Just realized I should register.

Here's the chain-link tile set, with xcf: http://opengameart.org/content/chainlink-floor-tiles

I'll upload the animation 'When It's Done'(TM).

Nice idea with horror styled graphics. Jacobs ladder is one of my favourite movies.

I like your animation, but maybe you could add some more highlights on the face mask? It is quite dark, though I suppose that is a good thing.

I decided to try my hands at an anatomical study of the character template walk cycle. :)  I have only worked on it for a couple of hours and it's not really finished yet.

I'm working on a Japan inspired tileset.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/448984/Pixelart/LPC/cherry_blossom_torii.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/448984/Pixelart/LPC/cherry_blossom_torii_2.png

Next goal is to make a floating shrine like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itsukushima_Shrine

Inari statues, temples, koi fishes, zen gardens and other stuff if I have time left.

Progress on the jacob's ladder animation, I think I'll do some more work on it though:

http://i.imgur.com/Lfyoh.gif

So I'm a noob at art.  Usually I just download stuff here. :)  But I want to create a set of clothing to go with the base character sprites, so here is my attempt at a robe-type thing:

http://i.imgur.com/UDHeq.gif

I feel like there is (still) a bit too much movement in the upper body of the robe, though I toned it down quite a bit from my initial attempt.  All critique welcome. :)

@wulax: the skeleton is awesome!  It seems like the scapula is a bit too small/far apart, but that's just me stretching for critique.

@C.Nilsson: love the Japanese stuff.  The cherry blossom tree is great, my only comment is that the way you have it, it might look odd if you don't have several variations.

http://i.imgur.com/x8xP7.gif

Making the head-shake twice as fast improved the effect a lot, there's an accidental "stutter" in the animation, but I think I may add in some intentional ones to make it seem more unnatural. Or possibly just stutters to the head-shake.

More work from me, I hope this will work when placed in water later. This is going to be a base for shinto shrine complex and similar stuff. Lots of tiles left in this set to make.

Edit: update

Thx to MrBeast on IRC who pointed the need for a contrast fix.

I've also done a little, mainly some fish and some plants. Could be used for farming / fishing sims, and maybe some mini-games in other games as well.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/449972/lpc/fishplants1.png

I also made a sketch of what a character portrait could look like (for overlay during conversations or such), though I don't really know what I think about the style.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/449972/lpc/charsketch.png

EDIT: Update of plants, addition of soil

@melior: That's a great start for the robe! The only issue I have with it is that you are using too high of a contrast between light and dark, and it makes the robe look shiny. Perhaps take the lightest parts and darken them up a step or two?

Here's one my wife and I experimented with last night:

@melior: I agree with pennomi, less contrast would look better, good work otherwise. Thanks for the input on the skeleton.

@daneeklu, C.Nilsson, great work! I don't have much critique to give unfortunately, I like your images as they are.

@pennommi, I hope you will make the robe usable for animations? That would be nice as it looks really good.

Progress of my skeleton animation:

I'm not happy with the last, north, animation yet. Maybe a bit too rigid? Not sure if I have got the pelvis right either...

@wulax, Yes! I actually have been animating the robe today. I have every sprite of the base covered. (Just the robe. I still have to do the shoes and hair. On separate layers, of course!) Here's a preview and the source file:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23175651/female_spritesheet.xcf

It's my first real pixel art piece, so suggestions and criticisms would be very welcome!

@daneeklu: your plants and fishes are amazing, could you please add variations and growing animation for these plants. it would be alot useful with those.

Great to see a lot of really good stuff already!

I haven't done much other progress myself other than adding an intentional stutter into the Jacob's Ladder animation, and giving standing head-shake animations: http://i.imgur.com/vyMD7.gif

But I should take a break from that, and find something else to create...

So much great stuff already... and the month is only starting yet. So much more time for more great stuff.

wulax, that skeleton is ADORABLE. Great work.

Quick sketch. Been waaaaay too long since I sat down and banged out some pixel art...

Dress still needs lots of refining, but I'm pretty happy with the hair.

I've started work on a sci-fi theme. Shading on this robot still needs some work I think.

Edit: Hopefully fixed image.

Hey guys,

I wanted to let you know that there are some slight formatting issues on three of the character base sheets, most noticibly (so far) a frame in the male side walk which is one pixel too far forward, giving the animation a strange jerk.  I have fixed versions of the files which should be implemented soon, but until then here are links to the files:

http://i.imgur.com/D9gke.png

http://i.imgur.com/aLyo9.png

http://i.imgur.com/fGtTj.png

Decided to start work on some interior tilesets. Both "normal" stuff that anyone could use in a normal setting and modified Silent Hill-ish versions.

