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OK, if you're on the IRC much I've probably already bombarded you with this to within an inch of your tolerance. But not everyone is, which means I have more bombarding to do! I have taken up an ongoing personal project: to resprite Xeon (http://opengameart.org/content/xeon-ultimate-smash-friends), a character who I made for Ultimate Smash Friends. I am doing this for a few reasons:
1) I want to get better at animation, and a personal project with no time pressure and a smaller size than your standard USF sprite (thus easier to work with) seems ideal.
2) these sprites would be more useful for a platformer, as opposed to a fighting game. His appearance in Last Escape was cool, but in the platformer environment he could have used a bit more in the way of fluid, dynamic movement.
3) There just aren't many character-driven FOSS games. This is something I discovered in the process of looking for characters to make cameos in Ultimate Smash Friends. Tux makes quite a few apperances, but he's not so much a character as a prop in my mind (and, I think, many others' as well).
I would like Xeon to serve as a viable open-source character with some character. One of the perennial problems of game-making enthusiasts is the lack of ability to make fangames (often to soul-crushing consequence when the C&D order comes). It would be cool to have a series where "fangames" were not only legal but encouraged, and could be anything from free software to commercial indie games. But that's just a pipe dream--for now, having a truly complete platformer character would be neat.
First off, here is a design sketch I did before starting these. there are a few differences from the original sprites, both in proportions (sleeker) and details (minor): http://i.imgur.com/uuSyZ.png
So now, for the promised sprites!
The style of the adapted sprites is somewhat similar to Megaman X 1-3, though with some important differences in outlining and proportions. Why does he have a scarf, you might be asking? Because... I added it as a joke (Protoman reference) and started to like it. I don't know if it'll make it to more animations, though. Time and people's response will tell.
Rotation:
I made this animation to really nail down his design and to get all the basic building blocks for later animations. I don't know how useful it would actually be in a game.
Running:
This animation follows the basic 10 frames shared by a number of similar characters, including Samus and Megaman X (including X and zero from 1-3 and Zero in Megaman Zero, and probably more). Still, I think a bit of individual character emerges.
Now, the unfinished jump animation:
I took a fair amount of inspiration from Zero's jump (from Megaman Zero) for the keyframe. Note that this is much shorter than an ingame jump would probably be--if I made it higher, the added translation makes the preview a lot less useful. This is actually my second attempt at this animation. You can see the first one here: http://i.imgur.com/rPTkG.gif
You can see the individual frames to all of these animations here: http://i.imgur.com/XPCWa.png
At the moment, the major issue is the jumping animation. How does the new one look? Etc. But any and all comments on anything are generally good and useful. I'll try and keep this updated as I make more stuff, though it will inevitably lag a bit.
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Damnit! Screwy gif disposal killed my edit of the jump (you'd think disposal would be a render time thing not a storage thing).
It's here anyway if you can extract anything from it.
But the bulk of what I did was lead with the elbows and bring the hands up and infront of the body.
The way he's currently flinging his arms out to the side looks rather effete.
Walk cycle looks great.
Red warrior needs caffeine badly.
Thanks for the edit! I'll have to take a closer look once I'm not in the hall outside my class, but I really like the direction you've taken the arm movement in. You're right, it does look much more active.
I like the new proportions and the scarf too !
I follow your job to learn from your experience. At this time, I try to animate a girl called Lila, using a video of my niece for reference. But I prefer use inkscape to make that because I'm not very patient with pixel art.
You did give a good style to Ultimate Smash Friends'characters, I hope you'll keep making a few characters for it, or may be give us ideas to develop.
It would be quite useful if you publish tutorials for pixel art and animations. Have you already done that ?
As I'm a non player, I do not need a platform for fangames (except for a bit of inspiration may be), but one of my 17th year old niece write fanfiction about Sonic, she's mad about this game, so I think young people will love this idea.
@doudoulolita: sorry for the super-slow reply on this. You seem to be getting pretty good results with the vectors. I would suggest, especially since vectors let you do some easier rotations, to up the framecount on walking from 4. 6 frames (at least) works a lot better, as I've learned. I do hope to make some more characters once I get Xeon here finished (partially, this is for animation practise so I can do a little better on the other characters, in speed and quality).
I haven't written any tutorials. I might give it a try at some point, though.
I think the arms look a bit wrong on the jump. If you think about how you move your hands when you jump, they either go first (for momentum) or last (because of momentum). So either they go up before the character leaves the ground, or the go up as the character falls. To have them go up in the middle just looks strange and counters the actual action rather than working with it.
http://forum.freegamedev.net/
Here's what I got ...
