Sprite Animation Weekly #12 - Pick Me!

[Sinix]

Finally defeated that big boss? Time to start up New Game+, it's Monday.

Week 12 - Pick Me!
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b11/sinix4/dsb100608a.gif
The challenge this week is to make a stylized SELF PORTRAIT for a pretend character select screen. This is the first challenge that doesn't require any transparency. There is a size requirement of 150w x 250h! Also, this is an animation activity, so you'll be giving the image some level of animation (and I don't mean flashing text like the advertisement). You can be lazy and just do blinking eyes, but hopefully you'll be more creative and fun than that with facial animations, fun backgrounds, anything you can think of. Remember, you're free to take any liberties you want with stylizing the self portrait. It can be realistic or cartoony, you can make yourself a fighter pilot, a zombie, a robot, anything your ass can come up with. Make sure it's animated, 150x250, and awesome.

Have fun.


Other Notes
It's nice to see newcomers continually participating, it's a lot of fun to see what you guys come up with.

old vid tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKTDEjVLNkQ

[RosemaryDarling]

ooo ACE. Good topic.

[Lake]

yeah this is \m/ rad. gonna do this one, figure I can toss something up pretty quickly/easily.

[shiNIN]

yay me :D
I just was thinking it should be a really temptating round to make me participate, I need my lil drawing time for my dear pencil studies, I became a little lazy after my two very time-consuming powerup anims...
and now this topic... wonderful!

I have already an idea...

[Hookswords]

Sweet. So there's no restrictions other than size? No bust shot or full body? Totally open? This should be fun

[Sinix]

Sweet. So there's no restrictions other than size? No bust shot or full body? Totally open? This should be fun

You can show as much or as little as you want, although a mock character select would generally focus in tighter to show more personality. I'll probably focus more on the face with some stupid facial animation and snazzy background.

[Hookswords]

Kinda what I was figuring for an old school approach. Now a days we are treated to full body glamor shots of characters.

[bleupencil]

Heheh, awesome.

I'm going to try and incorporate something I'm already working on for this. It was for an assignment last semester, based on the theme of "self". I'm working to improve it by choice so I can put it in my folio.

No harm in taking some frames from it to use for this, right? I'll just have to size them down and draw over them in photoshop (the original animation is done with flash).

Which brings me to another point. What is the actual animation process for game sprites? Do they do it completely in photoshop or some other pixel program? Or do they draw them elsewhere first? My technique has been to do it in Flash. I get the feeling that I'm overdoing it this way and that it should be simplified? Maybe I'm just drawing too many frames?

[shiNIN]

What is the actual animation process for game sprites? Do they do it completely in photoshop or some other pixel program? Or do they draw them elsewhere first? My technique has been to do it in Flash. I get the feeling that I'm overdoing it this way and that it should be simplified? Maybe I'm just drawing too many frames?

I'm interested in it, too...
I think people make this differently... but the pros' work must be optimized...
I did only a few anims this far and I used several programs and different methods.
I use flash for trying out the moving, then I optimize the number of frames, but I try to draw my things with pixel painting and with only a few colors (there are too many colors... the only time I did pixel painting was when I did my commodore-64 pictures and I used the original fixed 16 color mode with other restrictions) and black outlines.
if the moving is easy and/or I am already know what should I do without multiple try, I skip the Flash step ;)

[Mr. A]

Two different processes that come to mind are those used by Capcom and SNK in their various fighting games. In the former, you have each of the frames manually drawn out in outline form with only the most important details present. It's assumed that from here they are scanned in and colored in/ detailed digitally. For an example of these early drawings, some can be found in scans of Capcom's "Secret Files" series viewable through the Arcade Flyer Archive. (http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=archive&db=videodb&letter=s) I'd suggest looking at the Street Fighter III ones in particular, as more frames tend to be shown there.

For the earlier King of Fighters titles, it seems that 3d models were used as a base for the frames, which would later be drawn over. Not so certain about how it is being taken care of for the latest game in that series though, as they have started from scratch and changed to a higher resolution.

[Kin]

I'm new here and have been pixel pushing for a while now and it seemed fun to take part in some SAWs so here goes nothing. The animation is minimal, but I think it still adds enough action for the shot.

This was done with a great program called ProMotion. This image consists of 8 frames and 48 colors.

C&C welcome, enjoy! :yum:

[ScaryPotato]

Wow Kin, that looks really great. You set the bar high with that one :)

[BRINKMAN!]

I've got one in the works.... I can't wait to show yall :D

[Kin]

Thanks ScaryPotato, I can't wait to see everyone's submission.

From my experience making sprites, I usually use 3D reference as it's easier to use the models as a reference. Even if you use 3D as a base it still takes lots of work to clean up the sprite. As Mr.A said, I think KOFXII still uses 3D models even if the sprites are higher res and totally redone.

[monotony]

nice work Kin!

actually wanted to do another one with a bit more action going on but didn't get around to. was hard enough for me to figure out how to move more than one thing at a time, haha.
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I hope there'll be a few more entries.

[Hookswords]

Great entries so far guys. Kinda surprised at how few there have been. I know you cats have something up your sleeve yet! Cant wait to see em.

Anyway, I went a slightly different route on this. I went for the cool move select, Like, when you pick your guy, he does a cool little move to reassure you as to why you picked him.

Learning experience: Best one yet for me. I mean i learn something on all of them but this one was the most per volume. I learned a couple tricks to make things look a lot cooler. I also learned to check on size more. When I was working on this it was 600 x 1000. I wanted it to have a tighter look when I shrunk it to size. Sadly, a lot of detail was lost. There are things I toiled over that really dont matter at the requested size.

Tons of fun! Let me know what you cats think!

http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/6894/hooksselectsmallva8.gif

This is the size I made it at, so you can see what I mean.
http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/5257/hooksselectdu4.gif

[Sinix]

Well, balls, I wanted to do something sci-fi, but time got away from me. At least I made this earlier in the week as a test. I'll add this to my list of threads I want to come back and add to.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b11/sinix4/dsb101008b.gif

[bleupencil]

Cool stuff everyone.

Mine didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to.

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