That's it for now. I'll get around to the rest of the entries when I have time. Yes, I know the ratings are a bit useless. I'll eagerly see how the rest of you vote and try to learn from it :). So I might revise these later. I have a rather clear picture of how to order the entries, but rating them like this proved a bit harder :p.
We can post our ratings in this thread, right? Anyway, I'll just move it if neccessary.
So - I guess it's up to me to get this thing started? First things first; I'm not a sprite artist. That's right. Never touched a sprite in my whole life. Heck, not only am I not a sprite artist, I'm not much of an artist at all (mostly because I'm too lazy to practice). Needless to say, I'm not the best person to judge the execution bit. So what'll do is that I'll try to write up a little something for each entry. For the ratings, I'lll use the entry I consider to be the "best of" in each category as a sort of guideline to judge the others by. With that out of the way, let's move on to the entry who stands out the most...
Turnip Armor from the Depths of the Mysterious Evil Garden of Turniplandby Blarumyrran
Uh. I don't think much needs to be said about this one. It's a... turnip armor?
Unfortunately this entry doesn't qualify due to being incomplete - these frames are all there is to it. Shame, as I'd certainly like to see the full sprite sheet on this one! Because, in the artist's own words, turnips are good.
Full points in creativity for the utterly absurbd idea. The other ones are trickier - how do you judge the quality of turnips?
Creativy: 50 Execution: 45 Effort: 15
Brigand Armor also by Blarumyrran
Blarumyrran's second entry. The skill that was hinted at in the Turnip entry is shown here again in, you know, something you can relate to. Really, this is way beyond my ability to judge the execution of. I can see that there's some nice color use in there (possibly a bit overused in a few frames). Blarumyrran was slightly late with this one, which I guess has to count for something, so I'll lower the effort score a little bit.
As for creativy, it's a nice, well-made armor which doesn't look exactly like the rest. But neither is it something truly different. To be fair, what Blarumyrran wanted to do here was simply to give the poor guy some clothes - creating something that is of great use to a lot of people and in a lot of situations in the process. So while not truly "unique" (as in different), I still have to give it a rather high score here as it's fitness for it's purpose is undeniable.
Creativy: 36 Execution: 48 Effort: 43
Armor and Hair by LokiF
One of our earliest entries - a solid armor with some hair thrown in the mix. I mean, come on - what good is an "anime style" base without outrageously pointy hairstyles and absurbdly colorful hair (the most common haircolors in anime seemingly being red, blue, green, magenta, white, indigo and various shades of purple with a few odd ones thrown in - like the occasional blonde and the very odd ones - brown and black).
In my limited knowledge if spriting, I can see that Loki makes quite good use of dithering in places. The palette is rather basic, but works very well. Like Blarumyrran's armor it has it's own flair, but is still a "mundane" armor (nothing wrong with that - it's exactly what we need, in my opinion!). The layout is very clean, and Loki provides both the armor overlayed and on it's own. Still, I'd rather see png's with proper transparency over the dated gif format.
(The sloppy hair placement is my doing, not LokiF's.)
Creativy: 37 Execution: 44 Effort: 46
Top Hat (Lolhat)by Qubodup
Thanks to Qubodup for getting this contest started :). One thought in particular came in mind the very moment I laid eyes on this entry: "Are contest judges even allowed to enter!?"
After that, I clicked the link to see the actual image ;). So, what can be said about it? It's a top hat. It's round, and looks mostly the same from a lot of angles - compared to the full armor suits, this is easier and therefore gets a lower effort score. The simple execution works quite well and is has it's charm, but I can't help but wonder why some of the frames are antialiased and some are not? It earns a decent creativity score because tophats are always nice :).
Creativy: 35 Execution: 30 Effort: 20
Gentleman With a Side of Steampunkby Redwyn
Bionic arm, monocle, suit, top hat - is there anything in here not to like? Redwyn tries to pack a lot of stuff into this one. Sadly he doesn't complete it all, but I think that the sheer amount of changes in here weighs up at least partly for that. Now if only there was a cane in there too... ;). While there may be others in this competition whose skills have matured more, Redwyn clearly has talent and goes out of his way to show it. I hope he will stay with us and that I'll get to see him mature into something truly great.
("Now, where did I put my cane?")
Creativy: 45 Execution: 40 Effort: 38
Starsteel Barbarian/Armor/Clawsby Redshrike
This entry has it all. A barbarian, gigantic claws, and...and... that's it. But that's all it needs. I mean, how can you not look at this entry and think "Awesome!" ? If you really do manage to think otherwise, take one good look at him and tell him straight to his face. I dare you. And just wait until you see him laugh...
