I'm working with newGuy on a game project. The Thief sprite and basic run cycle is his work, I as the lesser spriter am just trying to refine his work. I'm just starting this thread as a place to get some C&C as I attempt to improve my very basic spriting skills through working on this game. For now I have two things I could use some advice on.

1. I added several frames to newGuy's original run cycle and made an attempt at adding a slide. How is it looking compared to the original.



2. We are starting to make the castle levels which the Thief runs through. The graphics right now are really just quick mockups to help establish dimensions and scale. Hopefully it is clear that we are going for the oblique perspective. Any thoughts on the basic design, and specific help with a brick texture and palette would be greatly appreciated.



PS: Please excuse the hideous red color for the carpets.

Well.. [I'm no good at this] but the jade green from the background and the green on the character might not contrast enough. I made an edit of 3, I like the depth on the bricks in that version:
oops and I lost a color in the process; told you I was no good at this :p.. but just one idea.


Edited by |||| - 08 May 2012 at 11:00pm

1 or 4 are the most readable. 

Hi Cheetah.. I am going out for a bit but when I get back I'll edit this post with some more color edits just to throw out more ideas and options.




Edited by |||| - 10 May 2012 at 12:43am

Glad you like them Cheetah.. and I remember that thief sprite when it was first submitted; it's super cool. I hope the game goes well.

I like the pattern but perhaps you should give the walls a bit more colour (like a very pale peach or sandstone) because the colour is really glary (especially on my super bright computer lol) Also, you might make the ladders darker or give them some shadow in order to define them from the bg and make them look more like the active objects which (I assume) they are

I like the latest experiments; the third one definitely works.

The first hide animation between the pillars is the same and is more abstract. The hide animation for the ladder is pretty much the last frame just pasted on top of itself several times. Which is looking better? Once again the original design and many of the frames of animation of the Theif are by newGuy.

We actually have a four person team on this project and I am not the programmer, these mockups are all done in Photoshop.

However, everything is programmed in Javascript using the CraftyJS game engine as a base. We also have Tiled Map Editor integrated for much of the graphics, awesome free software that anyone doing tiled sprite work should use for mockups if nothing else. http://www.mapeditor.org/

Edited by Cheetah - 25 August 2012 at 9:31am

Yeah, for development it is currently HTML5 so we can easily share and view our progress. It might change platforms in the future if we ever decide to go further with it.

I am uploading yet another preview. If nothing else continuing to post updates is pushing me to improve my own technique. The motion blur for the pillars is new. In action it only looks a bit better but the technique behind it is more replicable.

I have made some planks as floor .

Lol , why I made them was becuse of that I think that there is no castle in the hole world that has brick floor inside.
Making floor with planks gives it a little more feeling .
Still , I made this in like 7 min so you can probaly make it better in no time . :)

Edited by BatTheMan - 30 August 2012 at 8:21am

Thanks man ! Though I did see the help button at the top right . From there I got the information that I needed .

Well work continues on this project. I remade the tiles at 15x15, instead of 15x18, and tried to improve stuff a bit. I'm still not that happy with the palette and finding a balance between clarity and detail with this small of graphics is difficult.

The issue I have with this is that the backgrounds feel busier than the sprite, which makes the character less noticeable. Try adding more contrast to the character itself.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm much happier with the sprite (which isn't mine) than the background, so I making the background cleaner was the way to go. I was actually using Slym's latest mockup as a reference imnumberfour. I'm still not happy with the "gradient" and palette, but this appears to be the right direction.

All true Cure. I think I made the shading mistake particularly where the doorway meets the wall. I like your color edit looks great, but I continue to have the issue that I'm trying for a pristine white brick look for these walls. I'm having difficulty balancing it being to bright and still having it appear white. I think before I post another update I'm need to get some light sources in there to see if that helps.