The focus of this discussion has largely been about the characters, but I think there's room to improve other sections of the guide as well.
Miscellaneous Suggestions:
The copyright at the bottom of the page should be altered to include an LPC compatible license. None of us can use these guidelines until they're licensed properly.
A page with a quick-reference bullet point list of the requirements to be certified for each type of resource (tile, object, character), with links back to the relevant sections of the guide.
A page for common errors and how to correct them, such as having the incorrect head on left/right animations, or having too many colors because you did not use a dedicated pixel art editor. (I think I already have something written up for the incorrect head problem, I just have to find it again)
Tiles:
Guide for what makes a complete tile set, specifically for a building set. What is needed for a complete set of wall or roof pieces?
Color palettes for common materials: wood, stone, grass, snow, water, sand, glass, etc.
Objects:
A recommendation (maybe a requirement for the certification?) to draw objects from all 4 directions. This would only apply in cases where it makes sense: a barrel looks the same from all sides, but a chair does not.
Guidelines for how transparent materials like glass should be handled.
Color palettes for common materials: wood, stone, glass, metal, etc.
Characters:
I'd suggest having multiple certifications for different sets of animation. I propose we start with two:
Base: Idle (at least 1 frame), Walk, Hurt, maybe Sit. Your art needs to have (or be extending something that has) these animations to get any additional certifications.
Medieval: Cast, Thrust, Slash, Bowing
The remaining animations can be added to future certifications as it makes sense. A certification should have somewhere between 3 and 5 required animations.
Examples of possible future certifications (some animations don't exist yet, or have not been widely accepted):
Locomotion: Run, Jump, Climb, Crouch
Advanced Locomotion: Swim, Crawl, Slide
Melee: Thrust, Slash, Punch, Kick, Stab
Ranged: Bowing, Shoot Gun, Throw
Idle: Idle (more than 1 frame), Sit, Lying Down
Interact: Push, Pull, Carry
The advantages of this system are:
Smaller required lists makes creating new assets less daunting
We don't have to un-certify every asset whenever a new animation is added, we just create a new certification.
Overlapping required animations encourages doing 1 or 2 extra animations to get a second certification (for example, if I drew all the Melee animations, I might spend a little extra time to get the Medieval certification as well)
An artist working on a sci-fi game does not need to create medieval specific animations
submitted by Rhimlock, based on work by Johannes Sjölund (wulax). Rhimlock was unclear how much they contributed, but said there was no need to credit them. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-skeleton
Wolfmen
Matthew Krohn (makrohn) is credited because of the female thrust/shoot animations.
I think it would be useful to have a version of the shell tools with a graphical interface. Even if it is literally just a "Load Image" button. That way, someone who doesn't want to use the command-line can still draw over a template and replicate their head/hair/whatever to a full sheet easily.
On a related topic, I'd like to see the tools have more support for exporting separate animations, instead of having everything in a single image. Having everything in a single spritesheet is useful for passing improvements back and forth in a thread like this, but it discourages adding new animations because modifying the sheet breaks compatibility with existing assets.
We could also use the lower body from the "run" animation for this, combined with arms as Basto and BenCreating have proposed; TheraHedwig's run animation has the torso tilted diagonally forward, and the legs slowed down could be kinda kicking for swimming. That way it would work for underwater levels, or with a semitransparent overlay for swimming at the surface.
If we tilt the swim forward then we probably also need a non-tilted Idle animation.
At least for the "push", this could also borrow from the "run" animation---maybe the torso and lower body are the same and the arms are just held out in front of the character, pushing. Not sure about pulling.
Pulling would need a new backwards tilted torso. Probably not tilted as far, so the arms don't have to be really long.
If I have time, I'll make a quick proof-of-concept for these.
I'm having a hard time understanding Daneeklu's/BenCreating's animation here... Can you show an example of how it would be used?
A nod animation could be done with a head from the death animation, and the tilted head from the run animation. Sadly, this wouldn't give us a "look up" frame.
Looks like you're just missing the run animation. Also, the left-facing bow and thrust animations have the wrong head.
