Couple of overhead sprites

#1 Wow, awesome work!

#2 Very nice indeed!:)

#3 Looks like Dante from DMC, to me. But it could just be coincidence.

#4 Adding Wild Stomp would be some fun inspiration to top-down shooter gameplay.

Love the look.

#5 @Ted:

Quote:And let's ignore the blatant, uhh, "inspiration" that brought these about. :)

:-p

I've actually been working on the code for longer than I've been working on the art (which was a big achievement for me, since I'm more inclined to do the art first, coding later :-p), so I've got at least a decent head start with the combat mechanics. And yes, a lot of it is very much DMC- and Equilibrium-inspired. :-p

@David: Yeah, Wild Stomp would be a fun one. I've already got some Equilibrium-ish ideas for "special moves" as well. :-p

@everyone else:
Thanks for the comments. Hope to get at least the rest of the poses done when I get home tonight.

#6 As soon as I saw this, I thought "Equilibrium". Doing a game along those lines would be a really good idea and would work well in 2D, especially if you could somehow focus on those "optimal lines of fire".

The best of luck.

- Melv.

#7 I think these look nice, Teck. I like the pencil sketches a lot. So, you're not going to animate between positions?

Maybe you've already thought of this, but I have a suggestion. Wouldn't this look more consistent and smoother if you used layers and joints? That way, the paint wouldn't jump on an arm/head/torso every time the other arm wanted to move. Granted, it would be more difficult :). But also, it'd give some kind of transition between positions. With T2D running so smoothly, it'd be able to animate a position change without delaying the shot (noticeably). Also, it'd save texture memory.

Then again, I don't know how capable T2D is of doing this. I did see joint based animation in Cloud Burst though. And I do have an idea of which things should be joints, and how to bend the torso in and out for different arm positions. I think this would work best with a painterly look, because it'd minimize the strange jumps of strokes between frames. More consistency, yet smooth motion.

I've seen games handle it both ways though. Especially if it has hectic action, the player won't notice the lack of tween frames. Looks good so far.

#8 Heya Melv, thanks for the comments. I'm pretty psyched about getting a lot of work done on this, and seeing it progress. :)

Dave, I've actually looked into using "joints", so to speak, but had limited success with them. They were, in fact, the first thing I started working on before I started doing these sprites. I managed to get a jointed model working with the control scheme I've worked up, but it's pretty limited (well, my coding is fairly limited, too, :-p), and I couldn't for the life of me figure out a good way of doing the constraints (I had them only partially constrained). In any case, the amount of time I spent thinking about and testing out different solutions to the jointing system was time I should've spent creating sprites and animations for the various multi-directional poses. :)

Oh, and yes, I'll be doing in-betweens. The other reason I'm going with animations instead of a more dynamic jointed system, is that the jointed system would have to be stupidly complex to get some of the poses (ie, stuff where the players arms swing towards or away from the camera, etc). With canned animations, I can make the whole thing appear dynamic. It's more work art-wise, of course, but that's a lot less work than I'd have to do code-wise. Which is a good thing, being that I'm not a programmer. :-p In any case, appearance is what matters, not what's going on under the hood. :)

Also, with the end poses, I'm hoping to make the muzzle blasts large enough that the player won't really notice that the guns aren't pointed exactly at their target. :-p

No updates today, since I got out of the office late last night, and then passed out after dinner. :( Now if I could just get myself out of the two dinner appointments I have coming up today and tomorrow. :-/

#9 Those excellent. I've got designs for a topdown shooter down the road, so this gives me a breath of hope :)

#10 Boondock Saints T2D game!

Would also make a nice top down survival horror type game, tons of zombies coming from every direction, like a Robotron with zombies

#11 So, been a really busy weekend, with not much time for art or coding, but i managed to sit down today and do a little more art. Turns out the time away from the art helped, because i realized that I really didn't like the way the sprites were looking. At all. So, I sat down and did some more concepting, and redid the outfit (quickish sketch):


hence I had to redo the sprites. The results, as yet unpainted:


I'll see if I can get more done up tomorrow night after work.

#12 Niiiice. Moved the design over to Trigu... er... are we still staying hushed about inspiration? :)

This art is looking very nice. Your instincts were right; this is looking a lot nicer. The slight tilt to the gun/wrist adds a lot. I look forward to your painted versions.

