Clowning around ninja-style

Day 13:

Not really related to my game but meh.  I did work a bit on writing about characters and drawing their sprites.

Fixing Stuff

Day 11 & 12:

Not much to say or show.  Mostly fixing up a few things on newer sprites and starting to redo old characters.

Lilly did it

Day 10:

Working on Lilly’s battler’s standing animation.  Right now all that’s done is her head.  I keep thinking she looks a bit like a monkey.  It’s not just me is it?  Decided to post a side-by-side comparison with the original Melon Head base.

Speaking of comparisons, I never did post up the new sprites I’ve been working on for the main characters.  After making the game Painted Red, I decided to go back and remake the sprites for this game.  The old sprites were a bit more complex and difficult to animate, where as Adelyn was much easier to make frames for due to her simple design.  Plus they had no necks.

Yviar’s sprite was much newer than the other three characters, so his sprite was barely updated… mostly just adjusting the palette and fixing a few pixels.  Tal’s palette was really cut down and Phanoire’s outfit changed to look more like one of her older designs.

Mellowing Melon Head

Day 9:

I tend to jump around a lot between different sprites when working on graphics.  Staying on one too long starts to get boring, as well as frustrating when I cannot fix what I think might be wrong with it.  Often times when I come back to work on a sprite after a few days I have a much easier time fixing it plus I can see new things that need tweaking.

Today I decided to mess around with battler animations.  One of the issues I had before when I first started working on battlers is that I never started with a base and drew everything together so when it came time to animate them I had to do a lot of redrawing.  This time I’m starting with a base sprite that will get animated first so that I know how the character should flow, and characters will be separated into multiple segments which I could then easily move around or redraw without messing up the entire thing.

For now, it’s Melon Head posing as what will eventually become Lilly.  She uses sort of a flail-type weapon that she can also grapple enemies with.  The animation was done in about 2 minutes, I might add more frames and make it more bouncy later.

You found a map!

Guess my odd number days are mostly unproductive.  I couldn’t get a sprite to look right so I canned it.

 

Day 8:

A while back I started working on a world map tileset that looked like it was hand-drawn, kind of like those old-timey pirate maps.  Today I went back to it and added some dungeon components to it.  I decided to make points of interest look like icons so that they stand out more.

This is entirely done with a tileset, no parallaxing.  Would be neat to incorporate it into my game, maybe have a button you press to bring up the map or show a piece of it in the corner.  Of course, the question is how I would go about doing that since I fail at working with scripts.

It’s Melon Head!

Recently got a new computer so I only did a bit of planning yesterday.  Most of my day was spent setting everything up.

Day 6:

As I mentioned before, I want to go beyond just using simple animations and would like unique walk and run animations for each character.  Today I was putting together a base 6-frame running animation.  I was originally going to go with just 4-frames but it didn’t seem to give me enough room to create a decent looking bounce when I tried it in Painted Red.  I tried to exaggerate it a bit so that the character doesn’t look like they’re simply taking a jog down the street.

I usually call this base character Melon Head due to its large big green head.  Will probably turn it into Tal or Phanoire eventually.

Conceptual Blocks

I didn’t post here for day 3 because it was only a bit of shading.
Day 4:

Today was extra productive as I got quite a bit done.  This update is a bit early since it’s Sunday and I got more free time.

I’ve been staring at this animation in personal amazement for like 10 minutes now.  But yeah, I finished shading Yviar.  He’s still naked but that’s okay because he’s just a cute cotton pup, I’ll add the silly hat and collar later.  I still have a hard time determining where limbs and such should be so clothing and accessories are usually not added until once I got the base sprites finished.  He’s the first character to have an actual running sprite, even if it’s only the side view at the moment.  Main characters will have both walking and running sprites depending on whether or not you’re dashing.

RULE #1: All role-playing games must have block puzzles, whether they make sense or not.

These are just base concepts for now so they lack detail.  They’re just used to give me an idea how characters should look when performing a given task.  I’m trying to avoid just using a template for the main characters like you see with most VX sprite edits.  This means everyone has their own way of doing things including simple tasks like pushing blocks, walking and running, and even standing around idle.

Phanoire is also strong enough to lift blocks once she receives the Power Bracelet or whatever I decide to call it.  …or at least she would like to believe.

Shading

Day 2:

Not much to report.  I’ve been mostly adjusting palettes and tweaking shading on some of my sprites …nothing all that interesting.  I tend to use a bit too many shades when I start shading, something I’ve been trying to tone down since redoing the base sprites.  It develops into a lot of work when it comes time to animate when I have to work with 6-7 shades of one color instead of just 3 or 4.

Two-in-One Special

Two posts in one day?  What’s up with that?

Today I mostly spent time working on Yviar’s run animation.  I had it started (bottom row) but I smoothed things out so he didn’t seem as springy and added his ears then adjusted the colors.  I think it turned out okay but still got to do shading and add his “clothing.”

I decided to show the process on how I go about making sprites.  I begin with a chunk that I morph into into the basic character design.  Colors are chosen at random so I can properly see where the limbs.  Extra things the characters have like clothing or long ears are usually left for later as it allows me to get a better idea of where the limbs are supposed to be.  If you can’t tell who a character is when they’re a naked mesh of random colors, then you probably have more work to do.

Yviar’s known as a Cotton Pup, which is sort of a cross between a cat, rabbit, and dog.  He’s supposed to run sort of like a rabbit.   As you can see, I’m trying to avoid the typical 1-0-2-0 step animations for more important characters and am going for more natural run cycle.  I tried 4 when working on Painted Red but I think I’ll go for a 6-step cycle to make the animation more fluid.  Guess it depends on the character and how many they actually need.

Something lurks in the shadows

I’ve been kind of busy lately.  Err, did I say busy?  I meant lazy.  But that all ends here, for I joined some game making drive in an attempt to actually get things posted and more known about my games.

 

In other news, I entered the Mysterious August Contest with my game, Painted Red.  The game is about a young girl named Adelyn as she tries to look for clues to her past.  I was kind of hoping the results of the contest would of been announced by now, but it’s been dead silent.  The judging seemed to go so fast at first.  I would of loved to see how well I did and get some feedback on it.   The game did have it’s share of problems though.  The contest was for only 1 month, and about 1-2 weeks into it I abandoned what I was working on because I was entirely disinterested in it and had new ideas building up.

I was little overly ambitious with Painted Red and tired to go with completely new graphics.  As the deadline grew closer I came to realize I didn’t have nearly enough time to finish what I had planned.  Corners had to be cut: Many sprites were unfinished, the tilesets were the VX Ace ones thrown through a bunch of paint filters, and certain items were cut or had their effects simplified.  The ending was really botched up since I had to throw it all together within a matter of about 2-3 hours.  I’m just surprised it ran almost bug  free when it came to testing.

I would like to get back to the game some time.  Not just to fix up what is currently wrong with it, but to continue on where it leaves off.  The contest entry was intended to only be the first part of a much larger, the ending leaves the player with more questions than answers which might feel like a poor conclusion for a mystery game that you were intended to solve.  There’s a lot more to Adelyn’s mast and her mental state that I would like to dive deeper into and to learn what truly is going on in her head.  The next chapter is supposed to take place about 9 earlier and explore more of Adelyn’s past and learn more about Fifi’s poor condition.