Well, my last game went bust, but I'm trying again - slowly.
After multiple PQ2 remakes have been dropped, I've counted 3, I'm thinking of taking a stab at it. Here is the main character sprite for critique. Any help is appreciated as I haven't done much work in low-res sprite work. As it stands, it will be 16-bit colour as I can't get the character lower than 116 colours & still have any quality. It's original, no rips or edits, but I did use both the PQ2 & PQ3 character sprites as reference, but I suppose that's a given.
Anyway, thanks for looking.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Progress.png)
Looks pretty good, the only thing bothering me are the shoes.
Heh, yeah. Why one is yellow and another one is grey? You should do something with his head too. It's pretty good, though.
That's funny, ;D I didn't even notice the feet - Thanks
I can't see what's wrong with the head - Please clarify the critique.
I think it looks splendid.. Now animate it and then truly amaze me!
I think you definitely need to cut the color count. Right now there are easily a half dozen or so shades of very dark brown in his jacket. If you're really having trouble, I think I cut cut the count down to 20 by hand without losing the essence of the sprite.
Have at it - Paintovers are welcome,
I'd still like the jacket to look ruffled, that's what I'm having trouble with, the pro's seem to do it with 3 colours.
I'm also trying to decide if I want to deal with effects like PQ3's neon-red shirt. That is another factor that keeps me from cutting the colours.
I think it looks like a perfect lo-res Sierra sprite! Bravo!
Good luck with a remake; I'd love to see one. I enjoyed PQ2 quite a bit.
Bt
hmm, just following what bb said, i managed to get the picture down from 126 colours to 27 colours. Im not sure if its lost its charm though..
(http://www.twin-design.com/fafmb/photos/policequiestguy.gif)
I'm really impressed 8)
Ok, I'm inspired now, I'm going to see what my computer can do, (I don't know why I didn't think of this before).....
I counted the colours of the PQ3 sprite, (32), and had Paint Shop try to get my sprite down to the same number using the PQ3 palette.
I came up with this
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/pqtest.png)
Now does AGS allow for 32 colours for sprites, or am I still looking at 16-bit colour?
If you make your own pallete, you can have 256 colors..
Oh no, I didn't mean I only used the colours of the character.
I counted the number of colours on the sprite, & then loaded the full 256-colour PQ3 palette into PSP to allow it to decrease the colouring by picking the best 32 colours.
I could make my own palette, but I'm still leaning towards borrowing one from people who had more experience in that area. I don't know how they picked 256 colours that would best fit their entire game.
The sprite looks excellent, heck, it looks like an actual Sierra-sprite!
Some small crits though:
The feet look too small, make them a little bit bigger.
The right part of his head looks a little weird. You should change the hair's darker shades so that it doesn't look like the skin.
Otherwise, great work. I would make a paint-over to show you better what I mean, but that would ruin the sprite and make it look like my PO. ;)
Looks like you beat me to it in the paintover department. A quick suggestion: try hand-picking every color you use in your sprites. The end result will outshine a sprite that you used an automatic palette reduction on.
I think your main problem is that you've used the PQ3 sprite for reference. That sprite is obviously digitized and converted to 8-bit which is the reason for the unnatural composition of colors and shades.
Don't really remember the PQ games, but isn't he a police officer? Why is he wearing jeans? And what a scruffy jacket! Shoulder's up man! ....starts rambling off in German.....
Another suggestion: Make the shoes completely black. Or if not, make them 2 shades (like the PQ3 sprite). Right now, because of the very small area occupied by the shoes, the pixel mix looks distracting.
I always thought the PQ3-character was too blurred and ugly! Don't try to remake it! Do something new instead. Base it on the PQ2-character and upgrade it and you'll have a 21th century Sonny!
Big Brother - The offer's still open for a paintover. You're a great low-res artist, any critiques you offer are apreciated.
Oz - Almost all Sierra game sprites were made this way. While it's true I'm trying to avoid making it look like crap, I still want to copy the style. The game would be a nostalgic piece. For better or for worse, I think referencing the original is unavoidable.
Babar - I guess it is confusing if you haven't played the games. Being a beat-cop is BORING!!! In #2 exclusively, & in the other games partially, the character changes to "plain-clothes" detective. I guess in the 80's/early 90's this was very cool.
Fovmester - I'll see how well that works. I am concerned with making the game look like it would fit between the 2 VGA games, & PQ1 was made with the same pallette & style as PQ3; so I don't think I can venture very far considering the variables I'm trying to follow.
Ok, I pixelled over your original sprite, picking mostly all new colors. I pared your color count down to 11, which should be more usable in AGS. Probably easier to animate, too.
(http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/upload/files/progress2.gif)
Thats a good paint over.
I like what you did with the legs & feet.
You should remove his mouth. He looks like his scared or something. :P
big brother, great work, you totely lowered the colour count while at the same time improving the work all around. if i mayÃ, make a sugestion...
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/pquestedit.gif)
a single pixal i know but it makes a differance.
btw GREAT work on the jacket. it REALLY looks like a leather jacket now. :o
Although that one looks amazing, I guess his looking for a Sierra-like Fell?
That paintover is incredible!!! :o
I believe it answers my question to use 16-bit colour. Although the colours you've chosen are brilliant, I don't think I could even attempt sprite work at under 20 colours, & it is beginning to lose some Sierra-ness to it with the lack of assigned colours.