La-Quien Tales
- Thread starter DCurrent
- Start date
Family member pointed out the walk animation was a severe mismatch and didn't at all come close to the CVS aesthetics I wanted. She was more than right - If anything, it was a lot closer to the sort of Fresco, color banded style SNK used in KOF, which I've often mentioned not liking at all. Here's an attempt to rectify, and then retroactively apply what I've (hopefully learned) to the idle as well:
Old (left) vs New (Right):
I'll post a video later on when I finish up some more of the jumping/dashing movements.
DC
Old (left) vs New (Right):
I'll post a video later on when I finish up some more of the jumping/dashing movements.
DC
Hey guys, I'll be doing an informal live stream of converting this module to run 960 wide screen using sub-screens to zoom. If you are interested, it is scheduled for 2024-06-16 (today) at 12:00 EST.
@danno, @Kratus, @O Ilusionista, we all talked about this, so it might be of use to you.
DC
@danno, @Kratus, @O Ilusionista, we all talked about this, so it might be of use to you.
DC
O Ilusionista
Captain 80K
Sure thing! I will try to jump in
Since @Luca Natale brought it up in the live video, here's a size chart for comparison. Actual size, and 4x.
Left to Right
FYI, Valis's sprites are intentionally scaled to SOR2 Axel and Crassus. In terms of stats, Valis is roughly the same height as Axel (182cm vs 183cm), but considerably heavier (91kg vs 75kg). In fairness though, Axel's weight doesn't match his proportions at all - a pretty common trope in Japanese media. As you can see, I missed the mark a little - Valis will tower over either of them when he stands up straight. That's OK though as long I can keep a good size consisteny with all the other Quests of Quien sprites.
DC
Left to Right
- Kyoko - River City Girls
- Lucia - Capcom D&D Series
- Crassus - Capcom D&D series
- Axel Stone - Streets of Rage 2
- Valis Yuan - Quests of Quien.
FYI, Valis's sprites are intentionally scaled to SOR2 Axel and Crassus. In terms of stats, Valis is roughly the same height as Axel (182cm vs 183cm), but considerably heavier (91kg vs 75kg). In fairness though, Axel's weight doesn't match his proportions at all - a pretty common trope in Japanese media. As you can see, I missed the mark a little - Valis will tower over either of them when he stands up straight. That's OK though as long I can keep a good size consisteny with all the other Quests of Quien sprites.
DC
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Valis's back dash is now working in game. I might still make some more adjustments. The double hop is more realistic but also makes it a little spastic to me. Also, there are now jump and dust effects in place. Those too are hand drawn, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I wanted to get a close approximation of the CVS2 style dusts, but honestly I kind of like mine better in action.
On the back dash itself - in this game, back dashing is a very handy move that can get you out of a lot of situations. Depending on the character you can cancel into it during the recovery of various attacks, recoils, guard-crush, etc., to reset and regroup. Several characters can also cancel out of the back dash with certain moves, and may even have unique attacks only available in a back dash state.
In Valis's case, his is both advantageous and detrimental. It's fast, covers a lot of ground, has a lot of i-frames on startup, and he can chain it into subsequent back dashes to effectively run backward without turning around. However, he can't cancel out of it until landing the handspring, so you effectively lose your turn and are very vulnerable to area attacks or other enemies.
DC
On the back dash itself - in this game, back dashing is a very handy move that can get you out of a lot of situations. Depending on the character you can cancel into it during the recovery of various attacks, recoils, guard-crush, etc., to reset and regroup. Several characters can also cancel out of the back dash with certain moves, and may even have unique attacks only available in a back dash state.
In Valis's case, his is both advantageous and detrimental. It's fast, covers a lot of ground, has a lot of i-frames on startup, and he can chain it into subsequent back dashes to effectively run backward without turning around. However, he can't cancel out of it until landing the handspring, so you effectively lose your turn and are very vulnerable to area attacks or other enemies.
DC
Now that you have so many sprites, you can chop the bodyparts up into pieces of heads, torsos, legs, hands , bent /straight arms etc ... and keep them on a sheet so you can copy them from it - will save you lot of time, cause you can just copy paste them onto crude animation poses and build on top.
And they will already look nice.
You have some limbs but id do it for all bodyparts, more angles , bent torsos back and forward, various head angles, then you can rotsprite them to get new rotations without much drawing.
Aseprite has built in rotsprite, you can get it as libresprite its opensource.
I start by drawing head /torso front/3/4rd, side, 3/4rsback, and back view, then inbetweens if i need them.
With limbs you can get away with less and just edit them on fly.
Sure sometimes you do need novel angles but most of the time you dont need to modify much after pasting.
Kinda like this but for all bodyparts and angles , and you keep adding novel ones to sheet while you need them.
Like on the pic - al the angles are just rotations of the ones on top with 0 drawing , then you just change shading on the "new" ones so its lit from top like originals , theres no light from the ground up so the one in right bottom corner looks off lit from bottom + the one on left from it.
