Re: Boldek's art dump: OP killer sniper rifle marines!

[Boldek]

You need more contrast on aliens. Use brighter colors for highlights and darker for shadows.

Please consider some anti-aliasing for the rough blocky borders on outlines of the swords and characters.

Okay, does this look much of an improvement?

[battlestar]

Sometimes I use a transparent brush/pencil to draw as a means to anti-aliase, and with that you can make certain parts such as the tip of the head look sharper. Some parts there are still notable stair like pixels while other parts (especially the back) have blended together making it turtle-shell like. The old one was better where the little piece stuck out on the back so it feels like there are multiple pieces there.

[Shinobody]

Sometimes I use a transparent brush/pencil to draw as a means to anti-aliase, and with that you can make certain parts such as the tip of the head look sharper. Some parts there are still notable stair like pixels while other parts (especially the back) have blended together making it turtle-shell like. The old one was better where the little piece stuck out on the back so it feels like there are multiple pieces there.

Don't do it. Pixelart should not use half-transparent pixels. It's evil. Instead, study curved survaces from mainline sprites with zoom, to understand how they achieve non-jaggy lines. Effect originates froms overusing straight lines and 45 degrees slopes, rather than using different versions.
And yes, in terms of shading it is visible improvement.

[Boldek]

Sometimes I use a transparent brush/pencil to draw as a means to anti-aliase, and with that you can make certain parts such as the tip of the head look sharper. Some parts there are still notable stair like pixels while other parts (especially the back) have blended together making it turtle-shell like. The old one was better where the little piece stuck out on the back so it feels like there are multiple pieces there.

After consulting a picture, I decided that I had to change the armor any way, so I attempted a better shot of the elite's arm guards while trying to break the monotone. I hope this looks better:

[Boldek]

Here is the shotgun animation for the Marine, (Please ignore the 0 transparency issues, the barrel actually does move):

[Reepurr]

Just wondering why he's crouching down when he fires his weapon?

To further the critique, he's attacking east, not southeast (which could probably merit a complete redraw of the gun to be incredibly fussy), the gun isn't giving him much recoil at all, and IMHO the gunpowder flare at the end of the barrel could stand to be larger.

I hope you don't mind, but I fiddled a bit with your animation (and after all that I didn't point the gun southeast either):

attack.gif (2.7 KiB) Viewed 4389 times

[Boldek]

Just wondering why he's crouching down when he fires his weapon?

To further the critique, he's attacking east, not southeast (which could probably merit a complete redraw of the gun to be incredibly fussy), the gun isn't giving him much recoil at all, and IMHO the gunpowder flare at the end of the barrel could stand to be larger.

I hope you don't mind, but I fiddled a bit with your animation (and after all that I didn't point the gun southeast either):

attack.gif

Sorry, that's the defend animation, it's not supposed to be a part of the actual action sequence.

I did realize that the gun angle is off, but being lazy I thought I'd just try to get away with that, I suppose it could mean a lot to change that angle. Since this attack is for a single shot, I tried to make flare short and quick, but perhaps it would be better to overdue on stuff like that. Your attack sequence is definitely superior to mine, I guess I'll go back and try out your advice.

[Boldek]

Just whipped something up, how does this compare?

[alexanderthegre]

Wow. nice sprites.
It seems, though, that on frame 3 of the new one, you didn't remove the light off of the shooter's face.

[battlestar]

When shooting a gun with a lot of recoil power, the shooter will have to transfer the recoil to the shoulders instead of arms (otherwise the gun will jump up and hit the shooter in the face). That means the recoil will tilt the entire body back. The time of recoil action should be a little shorter than the recovery time from the recoil. Hope this is helpful.

unless you're a very big guy with a little pistol

[Boldek]

When shooting a gun with a lot of recoil power, the shooter will have to transfer the recoil to the shoulders instead of arms (otherwise the gun will jump up and hit the shooter in the face). That means the recoil will tilt the entire body back. The time of recoil action should be a little shorter than the recovery time from the recoil. Hope this is helpful.

unless you're a very big guy with a little pistol

Aha. Does this make a convincing shotgun or should I finally stop relying on cut&paste?

Marine-shotgun-big.gif (3.31 KiB) Viewed 4298 times

Wow. nice sprites.
It seems, though, that on frame 3 of the new one, you didn't remove the light off of the shooter's face.

The first is the standby, and two are firing. Do you mean the light angle?

[Boldek]

Here's some more sprites and a new palette:

[Great_Mage_Atari]

I like the direction of these sprites. It would seem to me that the shotgun looks too much like an assault rifle. Maybe increasing the diameter of the barrel, the location of the iron sight, and the shape of the gun a bit would convince me a bit more.

[battlestar]

Maybe make the animation faster, especially the recoil part, feels like watching it in slow-mo atm.

[Boldek]

I like the direction of these sprites. It would seem to me that the shotgun looks too much like an assault rifle. Maybe increasing the diameter of the barrel, the location of the iron sight, and the shape of the gun a bit would convince me a bit more.

Okay. This is the picture I based it off:

shotgun.jpg (2.88 KiB) Viewed 4222 times

Does this look more shotgunish?

Marine-shotgun.png (5.29 KiB) Viewed 4222 times

Maybe make the animation faster, especially the recoil part, feels like watching it in slow-mo atm.

I just set each frame at 300 milseconds so you could scrutinize it better. In the game it'll much faster.