Police Quest Character Sprite

[DCillusion]

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.

[Mozesh]

Looks pretty good, the only thing bothering me are the shoes.

[RyRayer]

Heh, yeah. Why one is yellow and another one is grey? You should do something with his head too. It's pretty good, though.

[DCillusion]

That's funny,  I didn't even notice the feet - Thanks

I can't see what's wrong with the head - Please clarify the critique.

[LGM]

I think it looks splendid.. Now animate it and then truly amaze me!

[big brother]

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.

[DCillusion]

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.

[Blackthorne]

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

[Sam.]

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..

[DCillusion]

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



Now does AGS allow for 32 colours for sprites, or am I still looking at 16-bit colour?

[LGM]

If you make your own pallete, you can have 256 colors..

[DCillusion]

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.

[CoffeeBob]

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.

[big brother]

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.

[Oz]

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.

[Babar]

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.

[fovmester]

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!

[DCillusion]

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.

[big brother]

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.

[Mozesh]

Thats a good paint over.
I like what you did with the legs & feet.