All the animation fixes have been to the female sheet so far. ElizaWy fixed the jawline in the thrust. Pvieger corrected issues with frame 2 of both the thrust and bow animations, and frame 12 of the bow animation. I posted a sheet very early in this thread that included all of their changes.
You may not want to do too much work on the existing non-standard animations until we've had a chance to clean them all up. No one is using them, so this is the best time to make larger modifications (like making frames duplicates of existing animations) that would break compatibility later.
Speaking of cleaning up the animations, I've made some changes to the grab. I've removed several errors, swapped the side-view torso so it matches the other animations, and changed the side-view arm in frame 1 and 3 to match one of the arm positions in the walk animation.
I don't know how you define shape, but I know that in sidewalking the second (not black) torso is one pixel shorter in height than the first. the fourth and sixth (this one is marked as duplicate, but isn't one) one have definitely different shapes
I think I made this a year or two ago, but if I remember correctly, I defined something as the same shape if it could use the same clothing asset. Texture/shading doesn't matter as much in that case, since the clothing is often just duplicated without taking it into account.
And you're right, those frames are incorrectly marked as duplicates.
I went over Bluecarrot's list of animations, tried to figure out which ones could be combined, and added a few more. I've included the existing set of animations in the list because I have some thoughts on them. I've broken them down into a few categories.
Locomotion:
Carry
Probably two-handed. This could be in front of the character, or above the head. If it is in front it could double as a push for light objects.
Climb
Are there any LPC ladders that this would need to match?
Crouch
If this gets made, a lot of other animations might have a crouched variant as well. I would limit any crouched animations to 3 or fewer frames.
Jump
Push/Pull
I think these should be for heavy objects. The character really needs to lean into/away from the object to make this feel right. Like pushing a block in a Zelda game.
Run
Swim
I attached a concept for this, using only frames from the cast, and one frame from the grab by Daneeklu. We should probably do something with the legs too, so it can be used for underwater levels.
Walk
Melee Combat:
Bite
Not a super important one, but it would be nice for vampires.
Charge
Running, but with the thrust arm position.
Chop
Two-handed downward swing. The size of the head makes this difficult, so it probably needs to start above one shoulder and descend at an angle. Could possibly double for casting a fishing pole.
Guard/block
This should work with and without a weapon. It should also work with weapons of any size.
Hurt/impact
The first few frames of this should be the guard/block animation. Otherwise, we would need a second version of this for blocking.
Kick
I imagine a chest/head height kick. If the pull animation is leaning back, we could use the same torso.
Lunge/Stab (one handed thrust)
Parry
Does this need to be seperate from the guard/block?
Punch
We can likely just use the lunge/stab, or the slash if we use Eliza's.
Slash
We should consider using Eliza's animation (probably simplified) in addition to the original. It can be used for a lot more combat animations.
Thrust
Two-handed swing
Do we need/want a horizontal two-handed swing, or could this be combined with the chop?
Ranged Combat:
Shoot (bow)
It would be nice if we could reduce the number of frames.
Shoot, one-handed (pistol)
Could possibly use frames from a one-handed thrust/stab.
Shoot, two-handed (rifle)
Possibly use the thrust arm position for carrying, and move it to the bow position for firing.
Throw
Combine with slash if we use Eliza's.
Other:
Cast
Craft/Interact/Work
If the hand motion is kept minimal enough, this could be used for typing on a keyboard.
Die
I would really like to see this extended to the other three directions. It could share frames with a crouch animation.
Give/present/hand object to
Grabbing one or two frames from another animation (the original slash or Daneeklu's grab) is probably sufficient for this.
Grab
Daneeklu's grab needs some cleanup to be useable. There are some missing pixels, and the head and torso do some weird things. It could possibly use frames from the thrust for the side view.
Handshake
I don't think we need a dedicated animation for this.
Sit
This needs to work well with the furniture.
Sleep
Standing with eyes closed works for the front view, but a few modifications could make it a lot better. It wouldn't hurt to have this for the other angles either. Like sitting, this needs to work with the furniture.
Bluecarrot, I think we agree, but I haven't been expressing myself very well. I only see value in completely re-doing an animation when we can add functionality.
For something like the walk cycle, I wouldn't want to see any modifications that change the outline. It would break compatibility with old assets, without adding a lot of value. Small changes to the shading, maybe, but nothing beyond that.
