homunculus's two pixels

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franz_mp
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by franz_mp »

Nice fish!
Water Age version 1.8.8,2 BfW 1.13.
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Crow_T
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by Crow_T »

That fish is pretty nice, and could be used elsewhere- like swallowing units whole that cross shallow water, kind of like a big catfish hiding in the mud ;)
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

I think those are the clam finals. No walk animation, although I was so happy with myself for inventing a better clam walk than evolution did : )).

I hope the cfg-s work, gargantuan clam cfg was checked in-game, but used copy-paste from BfW 1.10 cfg for the first part of giant clam cfg, and then replaced gargantuan with giant (case-sensitive) for the rest, but did not test the giant clam cfg in-game.
Also, the cfg-s are based on what was found in BfW 1.10 Inky's quest, I am not aware of any updates to those files in the meantime.
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Telchin
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by Telchin »

Nice! Last time I updated Inky's Quest was on the 12th of April. I was primarily motivated by drakefriend translating my campaign to German (and myself translating it to Czech), but I also used what was finished of your gargantuan clam animation at the moment. As you can see on Wesnoth unit database the level 2 currently still uses your old pale white sprite, while level 3 has the animated bone-colored one. I'll include your new animations when I update the campaign next, but I'm not sure when it will happen. If you want to continue drawing sea creatures I would be happy if you decide to improve some other sprites from my campaign (Master Sea Head and the sharks are the most lacking), but given how infrequently I update the campaign, I don't want to make demands on you.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

Well, there are two major things I think I need to learn in order to become better at spriting, pixel clustering and color neighborhood.
For a start with the clustering, it would make sense to try to animate the new tentacle.

Out of inertia, and out of curiosity to find out if I have progressed at rotating solid objects, I did take a stab at clam walk guides. It was much easier than before, so it seems I might try the clam walk after all.
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bfb
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by bfb »

Thanks for your PM. I was looking on the clam in some details.
You could make a nice hoping animation for movement out of the existing files

base
ranged-1
attack-6
attack-7
defend
base

looks awesome already.

I am not sure if people realize that the clam meat is team-colored. I would keep it pink and put some TC-algae on top of the clam.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

@bfb: Clam clapping in the same direction as the attack animation is already as some smaller species move (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2iXHBuSIJY). Although it looks a bit funny, it is not hilarious enough for my taste.
Also, to my knowledge, giant clams do not swim like that but move like a snail.
This is pixelart, and in my mind, overdoing with realism is better avoided (I didn't write realism is to be completely avoided, just to be clear), especially if a better non-realistic solution is available.
And, to my knowledge the team-colored thing is mantle really, not much meat there *sigh*

So, here are the walk cycles, I am happy to realize that I only spent three evenings after work doing it (including abandoning the shading in previous post and improving the guides), so my workflow must have become considerably faster. And there was not much trial and error. The smaller version is scaled down larger version with some minor corrections. Also, made it on CRT, so it might not look exactly the same, especially the intended speculars (the lightest shade of the shell) that I was bit clueless about anyway (if there are some obvious problems, feel free to point them out or edit, C&C is useful, you know).
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walk.zip
No script files this time, I saw some macro for walk animations that I hope is applicable, possibly with some file renaming.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

There was once a thread somewhere (could have been experimental corner) where a mod posted that the thread is soft-locked (meaning something like: if you don't have something radically new or different to write then don't).
Now the trend seems to have developed further, and even the term 'soft-locked' is not explicitly used anymore.
But I had already made a sprite for one such thread, waiting for its right moment which had not yet arrived, when the thread was hinted to be locked before the thread could come to its logical and expected conclusion.
Don't the eyes look too small? Consider drawing eyes larger.
Don't the eyes look too small? Consider drawing eyes larger.
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I was once doing a mine cart http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 15#p475176 that was a horrible monstrosity of dithering, and also used too saturated colors for shadows. I hope I alleviated it somewhat in the color saturation department, but unsure if it would look better if I also replaced the dithering with solid color:
MinecartOnRails.png
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Not sure yet about trying to animate the tentacle http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=37825, but did a first concept sketch to show in which direction I would be going with it. I remember someone also had some ideas about animating the new tentacle, possibly not the same way. The main intimidation is that it would need to be animated in all four directions if the animation is like that. Or if it is modified to make a sweep it might loose its impact.
(otherwise, this sketch would obviously need cleanup and removal of some useless frames)
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fabi
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by fabi »

homunculus wrote:Not sure yet about trying to animate the tentacle http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=37825, but did a first concept sketch to show in which direction I would be going with it.
Somehow this animation is not reminding me on a tentacle.
It moves like a whip.
Whipping in water seems quite inefficient, if not impossible.
The damage done by a tentacle is a mix of chocking and crashing, maybe the sucker is doing some damage as well.
I know the damage type of the weapon is "impact", but that shouldn't be translated literally.

