Big Indiana Jones Sprites and Animation

[Kaio]

Hi there. I was just thinking about picking up my old Indy-Game idea. It probably won't be finished anyways in the next 23 years, so I just wanted to get some advice about my spriting. I did some Indiana Jones sprites that would fit in a 640x480 background.


The most dificult thing to me was the face... So I kept it quite simple. What do you think?
Gretings, Kaio

[Khris]

Not bad, but the shading is completely off. The stance is a bit weird, too.
Also, don't post JPGs, they'll end up with artefacts. Use PNGs or GIFs.

[Sam.]

Could you post a non jpeg version? use png or something.. I wanted to look closer at it but it is full of artefacts

[Kaio]

Oh sorry!
Heres a png.

[Sam.]

You see, what you've done is save the jpeg image, already with artefacts, as a png. What you need to to is save the raw bmp, or photshop or psp image as a png, to avoid artefacts.

[Kaio]

What you need to to is save the raw bmp, or photshop or psp image as a png, to avoid artefacts.

But thats what I did. I also checked the uploaded png from my last post again, and there are no artefacts...

[Gilbert]

I don't see artifact in the PNG (there are in the JPEG).

[Sam.]

Quick paintover:



As you can see i only painted on the dressed down one. I cleaned up his head and gave his face more definition, also cleaned up the shirt a bit, i thought it looked too busy but thats up to you!

Just for ideas.

[InCreator]

Not bad, but

* Nose is wrong. Nose stands out, is closer to the viewer. ...Which means, it should be lighter, not darker than rest of the face.
* I kind of hate those yellowish hues.  Everything looks a bit too... yellow. Try with more different color tones.
* Right shoe looks like clown's shoe. Make it shorter by 2 pixels
* Left hand on Indy with hat is strange. Make it like on version without hat.
* Version without hat has way better eyes. They don't look so clueless and dumb. Use those ones on both.

[Sam.]

I think you commented on my paintover... Thanks though!

update:

Finished it on the other sprite.

[Kaio]

Thanks for all the comments. Zooty, I like all the small things you changed on the sprites. But I don't know about the face...It's hard to do a good looking face on that pixel-level. I'll experiment a bit on that. Again, thanks!

[paolo]

This is Indiana Jones from around what time? The face looks very boyish, as if he is a teenager. If this is "traditional" Indy rather than young Indy or Crystal Skull Indy, then he should look (early) middle-aged and rugged. The face needs to be aged. Sorry, no paintover as art is not my forte.

[Kaio]

It's supposed to be a post-WWII Indy. Around 1946. So he might be older than in the first 3 movies and jounger (I don't know when exactly Crystal Skull plottet) than in the 4th.

[Sam.]

just a little edit to maybe make him older

[Kaio]

I continued working on the sprites. Here's my first walkcicle:

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I really like the walkcycle but his feet are a bit of a problem.  The feet look like bricks rather than shoes (making them stick out slightly to the sides and lift up more on a down step will help here).  There's also a bit of a jerking effect in one of the frames, which leads me to suspect that this could be a paintover of another walkcycle (I could be wrong, and if so I applaud your attention to detail).

One thing I did was redraw the face, which seems to be what you are having the most trouble with.

1.  Changed the skin tones more towards the red spectrum (increased blue values by about 10-20).

2.  Reshaded the face to bring out Indy's weathered features and added beard shadow.





I only altered 3 of your skin tones and removed one that I didn't even notice until I played with the colors.  Something to watch out for is having too many similar shades in a drawing.  They don't add to anything if people can't see them.  I think the animation itself is quite good aside from the one frame jerk back, so I think you've done a good job!

[Kaio]

Wow ProgZmax, the face you've done looks awesome! That surely will help me. And alot of people are refering about the colors I choose... I'm working on my notebook and it shows the colors a bit different than a normal screen, so I didn't even noticed that there might be to much yellow and to less blue  . And ProgZmax, what do you mean with "one frame jerk back"?
Thx, Kaio

[Gilbert]

I like the animation, but one thing that bugs me is that the head doesn't change in all the frames. As the body and the arms, legs are nicely animated with varying angles, this makes the head looks flat as a piece of paper (though the head does bop up and down and sways to the left and right, it still looks flat as it is always that straight front view). I think even just adding some slight variations to the angles of the hat (e.g. rotating clockwise/anti-clockwise slight during the motion) may help.

P.S. Progz' paintover of the face is fantasic as well.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The jerky frame occurs between frames 3 and 5 when Indy's head moves smoothly to the left one pixel at a time and then suddenly jerks back two pixels in frame 5 I think.  One way to avoid this is to make the character animate in place without swaying, like so:




This often looks more natural for game animations because of frame limitations.  I also went ahead and made his feet stand out more (no pun intended).  As Gilbet said, some variation in the facial movements, even if slight, will make his head look less like a mask and more like it is part of his body.

[Kaio]

Ahh, now I see, thanks. True, it looks kinda off. And I agree with you, Gilbet. I might need to animate the head as well. Overall, the whole animation needs a bit of finetuning...
Anyways, I did a quick paintover using ProgZmax' head. I altered a bit to make it fit the body a bit better. Here you can compare:
old: new:

I'm just amazed how the new head looks. It fits perfectly imo .