Test of the starting stuff: http://i.imgur.com/b8kwS.png

Great work everyone, very interesting to see the progress.

@Ptolom: it seems the link to your image is broken.

@cemkalyoncu: I dunno how much animation and variation I'll add to the plants, but I think at least 3 for every plant (newly planted, growing, and full-grown).

And now, some update on the plants. One freshly-picked state and one state before the fruit is fully grown/regrown. Also, some sprites for the fruit/vegetables.

EDIT: updated the image to reflect some changes. Now plants that aren't full-grown has duller color.

@Clint Bellanger, glad you like!

@artisticdude, I like the dress!

@Sir Spummington, Nice tiles, maybe you could make the stripes on floor or wall go in different directions though? I think that would make them contrast better.

@daneeklu, Vegetables looks great, maybe some more drop shadows from them would be a good addition?

I made some progress on skeleton hurt, slash and spellcast:

I also tried making a sword slash animation. I don't think I succeeded very well though. It is kind of hard to figure out how they were meant to work by looking at the base character asset sprites.

On IRC I got the suggestion to use an offset of the sword from the character sprite to give more room for the sword. I'm not sure that is allowed by looking at the style guidelines. It would certainly make it harder to use the sprite in a game.

Instead of working more on the sword problem I started working on a zombie sprite:

Thanks for the comments pennomi and wulax, I'm working on getting rid of the shininess.

Also, if anybody wants a quick way to turn the character spritesheets into animated gifs using Imagemagick:

convert charsets_12_2ndsheet.png -crop 64x256 +repage steps.png

rm steps-0.png

convert -delay 10 -loop 0 -dispose background steps-*.png anim.gif

There's probably a fancier way to do this, but I was getting errors trying to chop off the first part and combine the two convert commands. 

@Redshrike: There's a hitch in the female rear-facing walk animation as well: the second walking frame (third sprite from the left on the sheet) is one pixel down but it should be even, and the third walking frame is even but it should be one pixel down.  I fixed this manually in my previous gif.

The attached image (hopefully) shows the results of the above commands, along with that animation issue.

@melior. Thanks for that. I thought there must be an easy way to do that with imagemagick but it would probably have taken me longer to figure it out than it would to write something with SDL.

@wulax: nice sword animation you got there, though just as you I feel that 64x64 is too small for an animation including a sword. So I did my own test animation, but increased the size of each frame to 128x128. I also don't know exactly how the animations are supposed to look, but I think it's something like this. I hope it helps at least a little when you continue yours :)

EDIT: fixed the last frame in the sideviews.

Re: slash animations

I made up a few mockup animations with a placeholder sword, which I guess didn't make it into the files.  See below:

But I'd say what daneeklu has come up with is pretty great.

@Melior: dagnabbit.  Brb, will get it fixed.

The slash looks awesome! Can I ask for a stab? :P

Slash animation looks nice but a single animation would look boring. It would be nice to have alternate animation, at least another one. I know that it would increase the work alot but I guess it will worth it. Some suggestions:

• Left to right: this is the one we have
• Right to left
• Diagonals 

This also applies for casting animation.

Also as Nushio pointed out, other attack animations just as trust/stab, bow firing, throwing darts/rocks would be nice even required to have.

Obvious warning, but each new animation variant adds more work per armor/weapon/hair/etc. Be careful not to end up with a situation where artists need to create hundreds of frames to have a fully compatible set.

I agree with Clint Bellanger, there are already 94 frames just to cover the male character asset (four directions for walk, slash, spellcast, hurt)...

@wulax: I know, I really do but think about the results. Anyway this argument is invalid since the competition is started this way.

@wulax, zombie might work better with a green/grey-ish skin.

@Myckel, thanks, that is a good suggestion!

New attempt

Too dark maybe? I tried making the rib cage move but it didn't look very good.

a stab/thrust animation is going to be necessary for spears... even though it will be lots of work for artists, many of us coders really need it for our games. maybe the legs could be the same as some other animations so that the only extra clothing work would be shirts.

and if someone does one please post it here asap so everyone else can adapt their clothes :p

@wulax i don't think they are too dark. they definitely look like zombies

Not just thrust, bow firing is also important. Even if the alternatives moves wont make it, we should at least allow most weapons. Here is a list that I can come up with. 

