As some of you may already know, my little amateur game development studio is in the midst of producing a new freeware adventure game set in the Wild West, with a decidedly Indiana Jones-esque flavor to it. (Check it out here for reference: http://www.chapter11studios.com).
We're looking for someone who can come in and create two or three different animated character sprites for our game. This could be either a one-time contribution or it could be a chance to join the design team full-time. Basically we are close to developing a beta demo of the game, and while I'm certainly interested (and intend to) learn animation myself, my time is stretched thin handling other aspects of the project right now.
If you're interested in helping out, even in a very limited capacity, please reply here or send me an e-mail. I'd be happy to answer any questions as well. Thanks!
P.S. Here are some examples of our screenshots and graphic style:
http://www.chapter11studios.com/images/screenshots/screenshot_stonehenge02.jpg
http://www.chapter11studios.com/images/screenshots/screenshot_outsidecave.jpg
Would these be in 'Outlaws' style-ish, or anything for reference. Like, what is your inspiration?
What kind of dimensions are you thinking of?
Here's a quick sketch of the general look we're shooting for with our character sprites:
http://www.chapter11studios.com/images/jake_in_color.gif
That was actually put together quickly by someone who's no longer on the team, but I like the look.
In terms of dimensions, our backgrounds are 640x480, and we're going back and forth internally debating whether to go 256 colors or higher resolution, but that will be determined shortly. But the height of the character sprites would be about 1/3 of the height of the screen. (I have the exact dimensions worked out elsewhere and would be happy to share them.)
P.S. Here are some character concept sketches that we'll be animating:
1) http://www.chapter11studios.com/images/evil_mastermind_complete.png
2) http://www.chapter11studios.com/images/mary_jane_full_body.jpg
3) http://www.chapter11studios.com/images/old_prospector_full_body.jpg
Also, my e-mail address is: chapter11studios @ yahoo.com
BTW mr roberts i'm really sorry about how i disappeared after that
I had a big series of bad events that ended with me leaving the internet for a month and a half
Quote from: cpage on Fri 07/11/2003 18:32:14
BTW mr roberts i'm really sorry about how i disappeared after that
I had a big series of bad events that ended with me leaving the internet for a month and a half
Hey, you're always welcome back if things are better for you now. As you can see, we still have a role that you could fill!
I'd relly love to help just let me make an animation of that for you first so you can tell me if you like it or not
1/3 of the screen's height (480) is 160 pixels tall. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) The concept art you have (Jake in color) is 158 pixels high, including the small margin.
That's a considerable size for a sprite!
How many frames were you planning on having for the walkcycle? The way the character is shaded now, animating him with sufficiently smooth inbetweening would be a monumental task!
(and that's assuming he had no more than 4 angles...)
Whoa, I still have to send in my art from my last request. Sorry, I have been extreamly busy. :-[ I'll try to do it this weekend.
Quote from: big brother on Fri 07/11/2003 21:55:45
1/3 of the screen's height (480) is 160 pixels tall. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) The concept art you have (Jake in color) is 158 pixels high, including the small margin.
That's a considerable size for a sprite!
How many frames were you planning on having for the walkcycle? The way the character is shaded now, animating him with sufficiently smooth inbetweening would be a monumental task!
(and that's assuming he had no more than 4 angles...)
Well, I think it really is just "concept" art, it doesn't mean the sprite itself will translate to that size onscreen.
QuoteBut the height of the character sprites would be about 1/3 of the height of the screen.
As I said, that's rather large.
1/3 of the screen is large? Shit, my sprites are about 100 pixels smaller than the screen height (200-something pixels in 1:1.85 aspect ratio on 640x480).
You'd better have some pretty floors and ceilings to show off. Of course you sometimes need to show large spaces, but there is such a thing as character scaling you know. It's bad enough that games rarely use close-ups, but there's no need to make the player feel like he's watching a play from the back row.
Sure, if you look at the oldies, characters are small, but only because of technical limitations. I mean, even Bill Tiller complained about the small sprites in The Dig.
I don't think it's just a technical limitation that the sprites were small. You also need to give a sense of the room/area that the characters are in, since there isn't much in the way of change of viewpoint.
Bill Tiller would complain - he's an artist, and I don't mean to generalize, but sometimes they think about visuals to the detriment of gameplay.
Cheers,
Steve
PS - to get back to the topic somewhat, the character designs I see here are superb. Very professional!
But there's always the irony with bigger sprites:
When they're bigger, they can show details better, but those details animate much worse.
I'm not terribly concerned about the size of the sprites (160 pixels high) affecting the quality of the animation. We'll need to put more detail into each animation, but I want this to be top notch all the way, so the extra effort will be worth it. And if it proves to be too difficult to do, there are a few workarounds that could be possibilities.
cpage, e-mail me (chapter11studios @ yahoo.com) if you want to discuss specifics. Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions.