Works of Sparky

[subspark]

Oh I wasn't referring to the characters sorry Nacho. I thought you were talking about the backgrounds the whole time. As for the characters, your absolutely right and I agree on every point.

Having said that, I do prefer a 'little' extra pixel detail and shade to my character sprites. They feel.....fuller/fleshier.
All my characters actually use 64 colors but under the recommendations of ProgZmax and yourself, they do need to be used in moderation. Admittedly, many of my character's colors are mushed together making the sprites appear blurry and dull.
I'll take your recommendations into consideration. Thanks again.

Cheers,
Sparky.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Your updated sprite looks pretty good, Spark!  You're still using rather more colors than necessary for such a small sprite, but the shading is much more uniform now and the colors on the pants in particular are much more eye-grabbing.  It seems to me like you started from a hybrid of the old FoA palette (at least for the skin tones) and sort of adapted it from there, so if I can make a suggestion, why not try for some more natural (less grey-red) skin tones?  Shifting them a bit towards pink and making them somewhat brighter with more contrast (highlight, midtone, shadow) would make the faces much clearer.  I don't think the washed out sprite palette is a good fit with your background but I could be wrong.

[Nacho]

No probs ^_^ Anyway, still, 16 is a good option for main characters, less colours to animate, less possibility of "animation bugs". If you use more in NPCs, which usually are static sprites that talk, it shouldn't be a big headache... Could annoy some of the purists, though! I am not one of those, I must say... 

[subspark]

If you really want to know I am definitely a purist and a perfectionist. I like my characters and their animations to be state of the art. That means animating every wrinkle in the pants and swaying of arms with shadows moving etc. I'm not sure I would use a limited palette to make it easier to animate. I'm much too of a quality over resourceful kind of guy, hence the reduction of colors 'after' my work has been completed in 32bit RGB.

Still, I do recognize the convenience and benefits of a using a 16bit palette but I'm going for the hyper detailed look.
I don't pretend to know why or where that idea started but I have a feeling it's been with me since I played The Secret of Monkey Island in 1993. I've always loved the smooth animation in the cutscenes and I guess over the years I saw room for improvement.
I really want to take classic 2D character sprites to the next level which is why I'm experimenting with so much detail (see the gardner character on the first page for a good example of the kind of detail I'm after). And it does animate.

Quite well actually:



Cheers,
Sparky.

[Renal Shutdown]

I sense Eric's sprite dealie paintovering..

I'll *never* get used to those legs.

[Dualnames]

Thank god no one pumped an old thread and this is new.

Btw your art sucks.

Btw I lie.

[subspark]

LMFAO!!

[Uhfgood]

I think a lot of people get the wrong idea about limited color palettes.  While it's true it would make things a bit simpler, it's also about restricting yourself so you can be more creative.

For instance we all saw how the star wars movies turned out.  The first one was great, because Lucas under extreme pressure to get something done on time and under budget, had to be creative about what to leave in and what to take out, and what to change.  He couldn't get all the aliens in the cantina due to budget constraints.  They had to reshoot all their front projection shots, because it didn't work and thus had to switch to blue screen (optical compositing), so they had even less time and money to do those shots.  We all saw how it came out.  But then compare that to the prequels.  No pressure on Lucas, he had as much money and time to do whatever he wanted and it turned out poor movies.  Same thing happened to Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, where they wanted to have social issues in their stories (twilight zone and star trek respectively) they had to be creative about it when the network censored them, thus the shows turned out better than they would have.

So my thought is that restricting your palette makes you more creative, and more choosy about how you use them.  You can always add colors and things later.

It's sort of like building a picture, you don't paint it all perfectly the first time, usually you start with an outline, maybe add some colors, then flat shade it... then, whatever...  You can work out your layout and composition in the sketch stage.

[subspark]

It's sort of like building a picture, you don't paint it all perfectly the first time, usually you start with an outline, maybe add some colors, then flat shade it... then, whatever...  You can work out your layout and composition in the sketch stage.

That IS how I work. What you see is the finished stage after I have added all the colors in and animated. But thanks for your perspective. I find that even painting everything by hand feels like I'm slogging through production on a 90's LucasArts Adventure title. It's fun but hard work. Still, worth it I beleive.

Thanks again,
Sparky.

[Jakerpot]

 :o So F****** incredible!  is that REALLY pixel art? it cant be! How do you make the collor choice, and how do you shade it? This is a wonderfull work brother, a walkthrough vide would be AMAZINGLY incredible!
Note; please do a background creation video. Or i will hunt down at least 200 signatures on a sheet of paper and show to the judge, so he will force you to do one! Is this way that democracy works isn't it?

[Peder 🚀]

Finally we get to hear a "bit" about your project!
Ive been waiting to see any information about it on here for ages!

Lovely backgrounds and characters!
I also think the last version of Hugh Mandle is alot better than the old one!
Nicely done!

Looking forward to see more about this game soonish?? .

[InCreator]

I cannot explain this very well or be constructive on this, but

* The left side of daylight background is my absolute favourite. It's totally great, and what makes it great are yellow flowers and high rocks. Almost like a photo.

On the other side, literally - right side of image is poor. Attention to detail and colors is incredible, of course, but everything looks like from someone who cannot draw very well. Can color and paint, but not draw realistic shapes. They are like a child drew them. That's a HEAVY contrast with left side, since left one is really realistic in it's weird way.

* Characters are okay, I guess. Your shading makes them a bit flat, and "attention to detail" is actually overdoing gradients (thus killing shading) and not much else... faces still look quite -er- functional. Not interesting or artsy, simply functional, like in every better AGS game. Pay attention to what ProgZmax said and remember that it's low res - don't try to treat it like high resolution picture. That's your main mistake... for example: if you have 13 pixels available to wrinkle clothes, you cannot cram every "realistic" wrinkle in -- it will look like horrible mess.
You have to choose only thay ONE wrinkle that REALLY has effect and pleases eye.

EDIT: fixed some typos

[subspark]

Thank you very much for your critique and comments, InCreator. They are the most honest and frankly the most helpful yet.
Gracias.

Sparky.

[cosmicr]

hey sparky, when are you gonna do a tutorial? the pics look great!

[subspark]

Thanks cosmicr. I'm tied up working on an Xbox360/Wii/PS3 title right now but I'll see if I can spare a weekend or two to do a proper comprehensive tutorial for you guys.
It'll give me a chance to implement some of the suggestions you guys have made into my work so you can see how I go about it.

Would a video tutorial be cool or perhaps a webpage with steps?

Cheers,
Sparky.

[InCreator]

Coming back to admire the picture, I finally noticed the cave.

The cave... Caves are usually made of 3 different ways: collapses (random), hot air and water. I'm reading an awesome book by Hungarian speleologist right now about karst and there's whole science behind caves.

This cave you drew doesn't look to be made in any of those ways. It rather looks like it's hand-made by really crafty giant.

[Dualnames]

Would a video tutorial be cool or perhaps a webpage with steps?

Cheers,
Sparky.

Would we beg for even a tutorial made of dead fish tied up together to give the illusion of animation?

YES MAN, anything!!

Wow, I'm acting like a little girl...