I would like to see them go in the opposite direction---fewer frames (the walkcycle being the most egregious example), minimal extranous motion, frames re-used where possible, etc., to make it as easy to contribute as possible.
I think I agree. Eliza's animations are good (and I'm excited for their release), but if we can get the automation tools in place then simpler animations will be better for the community. As Eliza pointed out, the precision needed for the current animations makes flaws more visible, but if we duplicate frames automatically it won't be as much of an issue.
Speaking of automation, I'd really like to see tools with a UI. The shell scripts we have are great, but in my experience, many artists won't use anything without a visual interface.
Baŝto, I don't know if it's helpful, but I just found a sheet I'd drawn awhile back when I was thinking about automation. I was analyzing the sprites to see how many torso shapes needed to be drawn, but I was also looking for duplicate frames. Each color is a torso shape, silhouettes are duplicated frames (some need to be mirrored), outlines are either unique torso shapes or frames I hadn't finished analyzing. Frames inside a white box probably should be duplicates, but aren't.
That's pretty close to what I imagined for a swim animation. I'm going to look over that list of animations and come back with some other thoughts later.
Yes, a simplified animation set for enemies would be amazing! Especially if it could share enough frames with the player set that assets would be easy to adapt between them.
Bluecarrot, I get your point about not re-doing everything, but I feel like the work of modifying the existing animations and creating new ones comes out about the same. Either way, someone will have to modify old assets to fit, so I don't think we should rule out updating the animations altogether.
I also have a feeling that even if we make any drastic changes, at least some of the old animations would still be used quite a bit, just not for their original purposes.
Taking Eliza's new One-Handed Swing animation as an example, it would probably become the new standard for attack animations. It could work for swinging a weapon, punching, and probably throwing things.
On the other hand, the original Slash animation would still have plenty of uses. It's probably still a better animation for waving a wand, gesturing while talking, and scattering seeds (or other small items). It even has some good frames for pushing a button, and shaking hands.
I think the key would be making sure that any replacement animations we create add new and different use cases, while any modified animations aren't changed so heavily that you can't use existing assets with them.
Eliza, do you have any of the animations close enough to being finished that you could post an example in this thread with the base animation, clothing guides, dopesheet, etc.? It might help us judge how difficult it is for a newcomer to create/adapt assets to these animations if we could play around with some of the guides.
I'm not opposed to a Discord, but I agree with Bluecarrot. Discord is fantastic for active conversations, but it's not great two years later when you're looking for that really great advice, asset, color palette, discussion about licensing, etc.
@pvigier. Thanks for pointing that out. That correction was merged in my version, but I'd forgotten about it.
@Evert Do you want to see separate layers for each limb for just the character bases, or for the clothing assets as well? Keep in mind, one of the goals of improving the sprites is to make it easier for new people to use and contribute to LPC. Needing to split every new submission into pieces adds a complexity that we may not want.
Regarding differences between the bases, the heads are only different on the lower half, so hats and short hair should all work. I think the heads are at different heights between bases, which is probably easy to fix.
Hands and feet are a lot more difficult. The bodies are all different widths, and it's not easy to get all the hands and feet the same shape and position without making them look funny.
It's certainly worth going over the sprites and making as much as possible the same. We just have to be careful not to go too far and make them all too similar.
Also, I think more/better tools to automatically adapt items from one base to another would smooth this process out a lot. I have some ideas about those, but I'll save them for another time.
I've been working to launch a project on GitHub (tentatively called Standard LPC) for organizing this stuff. If everyone thinks it's a good idea, I can get that out pretty quickly.
"I'd then like to carefully review several other adaptations which have attempted to fix some bugs in the animations"
As part of extending the bases, I've been trying to merge fixes as well. I have a Universal Female sheet that incorporates the changes from both ElizaWy and pvigier.
ElizaWy corrected the jawline in the thrust animation. pvigier cleaned up frame 2 of the thrust, and corrected the arm position in frame 12 of the shoot animation. I don't think either made modifications to any other bases.
ElizaWy's changes should work with existing assets, although I have not tested them extensively. The changes made by pvieger require modified clothing.
