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Broken sword quality is reaching a bit high from the start.

However, it may be worth your while to look at some of these sites with various sprites, including some walkcycles and stuff:

http://www.geocities.com/clamchowder1000/main.html
http://www.panelmonkey.org/
http://tsgk.captainn.net/

This site has a CRAPLOAD of sprite sites listed (I've not looed at many of them, mind you):

http://forums.gamemaker.nl/lofiversion/index.php?t11203.html


There's also this dead guy called Eadweard Muybridge whose work can be learned from (WARNING -- most links include nudity):

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/muybridge/photos.html
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/chronoph/muybridge/links/index.htm
http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/collections/photo_collection/muybridge/
http://www.too.com/digitalmedia/3dcg/plugin/maxplugindb/muybridge/
http://www.figuredrawings.com/Animation.html

A lot of stuff here is well worth your while, too, if you did around a bit:
http://www.fineart.sk/

Or if you're stuck for character-making:
http://charas-project.net/

( had mistakenly listed http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcgen/ here before, but I'll keep it here in case you can find it of use)

Enjoy!

[THIS]

F**k. I just realized that I'd typed up this big, insightful post, butÃ,  I was a moron and it no longer exists.

ANYway, what I'd wanted to say in a much more eloquent fashion was that I played "Friday the 13th" on the Commodore 64 when I was a kid. In it, as a GUI for you to see there was a picture of your face that would get more and more frightened-looking when scary stuff would happen.

What I was trying to say was that if adventure games are to be scary, it helps if you remind the player that the player character is scared, and do it visually. This might mean a cheap but effective "face GUI" like I talked about, or it could be through much more intensive animation work, like the charcater's actual facial expression and/or posture changing, but that can be an awful lot of work.

Blah. I swear it was awesome before I killed it.... And I once caught a fish THIS big.....

Dammit.

The theme for this week's Jam is Antropomorphism.

"What?" you might say. Well, what I want you  to do is make a sprite of an object that has human-like characteristics. Think about the mops in Disney's "Fantasia" and you'll get what I mean. Draw an object that has somehow come to life and is acting remarkably human.

No colour restriction. For size, let's say a max of 250 x 250 or so. Extra points for making parts of the object take on human qualities (bristles of a broom become hair, etc.)

Here's another example I drew up.



Have fun!

Sweet. Thanks, man!

I'll start a new Jam shortly.

... wait. We were talking about poo? 

He's quite nice -- but for the eyes, might I suggest buttons? I like button eyes on stuffed things. Gives them a nice, homemade look. But maybe that's just me. They'd be more immediately recognized as being doll eyes I'd wager, though.

Here's the pictures. Have fun sticking some words on them.

Sweet Jesus.

Thanks!

I'll whip a new one up right away.

Hm. I just chalked it up to another high-profile theft of a highly-anticipated game's source code... delaying production for way too long. 

Sure. But remember that just 'cause Mom can recognize 'em doesn't mean they're any good!  :

I kid. Thanks for that -- Though I know I stink at drawing hands, I think I'll cross the thumb over the fingers to make it more "fist"-like and less "looking at your nails"-like.

(Oh, and as an asside, save for .bmp, what's the best file format to save under in order to preserve colours exactly? I thought gif would do it, but it doesn't seem to for me. And png darkens things...)

Sure. But remember that just 'cause Mom can recognize 'em doesn't mean they're any good!  :



I still have a lot of work to do on the hand, and I might go for a larger "boot" picture instead of the walking legs. That, and I'm not done yet (hopefuly I'll be satisfied with something before the end of the month comes).

I'll see what I can do about extending the ass (now THERE'S a sentence you're not likley to hear everyday!). Last time I tried, it looked, well, less like a butt than it should have, though.

I was wondering if anyone could help me out with this icon that's to be one of the ones for my GUI. It's more or less the inventory icon, and is supposed to represent an ass pocket of a pair of pants. My own mother is able to tell what the other icons I made are at a glance, but this one had her stumped.



And it's done by using different opacities of these two colours.



Any suggestions or repaints you have that might make it look more pocket-like are welcome. Keep in mind that I want to stick to using those two base colours at different opacities.

Thanks!

(oh, and it's supposed to be a guy's pocket, if it makes any difference)

EDIT: My GOD I make a lot of spelling/ typing mistakes late at night. I think I fixed most of 'em.

Something I always wanted to do in a psychological-style horror game or movie was to use optical illusions on screen to mess with the player/ viewer.

AN EXAMPLE:
Presenting black and white, roatating spirals for a while then having the player enter a room that looks distorted due to the image aftereffect... but THEN having them come to the conclusion that there's absolutly NOTHING going on with the room at all. This would open the door for using actual graphical manipulations that are distortions later. All of this would be in the attempt to get a "WTF? Am I seeing things?" kind of reaction from the player. Of course, this might work best with the player character's descent in madness or whatever.

It's just a thought.

Jesus, viktor... is he pulling that outta' his arse?  :o

Um. I should have been more clear. I was joking. Wonderful sprite, though.

On a side note, if anyone is interested in stereotypical barbarian stuff, PLEASE do yourself a favor and have a good laugh watching the aptly ttiled "The Barbarians" (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1001648-barbarians/). It was awesome.

Jesus, viktor... is he pulling that outta' his arse?  :o

Something that a lot of "scary" movies seem to have in them is big tension builders that turn out to be a false alarm. This is followed shortly after by a sudden scare (usually accompanied by a loud, sharp, shrill noise). This sort of tactic gets the viewer on edge, lets them calm down a touch (though they're still expecting something if they're a veteran horror viewer) and then hits them with the scare when their guard's down.

It's a tactic rarely used in games, from what I've seen.

Can the player character HAVE a key, provided it doesn't have anything to do with solving any puzzle?

Thank you -- that's  a big improvement already. You have NO idea how many times I tried making her torso straighter WITHOUT being able to get her look "right". Maybe it was the way I wanted the "skirt" part of the thing to be straighter all the time?... Anyway, it's looking a lot better.

So now back to the boy -- here's the latest for his colouring.



Would y' say it's at a happy medium beteen the old and the new?

Fair enough. I'll keep those colouring suggestions in mind... Actually, what I might just do is literally take it partway -- overloy them and make one of them partially transparent... Yeah, that's the ticket...

Anyway, I'm still wondering if anyone has any wisdom to offer to give the girl a better, cuter look. As I said, I'm not altogether happy with her, and want to more or less use her final version as a sort of template for other cute-as-a-button, skinny girls in the game. Any quick paint-overs to show basic head and body proportions.

Yeah, I know those are badly lit pics I referenced to ya' -- I have better versions at my disposal. I am trying to use a lot of the original game's palette for a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of stuff that just didn't look quite right that way.

Here's a quick example (without oulines being fixed or shading):

Brighter, but sort of too gaudy, maybe? What do you think? I'm thinking the SNES colours worked well on this character partly due to its small size.

Compare that with a more modern version of the character, from Super Smash Brothers (Melee?):



Anyway, I do see that there should be some brightening, though. I'll keep playing around.

Yeah, MOTHER. More specifically, MOTHER 2.

I'm sort of using the original clay models (http://starmen.net/mother2/images/clay/) combined with the game's sprites as reference, and never even considered DOTT as inspiration (though I can see it now that you mention it). Considering I'm no artist, though, progress is slow, as mentionned.

And what about the boy? Better in terms of colour? Or should I just brighten his clothes and leave the skin tones alone?