jam of 2009. I'm really glad to see everyone participating in the contest, and it's going to be a tough decision. I'll do a quick critique and justification for my decision in the final post, but if anyone's still working on their sprite, it's still 6:00pm in Honolulu, so I'm going to leave the final decision for the last possible minute of January 16th. If anyone is really close and wants a slight extension, I'm willing to give it to them, but if I don't see anything in the next five and a half hours, I'll be closing up and making my judgment.

I've removed the backgrounds from sprites that have them, so that everyone can see the sprites themselves, and added them below for everyone to see and compare:





Anyone else?

[buloght]

That second one of mine wasn't really meant as a sprite without the background (it was just playing around, more image-based), so I guess it shouldn't be entry then.

That's awesome loominous, loves it

[SpacePirateCaine]

Ahoy, pirates and pir-ettes.

Okay, so here we are, and it is time for me to arbitrarily pass judgment upon the contestants of the contest to decide whose sprite is the winner. I'd like to start, however, by offering some constructive criticism and comments on the sprites individually. So here we go:

Babar:

Firstly, I think that conceptually, the sprite is great - A strong pirate woman with a big rifle and eyepatch, the pose is dynamic and interesting, and I always love an eyepatch (which, incidentally, all but BoG's sprites have). If I were to change anything specific about the sprite, I'd say you may want to straighten her up a little, as she's a little lopsided as-is. Also, the high-contrast shading on the white shirt is great, but there's not a whole lot of shading elsewhere to keep it consistent. I'd love to see a few more shadows on this sprite, to give it a little more punch.

loominous:

What can I say? Talented as always. Not sure what you mean by mutilated by the technical standards of the early '90s, but I know that you dislike low resolution sprites, still, your buccaneer there certainly does translate well on a smaller scale - though you have a lot of superfluous colors on the background that I had to edit out ultimately to get it to 'just the sprite'. This led to some jagged edges, and it doesn't really read well on a dark background. Mercifully, the forum displays pale blues, so it isn't a really glaring issue, but it would make it difficult to implement without either dark outlines, CMI-style, or making sure he only shows up on a very specific background. I'd love to see you challenge yourself with actual pixel-by-pixel art, and see what comes out of it. With your talent, I'm sure it'd be awe-inspiring.

pilferinloot:

Ah, the pirate's best friend - the parrot. The words even sound similar: Pirate - parrot. I really like what you've done with this little guy, he has a lot of personality. The main problem I could see would be the black outlines and a handful of double pixels, maybe some of the lines could stand to be smoothed out as well. But that aside, like it. The texturing on the body, pegleg, belt-strap... All very well done, and definitely they add a lot to the feel of the sprite.

BoG:

I don't know what it is, but I like it. I guess he's some sort of ant-pirate with a bitchin' beard. I really have nothing to criticize about this one, except I think it might possibly stand to have one more shade per color grade, just to even things out - it's very high contrast right now, and for some reason comes across a little flat. But I love it all the same, and would for certain be shivering in my timbers if I saw that thing scuttling towards me.

Alpha2T:

Yar indeed! Kinda reminds me of the Terminator or R2-D2 on the high seas... Probably the glowing red eye. The main issues I could take with this one are that I think a few of the lines could be smoothed out a bit, and for some reason, it had a really strange pallette when I imported it into GraphicsGale to view it (No fault of your own, I'm sure, but I had to actually take a screenshot, since the transparency layer came out black). It's cute, and I think it'd be fun to play a game with a similar style.

Ben304:

I love it. Actually, I used to wear my hair like that. Despite the small size of the sprite, it reads very well, and the design is simple enough to really get a good feel for. Maybe the right foot (her right, the one still made of meat) could stand to be brought in a pixel or two, but that's all I can really think of as criticism. Zak the Kraken was also an awesome sprite, and the tiny rubber ducky is super-groovy. If you made this game, I would definitely want to play it. As far as style, I think I'd like to have this as my protagonist the most out of all of them - the character just has a whole lot of personality, and I imagine that you could animate it really, really well.