I'm not aware of any fixes in Basto's work.
"I have other thoughts about the tilesets I'll post separately."
Out of any of us, you've probably done the most work with LPC tilesets, so I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
I've been thinking about doing a ruins variant for some of the existing sets, and maybe some sci-fi tiles, but neither is at the top of my todo list right now.
The focus of this discussion has largely been about the characters, but I think there's room to improve other sections of the guide as well.
Miscellaneous Suggestions:
Tiles:
Objects:
Characters:
I'd suggest having multiple certifications for different sets of animation. I propose we start with two:
The remaining animations can be added to future certifications as it makes sense. A certification should have somewhere between 3 and 5 required animations.
Examples of possible future certifications (some animations don't exist yet, or have not been widely accepted):
The advantages of this system are:
You've already found my boar, but here's a few others you might be able to use.
Redshrike made a rabbit you could definitely use, and you might be able to get a quail or partridge out of bluecarrot16's birds.
There's also a goat and a ram that could work, especially near mountains.
I don't know about the recolors, but I can help with the others.
Human Female Shoot/Thrust
by Matthew Krohn (makrohn) https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-ladies
Skeleton Shoot
by Johannes Sjölund (wulax) https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-medieval-fantasy-character-sprites
Skeleton Thrust
submitted by Rhimlock, based on work by Johannes Sjölund (wulax). Rhimlock was unclear how much they contributed, but said there was no need to credit them. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-skeleton
Wolfmen
Matthew Krohn (makrohn) is credited because of the female thrust/shoot animations.
William.Thompsonj is credited for commissioning/contributing the wolf I took the head from. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-wolf-animation
You should also credit castelonia for commissioning the Wolfmen.
I think it would be useful to have a version of the shell tools with a graphical interface. Even if it is literally just a "Load Image" button. That way, someone who doesn't want to use the command-line can still draw over a template and replicate their head/hair/whatever to a full sheet easily.
On a related topic, I'd like to see the tools have more support for exporting separate animations, instead of having everything in a single image. Having everything in a single spritesheet is useful for passing improvements back and forth in a thread like this, but it discourages adding new animations because modifying the sheet breaks compatibility with existing assets.
If we tilt the swim forward then we probably also need a non-tilted Idle animation.
Pulling would need a new backwards tilted torso. Probably not tilted as far, so the arms don't have to be really long.
If I have time, I'll make a quick proof-of-concept for these.
Daneeklu never made an example, but I assume it would be used like this: https://i.imgur.com/97yDgHj.gif
A nod animation could be done with a head from the death animation, and the tilted head from the run animation. Sadly, this wouldn't give us a "look up" frame.
Looks like you're just missing the run animation. Also, the left-facing bow and thrust animations have the wrong head.
All the animation fixes have been to the female sheet so far. ElizaWy fixed the jawline in the thrust. Pvieger corrected issues with frame 2 of both the thrust and bow animations, and frame 12 of the bow animation. I posted a sheet very early in this thread that included all of their changes.
You may not want to do too much work on the existing non-standard animations until we've had a chance to clean them all up. No one is using them, so this is the best time to make larger modifications (like making frames duplicates of existing animations) that would break compatibility later.
Speaking of cleaning up the animations, I've made some changes to the grab. I've removed several errors, swapped the side-view torso so it matches the other animations, and changed the side-view arm in frame 1 and 3 to match one of the arm positions in the walk animation.
I think I made this a year or two ago, but if I remember correctly, I defined something as the same shape if it could use the same clothing asset. Texture/shading doesn't matter as much in that case, since the clothing is often just duplicated without taking it into account.
And you're right, those frames are incorrectly marked as duplicates.
I went over Bluecarrot's list of animations, tried to figure out which ones could be combined, and added a few more. I've included the existing set of animations in the list because I have some thoughts on them. I've broken them down into a few categories.
Locomotion:
Melee Combat:
Ranged Combat:
Other:
Bluecarrot, I think we agree, but I haven't been expressing myself very well. I only see value in completely re-doing an animation when we can add functionality.
For something like the walk cycle, I wouldn't want to see any modifications that change the outline. It would break compatibility with old assets, without adding a lot of value. Small changes to the shading, maybe, but nothing beyond that.
