Character Creation - sprite sizes for optimal results

[Toonloon]

Hi guys!

I'm an absolute noob here but I did have a look round the FAQ's and the Tutorial Wiki's for more info on character creation. I didn't manage to find an answer to the question I was looking for, so maybe someone here can help...

I'm just about to make a series of animations for my character... is there best size for the sprites, or is it unlimited? Also, do I stick to the same number of animations that Roger has, or can that number be increased?

Any advice would be gratefully received. Thank you.

[Matti]

It totally depends on the style you choose and your personal preference. I myself draw characters approximately 1/3 of the screen heigth, others make them smaller or larger.. the most important thing is that they correlate with the backgrounds you make and the resolution you use. I suggest drawing some backgrounds first and then see what size the characters should have to fit in.

You can make as many animations as you like. I think there's a limit for the frames per animation but it's high and shouldn't bother you. Edit: There's no limit for frames per loop!

[barefoot]

Hi

Most of the character sprites i use are around  26 x 90.... This is basically just the character showing ie walking could be up to 50 x 90 full stride.  You can make sprites at other sizes if you want to. .

Obviously with a variety of new characters its best to keep the sizes similar otherwise one could be a giant or tom thumb! There is also a manual scale command for any character. Walkable areas also dictate character sizes as well.

You can have as many animation views of a character as you want. To change the animation view simple change the characters view number.

Hope this helps

barefoot

[Toonloon]

That's great guys! I didn't want to go to the trouble of creating something then finding out I'd made too many animations, or that I had made them too small and could have made them bigger to increase the detail.

Thank you.

[NickyNyce]

I'm not positive but i think it's around 14 frames for a view?

[Matti]

Nah, that would be quite a limitation! I just checked, there's no limit for loops per view or frames per loop.

[NickyNyce]

Oops sorry, I thought one of the Densming videos mentioned that, this is good news, I'm glad I mentioned it, thanks for the info Matti.

[Matti]

No problem. You can check all the limits in the help file under Reference > System limits.

[Toonloon]

How do you guys create your characters?

At the moment I have a full body human character withe the arms and legs as seperate layers in Photoshop. I then put it into After Effects and can animate the arms, but I'm having a real problem with the legs.

How do you do yours?

[barefoot]

Hi

There are geometric ways of doing the body as well as arms, legs etc.

Well, some of us are pants at making character sprites...

I generally copy and paste good character sprites into a paint program (like photoshop) and look at how the legs work and try and do my own on my new character..

Practice and  check out making/drawing characters on the internet.

barefoot

[Toonloon]

Okay. I went to a LOT of effort, but I've made an animated character that I am very pleased with, but when I import it into the spirte collection and I see him moving when I run my 'room', he is surroudned by 'garbage' pixels which I cannot find in my original animation frames. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong please?

[Khris]

Basically you are using images with alpha transparency in a game without.

Either clean up the edges of the sprites or change the game's color depth to 32bit and re-import them.

[monkey0506]

Some programs (like Photoshop) let you view only the alpha channel (turn off the R, G, and B channels), which can make it much easier to pick out these problems. Something else you could try is just create a new layer behind everything and flood-fill that layer to black (or something else that will give these problem areas a high level of contrast).

[Toonloon]

Thanks for the tips.

When I save my jpgs, photoshop automatically adds a white background, which is in contrast to the figure itself. I'll go through all my animation frames a look out for any "noise" around the figure and see if I can elimiate it.

[Khris]

JPGs! :o

Never, ever use JPG for anything other than photos you don't plan to edit later on.
It's evil. (It uses a compression algorithm that fucks up pixels and colors, adding artifacts in the process, and doesn't support transparency.)

Save your sprites as GIFs (single color transparency support, 256 colors) or PNGs (alpha transparency, millions of colors).

[Matti]

Never ever use JPGs, they screw up the image. Use PNGs instead, they are lossless and allow alpha channels.

Edit: Khris has beaten me, but I'm stating this once more anyway..

[Toonloon]

I tried using PNGs, but the alpha channel doesn't appear to be working properly. Do i need to make a layer or something before I save as PNG? At the moment I'm getting much worse background noise than with jpgs. I must not be doing something correct

[Toonloon]

Aha! It works brilliantly with gifs. No more mess!

Thanks guys!

[Toonloon]

You can make as many animations as you like.

I have 11 frames of animation for my character walking to the right. How do I tell the game to use 11 frames instead of 8 frames that "Roger" uses by default, please?

[Matti]

You don't have to tell AGS to use a certain amount of frames, AGS does that automatically.

Also, please don't multipost, you can edit your posts.