Good execution and effort - that the creativity score is also good goes without saying. Overall a very solid entry, and the changes Redshrike did to the base sprite gives us one badass looking barbarian.
("I promise, I don't know anything! Please don't hurt me! Whoever it was that stole your pants, it wasn't me!")
Courtesy. Some artists doesn't want their things to end up in other projects, even if they've agreed to the GPL. Technically, they can't really complain. We feel that it's better to not alienate those artists if possible though, That said, if it's clearly licensed under a permissive license and the author/creator can't be reached, we will still likely archive it. The artists can, however, contact us if they object and we will remove it from the site.
Hi MdNight! I haven't spoken to the other editors about this yet, so this is a preliminary response. If you hear nothing else, this is what you can go by:
As long as the sprite modifications can be overlayed, are color adjustments or minor changes, I think it's fine. To quote the contest rules: "Contest entries must be pixel art accessories or modifications for the OpenGameArt.org base sprites (linked above). This can include clothing, weapons, eyes, hair, or any other alterations or additions to the sprite bases.
So IMO, eg. new animations would be considered "additions". Changes that fit cleanly with the current base sprite should be cool too. A completely new base sprite is not (for this competition - of course we would love any contributions!). My take on it is that it's fine as long as it's obviously based on the base sprite. The only real constraint is that any changes you make should not interfere with the ability to combine the sprite with other accessories and such of the base sprite.
As for how to submit them, ideally it should be as modular as possible. So any edits that can be seperated cleanly should be (accessories etc). If you want to do this by layers or by seperating them in space is up to you. Submitting a single file is fine!
Thanks Qubodup :). As I still had all the ratings in an interpreter session, I might as well post the new standings here:
509 (399) (1) 1. Barbarian
506 (381) (3) 2. Brigand Armor
488 (393) (2) 3. Armor & Hair
451 (346) (4) 4. Gentleman
383 (275) (5) 5. Turnip Armor
233 (230) (6) 6. Top Hat
Probably correct :P.
Posting to let you know I'm done, as I'm not sure the forum notfies on edits. The whole entry is in my first post. The current standing is:
(399) 1. Barbarian
(393) 2. Armor & Hair
(381) 3. Brigand Armor
(346) 4. Gentleman
(275) 5. Turnip Armor
(230) 6. Top Hat
That's it for now. I'll get around to the rest of the entries when I have time. Yes, I know the ratings are a bit useless. I'll eagerly see how the rest of you vote and try to learn from it :). So I might revise these later. I have a rather clear picture of how to order the entries, but rating them like this proved a bit harder :p.
Edit2: Added the rest to keep it all in one place. New screenpaste: http://i29.tinypic.com/29yc8x.png
Edit: The forum messed up my layout. Read the screen"pasted" version here: http://i25.tinypic.com/eqphyc.png.
We can post our ratings in this thread, right? Anyway, I'll just move it if neccessary.
So - I guess it's up to me to get this thing started? First things first; I'm not a sprite artist. That's right. Never touched a sprite in my whole life. Heck, not only am I not a sprite artist, I'm not much of an artist at all (mostly because I'm too lazy to practice). Needless to say, I'm not the best person to judge the execution bit. So what'll do is that I'll try to write up a little something for each entry. For the ratings, I'lll use the entry I consider to be the "best of" in each category as a sort of guideline to judge the others by. With that out of the way, let's move on to the entry who stands out the most...
Turnip Armor from the Depths of the Mysterious Evil Garden of Turnipland by Blarumyrran
Unfortunately this entry doesn't qualify due to being incomplete - these frames are all there is to it. Shame, as I'd certainly like to see the full sprite sheet on this one! Because, in the artist's own words, turnips are good.
Full points in creativity for the utterly absurbd idea. The other ones are trickier - how do you judge the quality of turnips?
Creativy: 50 Execution: 45 Effort: 15
Brigand Armor also by Blarumyrran
Blarumyrran's second entry. The skill that was hinted at in the Turnip entry is shown here again in, you know, something you can relate to. Really, this is way beyond my ability to judge the execution of. I can see that there's some nice color use in there (possibly a bit overused in a few frames). Blarumyrran was slightly late with this one, which I guess has to count for something, so I'll lower the effort score a little bit.