Samurai Xeon
Katsuro Shimura is one of last Samurais sent back in time to protect Earth from an imminent Alien invasion.
He took an oath to protect Earth and its inhabitants at any cost and doing so he made the final sacrifice ... In order to travel back in time he needed to be more then human and so Xeon was born.
Using his futuristic knowledge and technology he secretly prevented the Alien invasion without interfering with the past (or so he thought).
With his objectives now complete Xeon realized that he become more machine then human and so embarked on a new journey ... a journey to find his humanity .
Ninja Xeon
Katsuro Shimura used to be well respected scientist until one day he found his daughter laying unconscious in the house.
While at the hospital waiting for the medical results he was abducted by two men dressed in back.After the abductors drugs were off Katsuro rushed at the hospital but he was to late all the traces of his daughter ever being there were already been erased along with his identity.
Using his knowledge stated to develop technology in order to help him in its investigation. When he was on the verge discovering ho was pulling the stings he realized that someone has set his laboratory on fire , he quickly put his newly developed suit of armor on as a big explosion broke out.
When he regained conciseness after the explosion he realized that he was sent back in time and so Xeon was born.With super speed and the ability to hijack almost any 20th century technology ... Xeon knew that this is his chance to exact revenge against his shadowy foes.
@Charlie: there's definitley exaggeratoin in the arm movements. This is pretty important, though, to make the animation look more active (you'll generally find this sort of thing is common in most platformers).
@Mumu: Awesome as always! I am a big Samurai Jack fan, which only adds to my enjoyment of this.
By the way, here's the jump with one more frame to smooth it out a bit (hopefully makes the apogee less jerky):
He now shoots, one of the rather important poses he was missing.
edit2:
The thinner style is definitely an improvement. I also like the scarf animation, but I question why a robot would have one. Oh well.
Syrsly
Twitch Streamer, Web/Game Developer, & Artist
syrsly.com - contact me for commissions, thanks!
Thanks!
Re: scarf: Ask Protoman.
Though Xeon isn't actually a robot. There's something living inside that armor, though who or what is yet to be revealed (/decided or imagined).
I think you should go unexpected and have Xeon be a dude.
The hero with the hidden face being a chick is a huge trope now, so everyone expects it.
Thats briliant , I could have never guessed that in 1 mil years.
I love these sprites! One quick request, could you make the backgrounds on them transparent (like the first one) and also put them into spritesheets? I ask because some (such as the jump) would be hard because Xeon moves in them.
I keep poking at this a bit, but once I clear out some of my current commission work I do plan to finish the baseline work on this. Until then, though, I really don't want to go through the rather tedious and time-consuming process of formatting everything (there are tools that can make it faster, but I am not versed in them).
That said, Bart is using him in a test game he made (http://static.opengameart.org/jsplatformer/game.html) so he might have them formatted.
Thanks for the tip. I found this, looks like a good start:
This issue with the jump animation is that the arms move in a counter intuitive way.
When a human jumps, their arms first go up, then shift down to help give momentum to lift the body. Try jumping, as you get higher, unless you are specifically trying to reach something, your arms go lower.
However in Xeon's jump animation, his arms go straight up with the jump then back down. I know, I know, he's a robot. Still, though, it makes the jump animation look unnatural.
http://forum.freegamedev.net/
I don't really think it looks that unnatural. I certainly wouldn't have noticed until you brought it up. Even then, it feels somewhat intentional.
Isent Xeon using jetpack shoes ; he can float id air and even fly in strai lines ; hence the odd hand position ?!?
It's pretty typical for this kind of sprite to have the arms be more up in a jumping animation than they would in real life. Partially I believe because it makes midair actions easier to animate (generally a more 'active' looking pose, sorta). Also what Mumu said, and because for a lot of these I was more influenced by the look of the older games than by reality. But I definitely see what you're saying, and I'll have to poke at it some more. His arms also get really super beefy for no reason when he jumps in the version posted above, which is an issue. I have a more polished run animation done somewhere from a few months back, but I can't remember if I've ever fixed that in the jump. Regardless, I will fix and finish this once I don't have other obligations pressing.
wow thats an awesome work!
would you maybe add an duck animation?
Hello,
i would like to use this sprite in a platformer game I'm making :)
Are you still working on this sprite?
Here is a link to my github repo: https://github.com/Mo-Official/DHBW_python