simple art style

[Morgan]

I have been trying to come up with an art style that makes it easy to create lots of backgrounds and characters in a short time. I think I’ve got it pretty much down but I need some help.



this is a animation test with a male and female character. I like the male characters face down animation but his other animations need some work. I am pretty happy with all the female animations. The static character in the middle is my idea for a main character.



this is a background that I am working on. any changes or advise you can come up with would be appreciated.

[SpacePaw]

this "simple style" you're talking about is just tile based graphics used in most old and handheld rpgs Look it up
I like it besides this gray squares on the top of the walls. Try to make in consistent (repetitive but continueous) instead of squares line

[Takyon]

See, golden sun, early final fantasy series, pokemon game boy games etc. They all use this style.

[Morgan]

Yes, I know this style was used in console RPGs. I have played video games in the past : . I made the characters eyes much smaller and gave them more realistic hair to differentiate them from Japanese, manga styled characters like in Chrono Trigger or Dragon Warrior.

spacePaw: I'm not exactly sure what you mean but I think you are saying that I should make the gray squares look more natural, thinner, and less blocky, to get them to look more like the top of the wall and less like "blocks". I tried that at first but I kind of like this better. The more natural looking walls looked to plain and uninteresting. The gray squares, in my opinion, make it look less real but it gives it more of a puzzle, "game" feel, if that makes sense.

[Trent R]

Once you get the fast style done, you could create some tilesets and then code a program (with AGS even) to quickly make your backgrounds.

Looks really good, and I like your take on the sprites.


~Trent

[rbaleksandar]

  About the animation - I thinkg that you could add 1-2 more frames in the side and back views pf the male character and 1-2 more frames  in the back view of the female one. Looks kind of stiff. Not like the from above view of the male character where you have more frames (4 or 5 I think).
  Question: why's there a big area of lighter grey above the table (or whatever color the floor is)? It looks kind of odd. I see that the same area is in front of each and every door. There it makes sense. But here...
  And SpacePaw's right - you should change the big grey squares and make 'em fit the whole background. They're too thick besides (unless this is some kind of a bunker - than it's ok ).
  One more thing - add some furniture beside the table and 2 chairs (I think you'll since you wrote that this is work in progress).

  I've never been a fan of this style (anime and manga too), but you've done well.

[Ghost]

Don't get me wrong, but when I compare these RPG-Maker-style, rather generic sprites with some of the original stuff you made... I beg you to stick to your old style!

[SpacePaw]

besides - I just pasted your characters onto the background. they seem to be too small or the background too big. window starts at the head o the character and doors are just gigantic!

Even the table seems too big - more than character height radius and only 2 seats? If you were after smal table for 2 people than it's too big too

[Morgan]

rbaleksandar: its suppose to be light from the window. I will probably remove them from the doors because it doesn't make sense where the light is coming from, unless there is a light bulb in every doorway.

I will look into reworking the background to make it look less angular and more organic and natural like some of my old stuff. I would like it to be made up of tiles without it looking so obvious.

I've touched up the main character and reworked the facedown animation.



I don't want these characters to look too much like unoriginal Japanese RPG sprites. It will be hard to completely remove the similarities but I will try. First off the game will be set in the future but have a 19th century atmosphere. I will also add some fantasy elements (giants, vampires, shape shifters) but try to not use the kind seen in almost every game (goblins, trolls, and elves).

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think that if you want to move away from the japanese approach then you need to look at design from a fresh angle.  For instance, what is it that 'defines' the japanese chibi-type character style popular in rpgs?

1.  Enormous heads and small bodies.

2.  Flamboyant colors.

3.  Flamboyant costumes.

4.  Small overall design.

So if you want to work away from the style towards something distinguishable from it you need to eliminate (or drastically reduce) the elements that make it easily identifiable, and the first four are the ones that stand out most to me (there could be more).

With this in mind, I made an edit.

1.  Altered character anatomy, making head smaller and legs longer.  A side-effect of this is that it allows for more dynamic poses and more expression.

