need advice on character/sprite creation

[Warg]

G'day fellahs.

I've been going through these forums over the past couple of days, have read the online tuts, etc.. And need a bit of help. YOu see I'm currently trying to make my own little adventure game (as we do) and am stuck on the best method to do (animate) the characters.

I'm really tossing up between two methods, the older style (Monkey Island 1 & 2, etc) games of fairly small characters, but with pixelated shading. Or my preferred style, like that seen in the CMI, where the characters are a lot larger but aren't actually shaded.

The way I see it, the CMI animations seem a lot smoother, I'm assuming because there are more frames for each action. Now I'm happy to sit there with my tracing pad and draw each frame, but is the CMI method plausible to do on AGS? Afterall a sprite can only be 640x480 correct? Whereas the CMI would look better at 800x600 (I know you can do 800x600 backgrounds but what about sprites?) and is there a limit on how many frames you can use per cycle (I know I read this somewhere but can't find it now).

My biggest problem seems to be that scanning in the images. To do an image at 250 DPI means that the image is really big, but when I resize the image (I'm using photoshop 5.5) the lines often get blurry. What is the best width pen do you think for drawing characters? Currently I'm using .5 and .7 - and should I be physically drawing the images at the size I want in-game or make them larger to fit more detail in them, then resize them once scanned in?

Sorry about the messy post, I thought I had a single coherent question till I started typing.

Cheers

[Johnny Odd]

Hiya!
Firstly i'd say that it depends entirely on your decision when it comes to cartoony/smooth characters or old school/pixleated characters - what is the rest of the game like? Backgrounds? Storyline? Atmosphere? Chose a style that fits these.
   If you scan in a drawing, generaly you have to clean it up a little on programs (like photoshop 5.5) - can't you resize the image and then reinforce the lines in paint or somthing?
   I think - but i'm not sure (i'm still new too) - that if you change from 640x480 to 800x600 then all the sprites you create will change in relation to this.
   Errr.. I think that's it. Is that any help?

[Gurok]

I find when I use a 0.5mm (scanning images in at 150 DPI), then resize them down to about the right size for a 640x480 resolution game (about ??x150 pixels), I get an outline thickness on each character of almost exactly one pixel. If that's any help.

EDIT: Gah. I should have mentioned that my sprites start out at about ¼ of an portrait A4 page each when I draw them.

[Warg]

Hey fellahs, thanks for the reply

THe game I'm working has really dark content. I think the CMI style works well with this, assuming I can get the backgrounds done right (now there's a headache!).

I've decided to go with larger drawn (2/3's of A4) images using .7 then resizing them once in. I did a 16 frame walk cycle using smaller drawn images and I couldn't put in a lot of the detail I wanted.

The biggest problem I'm having now is drawing the frikken hands. Anyone know good methods for hands?

[Kweepa]

Burne Hogarth does:

Drawing Dynamic Hands
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0823013685/qid=1085470512/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_2/104-2149797-1506351?v=glance&s=books&n=507846