1. Slash (present)
2. Casting (present)
3. Bow aim/fire
4. Throw (dart, stone, granade)
5. Two handed swing

Please keep in mind that these graphics will be used in all sorts of games. We are planning a strategy game for instance.

agree bow is necessary

as a minimum, 1-3 + thrust.

then 4

5 is less important because we already have a swing to go with. it also might be impossible 4with the anatomy of the chars.

i expect thrust and throw will require very little difference in clothing depending on how the animations are drawn. but it is all a moot point if someone doesnt do it soon and post it here so people can build clothes for it

then again, i'd rather have a naked bowman than none at all :p

Forgot the thrust, I want to expand the list to further discuss it. May be we should vote on them.

6. Thrust

7. Pick up

8. Carry torch/flag (last frame of slash is suitable)

9. Swim

10. Stair ascend/decend

 What about two weapon fighting. We can split body parts to reduce animations but it would complicate other stuff.

swim will probably not be useful enough. and we as devs are going to have to do some editing and not everything will look perfect.

my vote stands for bow and thrust as the two most important non-existing actions. think about how many frames artists already need clothes for!

the first few frames of the hurt animation could be used for pick up.

carrying could be accomplished by editing together one or 2 frames of slash or thrust with walking maybe.

stair ascending isnt different enough from walking imo to warrant a whole new set and new clothes.

but ultimately it's up to the artists

I was looking at the walk animation and it looks like it could easily (for an artist) be turned into a thrust animation. Hook us up artists? :D

Coders, I think that doing extra animations outside of the current set would minimize the chances of getting consistent assets across the board. (It pains me to say it; I'm a coder, not an artist.)

But!

I think with a little creativity, we can reuse existing frames to create new animations. For a "use" action like activating a button, you can just use the last frame (or two) of the slash animation. It would require the coder to tweak the art (by creating a new animation block) in a way that's specific to his or her game, but that way artists won't have to create assets that won't get used by every game.

By playing different segments of the animations, possibly in different orders than we initially intended, I suspect most basic animations could be handled.

I'll take a little time tonight and try to demonstrate this. (Maybe I'm actually just full of hot air :D )

Regarding number of frames, there are many shortcuts for clothing: the left and right animations *should* be mirrored left and right.  This isn't quite ideal since the characters all appear to be ambidextrous, but I'd rather have more animations than to get that right.

The forward and back walk animations are also nice because you can just flip the second frame to get the sixth, the third frame to get the seventh, and the fourth frame to get the eighth, as long as you have symmetrical clothing.  It looks like that's what the artist of the base sprites did.

In terms of animations, I would vote for firing a bow, thrust, and throw animation.  We could also reduce the number of frames to simplify clothing them, especially for new ones.  Firing a bow is probably going to require the full set, but throwing could be four frames or so.

My robe still seems a bit too shiny in the backward facing animation, and it looks like she's suffering from a wicked case of static cling in the sideways walk.  And the movement in the upper part of the robe didn't turn out like I hoped, so I've got a lot of work to do.  I'm planning on adding other pieces of the outfit in separate images, if anybody was wondering why mine is so boring.

"In terms of animations, I would vote for firing a bow, thrust, and throw animation"

these are absolutely essential really....

melior, Looks much better to me! I think you're making good progress.

I strongly suggest against making new animations. The style guide is already published. People are already working on assets for the base animations. Creating new animations will make their work incomplete.

That might mean no Bows, for instance; well get creative. The Slash animation can be used for throwing knives. Part of the slash animation (one arm forward) could be used for aiming a Crossbow. Work within the current limits to make interesting things.

@Clint: I know that the standard is published and I told that this talk is probably pointless. However, the real aim of the competition will fall short on these kinds of creative tricks. If I am not wrong, it was to show the world that FOSS community is capable of releasing quality games. 

I think it's viable to make additional animations, though it does have the side-effect that a lot of them won't get hit with the more basic costume things.  That said, I have the feeling that people will need to do some additional work to get everything together for their specific games anyway, which might include having particular assets extended to additional animations.  I know that that adds complications, and kind of upsets the ideal of having everything being perfectly interlocking and interchangable, but I can see how it would be important enough to do.

The style guide encouraged expansion. it's ridiculous to expect all games to only use slash and spell attack animations.

It shouldnt be a huge issue for some artist to make a thrust and bow animation and post it here within the next week for clothing and such to be adapted. Collaboration is the spirit of the competition!

I mean, it's not terrible to make new animations. But realize the set of armors, hairstyles, etc. matching those new animations will be far fewer than the base set. That's probably fine for some kinds of projects.