I think I agree. Eliza's animations are good (and I'm excited for their release), but if we can get the automation tools in place then simpler animations will be better for the community. As Eliza pointed out, the precision needed for the current animations makes flaws more visible, but if we duplicate frames automatically it won't be as much of an issue.
Speaking of automation, I'd really like to see tools with a UI. The shell scripts we have are great, but in my experience, many artists won't use anything without a visual interface.
Baŝto, I don't know if it's helpful, but I just found a sheet I'd drawn awhile back when I was thinking about automation. I was analyzing the sprites to see how many torso shapes needed to be drawn, but I was also looking for duplicate frames. Each color is a torso shape, silhouettes are duplicated frames (some need to be mirrored), outlines are either unique torso shapes or frames I hadn't finished analyzing. Frames inside a white box probably should be duplicates, but aren't.
I used the sleeveless shirt as a mask to define the torso area.
That's pretty close to what I imagined for a swim animation. I'm going to look over that list of animations and come back with some other thoughts later.
Yes, a simplified animation set for enemies would be amazing! Especially if it could share enough frames with the player set that assets would be easy to adapt between them.
Bluecarrot, I get your point about not re-doing everything, but I feel like the work of modifying the existing animations and creating new ones comes out about the same. Either way, someone will have to modify old assets to fit, so I don't think we should rule out updating the animations altogether.
I also have a feeling that even if we make any drastic changes, at least some of the old animations would still be used quite a bit, just not for their original purposes.
Taking Eliza's new One-Handed Swing animation as an example, it would probably become the new standard for attack animations. It could work for swinging a weapon, punching, and probably throwing things.
On the other hand, the original Slash animation would still have plenty of uses. It's probably still a better animation for waving a wand, gesturing while talking, and scattering seeds (or other small items). It even has some good frames for pushing a button, and shaking hands.
I think the key would be making sure that any replacement animations we create add new and different use cases, while any modified animations aren't changed so heavily that you can't use existing assets with them.
Eliza, do you have any of the animations close enough to being finished that you could post an example in this thread with the base animation, clothing guides, dopesheet, etc.? It might help us judge how difficult it is for a newcomer to create/adapt assets to these animations if we could play around with some of the guides.
I'm not opposed to a Discord, but I agree with Bluecarrot. Discord is fantastic for active conversations, but it's not great two years later when you're looking for that really great advice, asset, color palette, discussion about licensing, etc.
@pvigier. Thanks for pointing that out. That correction was merged in my version, but I'd forgotten about it.
@Evert Do you want to see separate layers for each limb for just the character bases, or for the clothing assets as well? Keep in mind, one of the goals of improving the sprites is to make it easier for new people to use and contribute to LPC. Needing to split every new submission into pieces adds a complexity that we may not want.
Regarding differences between the bases, the heads are only different on the lower half, so hats and short hair should all work. I think the heads are at different heights between bases, which is probably easy to fix.
Hands and feet are a lot more difficult. The bodies are all different widths, and it's not easy to get all the hands and feet the same shape and position without making them look funny.
It's certainly worth going over the sprites and making as much as possible the same. We just have to be careful not to go too far and make them all too similar.
Also, I think more/better tools to automatically adapt items from one base to another would smooth this process out a lot. I have some ideas about those, but I'll save them for another time.
I've been working to launch a project on GitHub (tentatively called Standard LPC) for organizing this stuff. If everyone thinks it's a good idea, I can get that out pretty quickly.
As part of extending the bases, I've been trying to merge fixes as well. I have a Universal Female sheet that incorporates the changes from both ElizaWy and pvigier.
ElizaWy corrected the jawline in the thrust animation. pvigier cleaned up frame 2 of the thrust, and corrected the arm position in frame 12 of the shoot animation. I don't think either made modifications to any other bases.
ElizaWy's changes should work with existing assets, although I have not tested them extensively. The changes made by pvieger require modified clothing.
I'm not aware of any fixes in Basto's work.
Out of any of us, you've probably done the most work with LPC tilesets, so I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
I've been thinking about doing a ruins variant for some of the existing sets, and maybe some sci-fi tiles, but neither is at the top of my todo list right now.
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