Request for All Spriters

[Heretic86 25]

http://www.videogamesprites.net/ChronoTrigger/Party/Marle/

 

I've got a question for the Spriters out there. I know it is a lot of work to make GOOD looking ORIGINAL sprites. I've tried and failed many times. For some people out there, they seem to be able to just flow thru their fingers and thru their mouse and become incredible with what appears to be very little effort! I know from experience that it does take a lot of effort to become that efficient, and many people often mistake their experience and efficiency as being easy.

 

One of the troubles that I find in a lot of games is that the Characters come across as being very static. Not animated. During cutscenes, usually two characters just come up to each other face to face, then we get tons of dialogue to read. I'm trying something different, trying to rely heavily on Character Animation to convey the emotions of the characters to the player, but I run into the same problem time and time again when I try to use RMXP to create those animations. RMVX is even worse since they cut out one of the walking frames of animation, so to me VX feels like an absolute step backwards. Now, trying to rely on Character Animation, I am pretty much stuck with using one of the frames of Walking Animation to animate the characters during cutscenes.

 

But what I am really wondering is if any of the Spriters would be interested in creating characters with a LOT of different poses, like the Marle sprite I linked to as an example. I would have embedded it, but the website requested that we dont hotlink since they have to pay for the bandwidth, so if you are interested, click the link. But do take note of how many different animations Marle has, more so than just the Walking and Fighting animations. Things like shaking their heads NO or YES, jumping for joy, climbing, kneeling, handstands, the butt slap (maybe she farted, I dunno), hands up in the air, etc, they all took a lot of effort to create, and look fantastic. I dont know if any of you have ever played the game Chrono Trigger, but if you haven't, I HIGHLY recommend playing it, just to get a feel for what Animated Characters can do for a game. At the time it was originally released, Chrono Trigger had the most animated characters ever seen in any video game, period. And it showed, because to this date, I dont think a sprited game has been produced with the massive number of animations that all of their characters have. And, to this date, it remains my favorite game of all time. And a LOT of people agree with me on that, even GameSpot said it is the BEST RPG EVER. Better than Dragon Age, better than Morrowind, better than almost everything released today. WOW doesnt count as its an MMO and they have a nearly unlimited budget, we dont.

 

However, how would you Spriters feel about making sprites with as many animations as Marle? I know I would use them, if the character fit my game (robots dont tend to work to well in mideval times, and ninjas dont fit in an a post apocolyptic world), but I think that would add a TON of value and earn you a ton of respect for those of us who want the extra animations to use in their games. I understand that you wont want to do a ton of work for a character that may never be used, but I've seen some pretty incredible sprites out there, and some absolute crap ones, for example, ones that are produced on the backwater sprite generator that people claim to be their own work. The thing is, Backwaters sprite generator isn't that bad, but so many of the characters look TOO similar to the rest. I almost wish we could start a community project, like Backwater, that offered a ton of different animations, like the Marle Animation I linked to. Maybe rendering them would be easier, treating things like clothing, hair and swords like objects, and it could render different poses. Just something to speed up the process and make it more rewarding for producing something that may not be used, like an attachment, without having to do the work of redrawing the same character 50 times, and for each of those 50 times, up down left and right poses.

 

Just curious how everyone would feel about that?

[Chief 30]

I can tell you right now that you will more than likely have to pay someone to make sprites like that. Its a really huge task. Something I know I wouldnt try to accomplish without adequate compensation.

 

Also, nothing is better than Morrowind, therefore your validity is invalid.

[Heretic86 25]

Lol@morrowind! I totally agree that very skilled people would and should expect adequate payment for their work. And Im asking for more work. What I was thinking of also while I was writing that is a way to make it easier for everyone, so the most skilled of us can pump out high quality multiple poses for individual characters with less effort. Hence, the Rendering.

 

I came across this last night after thinking about it:

 

http://www.d-grafix.com/?page=spriteforge

 

 

Of course, rendering sprites might cause conflicts in the visual style if they look "too realistic", like throwing a sprite of Donkey Kong Country into the original Super Mario Bros. Other problem is now I'd have to learn modeling too.

[kellessdee 48]

And a LOT of people agree with me on that, even GameSpot said it is the BEST RPG EVER.

 

YES THIS. <3 Forget what anyone has to say about chrono trigger, it IS the best GAME ever made. Sorry, that's fact not opinion.

(okay so that is opinion, but whatever I do what I want)

 

Also, nothing is better than Morrowind, therefore your validity is invalid.

 

Except for chrono trigger :shifty:

 

d-d-d-deraaailled

 

*ahem* back on topic.

 

like Chief said, it's going to be hard to find spriters who would be willing to do something like this. The downside also to 3d models > 2d sprites is that, when scaled down to rmxp's resolution, you're going to get a lot of abnormalities/artifacts/etc. It's just not going to be the same quality.

 

Personally, what I would do anyways, is either A) create a set of templates from chrono trigger sprites (so with all poses, perhaps a few general templates, like a couple male and a couple female) then, just simply (okay, it's not just that simple, but easier than from scratch) edit the templates for each of your characters. Sure, it would still be a lot of work, but

1. they would be fairly original, nice looking and have lots of animations

and

2. still be WORLD's less work than starting from scratch.

 

EDIT: I forgot option B) Not spend so much time on character animation. I do see where you want to take the idea, but honestly, considering the fact that you do not have a team, and that a solid and intriguing story line/characters/dialogue trumps any questionable "added" detail...I'd say it's almost not worth it. I don't want to try and stop you/deter you from trying something of this magnitude, but based around the number of players that would even NOTICE these details--it just doesn't seem worth the work (ie. you can spend that time developing the game/story itself, or even producing a larger volume of not so dynamic sprites)

 

Just my 2 cents though.

 

I was actually working on a game once upon a time where I planned to utilize all chrono trigger sprites, just edited...Although, not that extreme--it was more just recolors + frankenspriting...

 

either which way, I wish you luck

and

YEEEEEEAAA CHRONO TRIGGER FOREVER <3