The sprite I'm mainly going to talk about is the level one sprite that you see when you start the game. I'm almost complete with both the level two and three sprites right now, but I think the process of making the level 1 sprite is more interesting as I had no experience making sprites when I started out.
The level one has her holding a a pistol with both her hands. The game is top down so the only things you see is the top of her head, her shoulders and her arms. Starting out I made a new 64x64 canvas in photoshop which I then sketched the the main character's pose on to. I used a small brush tool with a lower opacity for this as I didn't need to define the lines at this stage. In hindsight I should've probably started out with a bigger canvas and then scaled it down to 64x64 when I was happy with the proportions. When you are working in such a small size as 64x64 it is hard to make lines the way you want them to, which is why I think that starting out bigger would've been easier.
When I finished her pose I made a quick outline and started to put down color on her just to experiment with her color scheme. I may have done this a bit backwards as I put down the colors before I had a final outline to work with. Instead I put down the colors on top of the half-assed outline and then created the final outline by painting a darker color around the main color. E.g. to outline her green clothes, I took a darker shade of green and created a one pixel wide outline around it. At this point I was using a one pixel big pen tool in photoshop.
This technique of making an outline looked good in photoshop, but when it was put into the game it didn't provide enough contrast to stand out. To fix this I made the outline pitch black which made everything much clearer in game.
It's still not absolutely final as some group members still have some problems with the colors, but at this point I'm starting to feel I've put more than enough time on it and that my time could be better used on something that is yet to be created. That is something that I will have to speak with the rest of group about though.
Hello Esbjörn
SvaraRaderaI have had the same kind of problem with the sprites and I also find it easier to make them bigger first and then scale them down to the intended size afterwards. However sometimes you can lose some of the details when you scale it down and then afterwards you have to fix it again, so it might not be the most time efficient way to work bit I think it is easier.
I consider that her hair and the shirt blend into one another a little bit and I would probably use a stronger tone of green for the shirt or maybe make her hair a little bit darker to make them stand out from each other more. On the other hand it is my personal opinion and I still think it looks good the way it does, and that the sprite has a lot of details and it looks great.
The pose looks nice and functional, is there going to be any animation on the sprite or is it going to be static? Even if it is top down some simple animation could make the character become more alive, maybe a breath cycle or tilt her head left and right a bit?
Greetings!
SvaraRaderaLet me start off with that I like the simplicity of her character. When working at such low resolution it is really hard to get in some good looking details without making it look too clustered.
As I understand it she is supposed to have different clothes depending on the level. And I’m a bit sceptic as to how great of a change that can be. I saw your post before with the concept of the main character, and in those she wears different outfits that are distinct in the way the play on the body since they have no colour. But when going top down like this, will you really be able to do that? Since it is still at such a small scale, I would think it will be incredibly hard to get that much of details on her without making a cluster out of it. But, having that said details (as in things) aren’t that much of a game changer. I would guess that just having different colour schemes that contrasts each level is well enough to make her look different.
As I said at the start, she looks really simple and nice and I like it. Keep up the good work!
//Måns