The tentacle (or the beast behind it) will go for the victim straight,
trying to keep the surface that works against the water small.
Even when attacking a unit on land it will most likely not rely on whipping,
the muscles are not designed for it.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

(if someone reading doesn't know what this is about, a quick intro could be how the real octupi look extremely helpless and pathetic when tossed around in water: http://youtu.be/VIwYYc9tUe4?t=30s)

@fabi: I was indeed doing a whip animation to make it look like it could do impact damage.
From http://youtu.be/F7AqaKzJU3c?t=30s, you can see some similarity with whip movement, although with different intent.

I guess I will try some with less obvious whipping impact.
This way a wider sweep might be possible as additional bonus.

And maybe I should also try some more realistic movement where it might look like the suckers are doing the damage (though the suckers on the tentacle do not look extremely prominent in the sprite).

In the latter case, I am curious about the possibility of using the first half of the "potion" sound (pulling the cork) for attack sound, no idea if or how that could be done (right now the cuttlefish attack uses whip sound if I recall correctly).
The "pulling the cork" sound could also be useful elsewhere, for example, zombie recruit animation (sketch).
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Crow_T
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by Crow_T »

Whipping in water seems quite inefficient, if not impossible.
Actually...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23245791
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

Crow_T wrote:
Whipping in water seems quite inefficient, if not impossible.
Actually...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23245791
That is a very interesting reference.
The tail is rather flat, and it seems to move through water sideways until before the slap, but still creating such impact was a surprise.

offtopic: the end of the world must be near, because it seems to be possible to become PhD without knowing of the solubility of gas being dependent on pressure, or if it was meant the correct way then even worse, don't know what a molecule is, and what exactly the water molecules would break down to if the covalent bond was broken (= an explosive gas, better be careful not to create any bubbles when you use tap water) (and I assume "Dr" means PhD, and there also seems to be a Prof involved :shock: ):
Dr Oliver also speculated that the speed and movement of the strikes might create shock waves in the water.

"We saw bubbles coming out of the water at the apex of the tail whip; an explanation for that is that it's caused by pressure differentials [that create] an explosion in the water [and] break down water molecules."
At least the journalist has some common sense to call it a speculation (uhh, this has a good chance to be high sarcasm (much like the high elves)).

And I also found another good reference video that I should be keeping in mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEKTxm-D8Q (unrealistic and clumsy, but a lot of style).

------------------

That was actually not what I wanted to post about.
I recently mentioned the virtues of sketching in the forum, and I am sure other people have their own experiences, which are better than mine, but I still feel like sharing some thoughts.

1) Recently I did some pixels, sketching first, and when the sketch started to "look like something" I decided to apply the palette and make it into a pixel image (the palette was restricted beyond my control). And, to my surprise, I then found that I had accidentally created a composition like this:
friends__r1158439141.png
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I was drawing pixels on the sketch layer, so the sketch is lost, but there was another sketch that is preserved to illustrate another point.

2) While sketching I often get some awesome random details that are actually the right details (or develop into right details) that I would not have thought of otherwise:
phant.png
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By the way, I usually sketch with airbrush in GIMP, using default settings, at 600x600 image size, using value and saturation about 30 (or sometimes just black if I feel even more lazy), on white background so I just erase with white airbrush.
But that is from self-learning and inventing, I am interested in other people's opinions about sketching (though not very optimistic about the chances of really getting any posts on this topic here, but I would be happy to be wrong).
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Rbuck
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by Rbuck »

homunculus wrote:
I am interested in other people's opinions on sketching
Well, usually I start out with a basic concept for a unit and its appearance, e.g. Speed, Attack Strength or Ominousness.
When I have a free moment, I use pencil and paper to rough out a possible outline for it. For example the Alien Gunship started from its large cannon.
If I feel satisfied with the concept sketch, I add a few details and use it.

Of course, my techniques are not usual because then I run the sketch through Blender and just touch that up with Gimp.
A paintbrush is worth a thousand swords.
The average pen is equal to a sword, but a picture paints a thousand words.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

looked at some classic paintings, and the poses seemed to be used repetitively.
for example, if you search for "archangel michael" you get many that repeat this pose:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... angels.jpg

for the lack of time, i cannot imagine trying to reuse all the poses that look interesting, so i made an attempt at reusing a donald duck like pose for a dragon (not completed, more like a sketch). in no small part influenced by another dragon sketch at the end of this post:
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 75#p481858

a self-obsessed dragon surely looks more realistic to me than a wannabe threatening dragon.
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homunculus
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Re: homunculus's two pixels

Post by homunculus »

Felt like doing some pixels again (after doing this, by the way), I think I got an idea how the tentacle animation would flow quite reasonably.
homunculus wrote:found another good reference video that I should be keeping in mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEKTxm-D8Q (unrealistic and clumsy, but a lot of style).
So, I tried to include some of that stiffness.

Posting in case someone has some comments that might be useful, and I would also like to know how fast the animation should be.

What is the usual time for one frame in BfW unit animations?

The motion should be initiated by circular motion underwater, and that is where the sweep should come from. In the frame with the motion blur, at the end of the motion blur the tentacle should appear having gone outwards from the circle to break the sweep, and the last frame should be returning to base frame in a relaxed way because of muscle elasticity.
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