If light source is consistent its going to look fine.If its not - it will look like cutout puppet.
For diagonal angles of limbs... id make like 3 at various degree angles, 4-5 is best, 2 not enough
And they will already look nice.
You have some limbs but id do it for all bodyparts, more angles , bent torsos back and forward, various head angles, then you can rotsprite them to get new rotations without much drawing.
Aseprite has built in rotsprite, you can get it as libresprite its opensource.
I start by drawing head /torso front/3/4rd, side, 3/4rsback, and back view, then inbetweens if i need them.
With limbs you can get away with less and just edit them on fly.
Sure sometimes you do need novel angles but most of the time you dont need to modify much after pasting.
Kinda like this but for all bodyparts and angles , and you keep adding novel ones to sheet while you need them.
Like on the pic - al the angles are just rotations of the ones on top with 0 drawing , then you just change shading on the "new" ones so its lit from top like originals , theres no light from the ground up so the one in right bottom corner looks off lit from bottom + the one on left from it.
If light source is consistent its going to look fine.If its not - it will look like cutout puppet.
For diagonal angles of limbs... id make like 3 at various degree angles, 4-5 is best, 2 not enough
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I've been trying to build an inventory as I go. Didn't think of Rotsprite though. I don't even have asprite, Spriter or anything else. All work is in Photoshop. So far, I've only been able to re-use a few things because I want every animation to look and feel unique.
Always hated it when sprites get overused: Kip-up = Handspring = Back jump = forward roll start up = thrown = suplex = ....
Back in the day you might give a pass for video RAM, but even then it was way overdone. Well, I can't sit here and bitch about something and not put money where my mouth is.
Presumably as time goes on I'll have a lot more to pull from and the process will speed up. I hope!
DC
Yeah its hard to move to other programs when you are using one for like 10 years , i still jump between like 4-5 programs when im making openbor stuff.
I agree when sprites are overused its kinda just one angle rotated so it looks pivoty, but the point is to create as you go and build the library, so after some anims you can do whatever angle you want really, all it takes is just creating sprite once and you can rotate it to use it later, especially the tilted ,bent angles that are unusual - where bodypart changes its x or y size cause its leaning towards camera/viewer.
It just saves time and time is money.
I agree when sprites are overused its kinda just one angle rotated so it looks pivoty, but the point is to create as you go and build the library, so after some anims you can do whatever angle you want really, all it takes is just creating sprite once and you can rotate it to use it later, especially the tilted ,bent angles that are unusual - where bodypart changes its x or y size cause its leaning towards camera/viewer.
It just saves time and time is money.
And By the way, the last shading You did, i think colors are too similar so it starts to blur the shading, they have to be different enough so you can see each colour.
2nd skin color counting from brightest is not necessary, 4 colors are fine, 2 for shade and 1 for highlights, 1 for midrange
Why dont you copy the colors from actual games ? From SF alpha or something.The problem will be solved.
You can extract colors/color ranges from this pic.
2nd skin color counting from brightest is not necessary, 4 colors are fine, 2 for shade and 1 for highlights, 1 for midrange
Why dont you copy the colors from actual games ? From SF alpha or something.The problem will be solved.
You can extract colors/color ranges from this pic.
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I always did. Valis's skin tones are almost a 1:1 of CVS Ken, adjusted just slightly lighter. Then there are two extra tones to handle odd poses and deal with some issues that come from the smaller image size.
- One "super highlight" tone mainly for his cheek just below the eye and point of his ear. CVS and Alpha have super highlights too, but it's always a shared white and I obviously don't want that.
- An additional tone between highlight and first midtone. It isn't used much, but I found without it some poses just didn't have the right depth.
To be honest, I'm giving myself more work with playable characters by going with SOR/Tower of Doom/Shadow of Mystara size instead of typical 320 res verses game size. It's a lot harder to get certain angles and details right when every single pixel represents a much greater space. The catch is, this size will give me back my time and then a whole lot more working on enemy characters. I imagine that's one reason why Capcom did the same thing with most of their beat em' ups post Final Fight.
DC
That's a pretty close approximation. Only things I see off are these:
- Sheath is missing (that's what the extra strap on his hp is for.
- His eyes and hair are both black, not red/blue. The red eyes are just smart palettes. The blue highlights I used is because WTF else can you use to add texture to black hair? I noticed both Sega and Capcom used blues, so I figured do what the pros do.
- That lose shirt thing. He's supposed to be wearing a chain Byrine.
- Missing cape.
- The ears should be pointed.
Was this ANI generation or did you rough something out quick by hand?
DC
*Edit:*
Got curious and did a very quick and very rough couple of fixes. Corrected hair/eye color, added ear point and retouched the expression to be a little more serious. Might see if I can fix the armor and add sheath later. Even if I can't use something like this for sprites, might be handy for a portrait or overlay.
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