$12256 / $11500
This is a continuation of my thread Perspective Woes (http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/perspective-woes-pixel-art-sprites), where I attempted to create a base character design based on the proportions of the Illusion of Gaia sprites...at twice the size. Turns out I still had a thing or two to learn about lighting and anatomy (But I generally don't consider myself a true artist).
After some time, I think I've finally settled on the north and south body shapes. It's a bit of a compromise between standing with legs out while trying not to look bow-legged.
For the breathing patern, I tried a few different combinations of arm-staggering. I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with this one, so it's open for suggestion. Since it's not really meant to be a combat-stance, I didn't want the arms bouncing too much. Now for a bit of walking...
I was reluctant to include these walking animations at first (Because what if they're wrong and I have to do it all over?! Well, I guess I have to learn somehow.) These are meant to be just boring NPC walk cycles-noot too much arm movement, and not too much exuberance. I have a north and south "hero strut" in a somewhat-finished state, but I'm still doing some tweaking to make it look just right.
My hope is that the north and south-facing sprites aren't overly offensive to the trained eye. I'm open to any simple changes that could be made, but maybe less so for the ones that'd require heavy edits to the animations. On that note, you've probably noticed that there aren't any east/west-facing animations among these. I don't want to attempt animation until I have a form that makes sense that I'm happy with. I may have gone overboard with the lighting--most side-facing sprites I've looked at don't bother with shading as you go down, and I'm wondering if I'd be better off without it. There's also the matter of just the anatomical shading in general. With north and south, it's easy to envision which parts extrude, and thereefore cast shadow...but not having an easy time visualizing that from the side.
There's my update for now. I actually have a lot more done that I'll probably show later (Some primitive clothing objects, different skintones and a whole bunch of hairstyles/colors). As of now, my main priority is finishing the basic animations.
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They look good, but I think the arms on the south-facing character need to be longer. Compared to the one facing north you can see that they are noticeably shorter. Based upon the perspective the south-facing arms should be just a teensy bit longer that the other (though perhaps only a pixel) being closer to the camera (like the difference in placement of the toes).
I second dannorder's comments about the walk cycles, they look really nice but the arms could be a bit longer in the south version.
The breathing is nice but the forearms and hands have a strange 'pixel stretching' thing going on. I don't know what else your supposed to do, but the way the the arms contract and expand seems a little off to my eyes. Particularly the hands snap up on the last frame of the breath in (chest moves up). Maybe try having the hands move up a frame or two sooner, so it's more part of the overall movement (so less noticeable).
overall, I'd say the sprite and the animations look quite good especially for someone who doesn't count themselves as an artist, you definitely got me fooled ;)
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Only a short update right now as I work feverishly on a 15-page paper (Then I can jump back into this in full-force).
Hm...having the arms come down one pixel further than north-facing make them look a litle long. Tweaking the shading on the biceps (maybe have it come down to inner-elbow joint) might fix that.
Any thoughts on the sideview idles? I'm eager to get those started.
These past few weeks I've been preoccupied with school stuff and music (The one area where I do consider myself a good artist). Anyway, time for a bait-and-switch.
He's gotten a bit bigger since the last time. I've got a myriad of justifications for deciding to go with a higher size: I find it easier to do the hands at this size; The breathing looks more natural when there's less movement; the character was already starting to take up more than a 64x64 space when adding different hairs; I wanted the characters to look more personal at the resolution I picked out. Whatever.
I'd like to get some feedback on the design before I launch into animation. Are there any oversights I made with proportions? I'm still a little troubled bythe side-view design. The arms look a little on the long side to me, but should I even be lining them up with the arms from the other directions?
One person informed me that the legs looked a little stumpy (But only in the front view). The imrpoved version has the legs no longer sticking out from the side of the waist..however, they still do that in the back view. I'm willing to chalk this up to perspective and say "well maybe this works because the butt sticks out."