IndieBoy:

Very simple shapes, solid black outlines, but I really dig the way it presents itself. I think that stylistically, it's a great choice, and though I still think black outlines can have a negative effect on the sprite, I see no reason it would really immediately need any drastic changes. I neglected to add any of the props or the background that you supplied, though it really shows that the style translates cleanly, and it would be a really charming adventure to play. Incidentally, of the props, I really, really want to see the parrot in action.

buloght:

And bulought, what can I say? For pixel-pushers, you're amazingly talented, and I wish I had the patience to put something together that detailed. I zoomed up to about 5X and had a very close look at them, and it's amazing what a few colors can do to make an image work. It took me ages to wrap my head around some of it, especially with the amazingly small color pallette. 15 colors +1 for transparency? They're both awesome. If I were to criticize, I'd say that the woman pirate seems just a tiny bit lopsided, leaning forward. If you rocked her back just a pixel around her thigh area, I wonder if that wouldn't help. Honestly, I'm grasping at straws.

All in all, a whole lot of awesome sprites. Still, I'm obligated to choose one winner. So, for blowing my mind with the complexity but surprisingly smooth read, I'm going to have to go with buloght.

Thank you all very much for entering, and I really appreciate everyone's great work. Now, let's see a bunch of new pirate adventures with these guys in them!

[loominous]

but I know that you dislike low resolution sprites

Where does this silly notion come from? Have heard it several times before and I have no idea what it's based on.

-

Oh, and great entries everyone! I particularly like:

Ben's - the style is just magnificent
Bulought's -  annoyingly skilled execution
IndieBoy's - simple and really cool design

[ALPHATT]

it had a really strange pallette

Yes actually I used the defult 16 colors EGA palette.

Not sure why though, but I guess it doesn't matter too much.

[SpacePirateCaine]

Where does this silly notion come from? Have heard it several times before and I have no idea what it's based on.

Honestly, I'm happy to hear if it's not the case - I always got that vibe since your general attitude towards the whole low-res scene seems a little standoffish, generally speaking. Word choices like "Mutilated by the technical standards of the '90s" sort of imply that you don't like being limited by an anachronistic style. If I read too much into it, all the better. Regardless, your art is definitely top-notch stuff, whether it's traditional pixel art or otherwise. I'd love to see what you can do freehand at the pixel level.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Congratulations Buloght.  I think your male pirate was a well-deserved win.  Very classy.

[buloght]

Thanks for cool feedback caine. I did love them all and thought loominous would take this one. I agree that it's a little hard to use it as in-game sprite. It would be really amazing if made clean (like CMI) (just pixel-cleanup, you'd easily own that, directly over your character).

Thanks, progz

I'll start new one now.

[loominous]

sort of imply that you don't like being limited by an anachronistic style.

Oh, that's very much true. I rarely enjoy pixeling, just like I don't like oil painting either. But that's completely separate from my affection for the results of these processes.

Honestly, I'm happy to hear if it's not the case - I always got that vibe since your general attitude towards the whole low-res scene seems a little standoffish, generally speaking

I think your first words in this thread sums up quite nicely why I do have a problem with elements of the low-res scene in this community: Being greeted by "Ahoy there, fellow pixel art enthusiasts" in a public general art activity is kind of like nation leaders in a world summit meeting being greeted by a "Welcome Europeans!" banner.

I'm beginning to realize you guys simply don't care how you treat hi-res enthusiasts, so I'm gonna propose a dedicated pixel art activity, and hopefully this will all be in the past (guess the Suggestions thread would be the place).

[buloght]

I'm in two minds about this, because it's a sprite activity, and generally sprites are clean or pixelled or something like that for animation purposes (and fitting it to rooms without outline noise). But designing a character is such an important part of the end product, maybe there could be some middle ground. Because I truely enjoy your character art (and you are not the only one -> misj and others).