2.  Altered and reduced colors to increase contrast between shades and bring out the shapes of the characters.

3.  Changed some clothing designs to make them less eccentric in appearance.  For instance, removed the bandanna because it's a highly cliche'd element in the rpg wardrobe (so are trench coats, but at least they are commonly worn).

4.  Each character now has a different 'shape' instead of being generic templates.  Differences in height and weight go a long way to adding character to tiny sprites.





After reducing the color count and changing some here and there I found a clean style that, in my opinion, stands out from traditional japanese rpg artwork and gives the artist plenty of room for facial and body expression.  For instance, a mouth can now be displayed if you like, and the extra leg length and presence of a neck area allows for more interesting poses.  Hopefully this helps!

[Jakerpot]

Why is the main character so diferent? I think if you stay on a standard (i don't know how to say it) you could make the game look more atractive. I alseo done some edits on your bg:



I know that you wanted to make the tiles in the top of the doors to indicate the door is here, but i think it looks much poluted with all this tiles on te roof... You can just use the lttle lights you already used, or make something else, or just ignore me! But i worked many years with rpg maker, and never saw a game with this kind of roof... But if you want to be the first...  :

[rbaleksandar]

I really don't see any difference in your paint-over, Jakerpot, except the fact you removed the bricky-border. Well, and here comes a little problem - no matter what kind of border you choose, it has to be obvious where the doors are. In your case if the door is placed sideways (vertical), the player can only guess where it is since Morgan said, that he's going to remove the light spots on the floor. So if you have a room devided in to halves with a vertical line (wall), where you don't see where the door is, if you have to use a key or something on this door, you'll be forced to do some pixel-hunting. And as we know - that ain't cool So there has to be SOME indication where the door(s) is(are).
  One more thing - border is still too thick and takes precious space on the screen that can be used for something much more important thing

[Morgan]

ProgZman: While your edit looks great and I could do something similar if I wanted, the point of making the characters look the way they do is to make it easy to use the basic design to create many characters with ease. While doing it this way I have to make sacrifices like the ability to make each character an individual, it saves me a lot of time and energy.
Jakerpot: The man and woman that I original animated are test characters that have nothing to do with the game. I made them before I had a plot or any ideas for a game just to get the design and animation down. Now that I animated the main character and am planning on completely redrawing and reanimation the side and back views you can ignore those characters.

I’ve been dabbling with the background.


First I have removed the gray squares and made that part of the wall look more realistic. Second I added some noise to the background to make it look grittier. And last I have three ideas for changing the floor tiles. The first (top left) removes many of the actual tiles but still gives the impression that the floor is tiled and makes it look less uniform. The second option (top right) is similar to the first but with a more minimal approach. The last option (bottom) solves the problem of telling were the doors are and is the one I’m leaning towards. The only problem with this one is that it makes the side doors look as if their being viewed from a top down perspective while the rest of the background is at an angle.

I’ve also tweaked the main characters front view animation.

[Layabout]

Looks like you have used a coloured noise filter. You should use greyscale noise filters to add texture.

The reason why characters are usually designed to have a different shape and variation is to the characters and makes them easil recognisable to the player. Outfits are helpful, but so is body shape, proportion etc. Too many a times have I been playing a game and got confused because characters dress in a similar way or their body shapes are 'standard'.

Are you doing more frames for the animation? It's very jumpy, 4 frames will do that, although I understand your reasoning for doing it. A good comprimise would be 6 frames, although with the art style and size of sprites, you might not want to bother with it. Not my cup of tea really. Your little dudes side views don't match the isometric style. Should be looking down on him, but it looks like a direct side on view. This applies to all the sprites. Front views are pretty ok, if not samey.

And Jakerpot, why do you keep doing edits which are really only changes that could easily be dictated. It's a bit pointless really.

[Morgan]

I redrew and animated the side and back views. I'm very happy with the side view animation and I think the back view is good but I think the head looks wrong. I also did a quick "push" animation and "gun shot" animation.

I think I will use character portraits to solve the lack of character/style problem.

[rbaleksandar]

About the back view - try to make it bounce vertically. What the guy's doing right now is turning his head left or right on each and every step, which - no need to say - will give him great pain, if he does that all day long.