As for creativy, it's a nice, well-made armor which doesn't look exactly like the rest. But neither is it something truly different. To be fair, what Blarumyrran wanted to do here was simply to give the poor guy some clothes - creating something that is of great use to a lot of people and in a lot of situations in the process. So while not truly "unique" (as in different), I still have to give it a rather high score here as it's fitness for it's purpose is undeniable.
Creativy: 36 Execution: 48 Effort: 43
Armor and Hair by LokiF
One of our earliest entries - a solid armor with some hair thrown in the mix. I mean, come on - what good is an "anime style" base without outrageously pointy hairstyles and absurbdly colorful hair (the most common haircolors in anime seemingly being red, blue, green, magenta, white, indigo and various shades of purple with a few odd ones thrown in - like the occasional blonde and the very odd ones - brown and black).
In my limited knowledge if spriting, I can see that Loki makes quite good use of dithering in places. The palette is rather basic, but works very well. Like Blarumyrran's armor it has it's own flair, but is still a "mundane" armor (nothing wrong with that - it's exactly what we need, in my opinion!). The layout is very clean, and Loki provides both the armor overlayed and on it's own. Still, I'd rather see png's with proper transparency over the dated gif format.
(The sloppy hair placement is my doing, not LokiF's.)
Creativy: 37 Execution: 44 Effort: 46
Top Hat (Lolhat) by Qubodup
After that, I clicked the link to see the actual image ;). So, what can be said about it? It's a top hat. It's round, and looks mostly the same from a lot of angles - compared to the full armor suits, this is easier and therefore gets a lower effort score. The simple execution works quite well and is has it's charm, but I can't help but wonder why some of the frames are antialiased and some are not? It earns a decent creativity score because tophats are always nice :).
Creativy: 35 Execution: 30 Effort: 20
Gentleman With a Side of Steampunk by Redwyn
Bionic arm, monocle, suit, top hat - is there anything in here not to like? Redwyn tries to pack a lot of stuff into this one. Sadly he doesn't complete it all, but I think that the sheer amount of changes in here weighs up at least partly for that. Now if only there was a cane in there too... ;). While there may be others in this competition whose skills have matured more, Redwyn clearly has talent and goes out of his way to show it. I hope he will stay with us and that I'll get to see him mature into something truly great.
("Now, where did I put my cane?")
Creativy: 45 Execution: 40 Effort: 38
Starsteel Barbarian/Armor/Claws by Redshrike
This entry has it all. A barbarian, gigantic claws, and...and... that's it. But that's all it needs. I mean, how can you not look at this entry and think "Awesome!" ? If you really do manage to think otherwise, take one good look at him and tell him straight to his face. I dare you. And just wait until you see him laugh...
Good execution and effort - that the creativity score is also good goes without saying. Overall a very solid entry, and the changes Redshrike did to the base sprite gives us one badass looking barbarian.
("I promise, I don't know anything! Please don't hurt me! Whoever it was that stole your pants, it wasn't me!")
Creativy: 45 Execution: 45 Effort: 40
I think this is a good idea :).
Courtesy. Some artists doesn't want their things to end up in other projects, even if they've agreed to the GPL. Technically, they can't really complain. We feel that it's better to not alienate those artists if possible though, That said, if it's clearly licensed under a permissive license and the author/creator can't be reached, we will still likely archive it. The artists can, however, contact us if they object and we will remove it from the site.
Cool stuff :).
Hi MdNight! I haven't spoken to the other editors about this yet, so this is a preliminary response. If you hear nothing else, this is what you can go by:
As long as the sprite modifications can be overlayed, are color adjustments or minor changes, I think it's fine. To quote the contest rules: "Contest entries must be pixel art accessories or modifications for the OpenGameArt.org base sprites (linked above). This can include clothing, weapons, eyes, hair, or any other alterations or additions to the sprite bases.
So IMO, eg. new animations would be considered "additions". Changes that fit cleanly with the current base sprite should be cool too. A completely new base sprite is not (for this competition - of course we would love any contributions!). My take on it is that it's fine as long as it's obviously based on the base sprite. The only real constraint is that any changes you make should not interfere with the ability to combine the sprite with other accessories and such of the base sprite.
As for how to submit them, ideally it should be as modular as possible. So any edits that can be seperated cleanly should be (accessories etc). If you want to do this by layers or by seperating them in space is up to you. Submitting a single file is fine!
Thanks for your interest and participation :).
It needs to be a bit more visible. Really cool, nonetheless :).
...on if what you think it is is what I think you think it is ;).
Art packs will be really cool! Just make sure you don't burn yourself out :).
Pages