#13 Thanks for the compliments, Dave; they're much appreciated. :) It's funny you mention Trigun, as that was one of the references I actually didn't look to. It was only after I was done that I realized how Vash the outfit looked. :-p

I basically wanted a DMC2 sort of outfit, only less sleek and more grunge (essentially something inbetween DMC2 and DMC3), so I kept the long coat-sans-lower-front with the vest look from 2, but loosened the style a little. The front button-on piece with the neck cover came about as a result of looking at medieval fencing outfits, and a desire to give somewhat of a samurai-wannabe sense to the outfit. I still haven't completely figured out the legwear yet, though. I'll probably end up going with something cargo-ish, with some gothy boots. :-p

edit: Doh! Forgot to include the katana in the sprites. :-p

edit2: I realized I haven't addressed the quibble about the paint matching up between frames. I actually am not all that worried about that, strangely enough. I don't mind paint jumping and non-perfectly-lined-up frames, especially being a big fan of Bill Plimpton's work. For those who aren't familiar with him, he's done numerous animated shorts and commercials useing a very raw, hand-drawn technique. Little to no cleanup, frames that don't match perfectly, leading to a rather flickery, yet superbly dynamic look. Besides, I'm hoping things will be moving too fast for a nitpicky player not to notice any "inconsistencies." :)

#14 Don't know if you're familiar with the "Rhubarb and Custard" cartoon (might just be a UK thing) but the artists in that used various types of marker pens for the colouring and the colours pulse and outlines wobble all over the place during the animation. But for a kids cartoon, it was very cool and hugely to the style of it. So if it's good enough for a TV show... ;)

Nice artwork, but I'd have probably gone for a Glock 18c or M93-R as the machine pistol :)

#15 @Teck:
Yeah, I dig Plimpton. But the inconsistency I spoke of wasn't just in the lines between positions. When a sprite stays on the same frame for more than the length of a single frame's worth of time (shooting steadily at an object), the lines look static. Then, if it goes to another animation or frame, it jumps at that moment, only to remain static again. Bill Plimpton animates his linework consistently through all of his animation, even if an object is standing still. If you want that look, it may require at least two frames per position, and animate between them while in that position. That should create more consistency. But that might require two+ frames for every static object in the game to get the look going throughout. Too much work :). But whatever. I haven't seen it in action of course. That's just how I see it in my head. Heh, and as you can see... my head immediately and automatically thinks of how I could create the most amount of work for a simple result. hehe... BUT, an excuse to put two frames per position is to have one normally lit character, then another with light and shadow from the gun blast! That way, he'd be animating constantly while firing, you'd have the constantly varying lines, and it'd look nice! Again... probably wayyy too much work.

It's looking good. I look forward to how the whole outfit turns out. And the guy's face :). I'm also interested in how your digital paint will turn out the second time around.

#16 @Philip:
I haven't heard of Rhubarb and Custard, but I'll be on the lookout (a google search didn't give me much in the way of useful info, unfortunately). For the machine pistol, yes, a Glock 18 or Beretta 93R (there's no "M" prefacing it ;) would have made more sense, but I'm a big 1911 fan. It simply looks beefier, all the more so with an oversized barrel weight. :-p

@Dave:
Good call on the static frames. It's something that I had kind of overlooked, but I guess at this point we'll see how it all turns out. :-p And don't worry, there's definitely going to be "lit up" effects for the weapon fire, though I haven't figured if I'm going to do them as a second frame, or as an additive-alpha-blended overlay. I'll cross those bridges soon. :-p

#17 Found a link: http://www.roobarbandcustard.tv/flash.htm watch out for the rather loud music that plays though.

It looks like they're rebuilding the site, but the front page should give you a little idea of the style.

#18 Love seeing this stuff. all looks really good. what you painting with?

#19 LoTekK: I really like your art, and I think a Equilibrium inspired game could be pretty cool in Torque2D. I've been trying to think of some cool game idea of my own to use Torque 2D for, but havent come up with anything so I've started looking for other cool projects to join. So if you want some help with the coding part, drop me an email. I would defenitely like to hear more about your game.

I would have sent you an email about this, but you dont have a public email address. :)

#20 Bwaha. Bwhahahahahaha. Bwahhahahahahahahahaha.

Sure they are, they're just still in their little holsters.

Gary (-;