Mudcrawlers

[thespaceinvader]

Since eternal gave us a lovely base frame for the Giant Mudcrawler based on kitty's portrait I thought I'd make it a little more in tune with the new dirt colours. Then, I made up a quick base frame for the Mudcrawler. SHould be doing some animating soon, if I can get my head round gloopiness.

Decided to go with TC eyes, then they can be used for such things if desired, and coloured to default to red if not.

EDIT: the small one could probably stand to be a little larger. Or the big one a little smaller, since the units are level 0 and level 1.

[Vladcara]

Great sprites, as usual.

As to the issue of size, I think they look okay compared to other units-drakes and woses are as big as the lvl1. However, compared to the lvl0 the lvl1 looks huge. I think going with knocking a few pixels off the big one and adding a few to the small one would fix that.

[thespaceinvader]

Bit of tweakery. Probably the small one could do with being a little larger.

[Trilby]

Needs bolder shadows about it's personage.

I know it's mud, but if you're considering references for motion, I would recommend the Sandman in Spiderman 3, the scene where he's just been transformed. I think the sluggish/lumbering uncertainty would be fitting for a creature of this type. So the body seems to have difficulty keeping it's shape.

[thespaceinvader]

Yeah, i figured on more contrast.

[Cloud]

Still needs more contrast, especially dark, but maybe a touch of light for the more liquified parts to represent that. Aside from that it looks good so far, though I'll withhold judgement until I've seen an animation, that's going to be the real test of these two.

[Sgt. Groovy]

The giant one needs more shadow on the chest area and to the side to make the arm stand out better.

The small one looks like a pile of bear dung, with two undigested lingonberries in it (and I should know, I've worked in a zoo, I've shoveled plenty of that stuff ). It needs more defined shape (head, hands), to make sure it's a living thing.

[Mabuse]

very nice.

[thespaceinvader]

The giant one needs more shadow on the chest area and to the side to make the arm stand out better.

The small one looks like a pile of bear dung, with two undigested lingonberries in it (and I should know, I've worked in a zoo, I've shoveled plenty of that stuff ). It needs more defined shape (head, hands), to make sure it's a living thing.

Actually I'd disagree. It should just be a vaguely animate glob of mud. The level 1 is amorphous but vaguely recognisably humanoid. The level 0 is basically lump of ...what you suggest

I'll drop in more contrast tomorrow, and hopefully pull together the beginnings of animation. Gloopery will be a test of my skill.

Why do I make these rods for my own back >.<

[Jetrel]

Mix up your palette a bunch more. Eternal's core color may have been off, but he was properly mixing up his palette. Don't do a straight run of the same hue at different brightnesses.

This is a post from someone commenting on us doing that right, in frogatto:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... id=3684412


For characterization reasons, the small mudglob should of course not have hands and such, but IMO should have something closer to a recognizable face, at least with a mouth and eyes in about the right spot. If we step away from that kind of characterization, we need to go whole hog, and ditch looking remotely anthropomorphic. The point of being anthropomorphic (at all) is evoking sympathetic human emotions. Faces are really important for that.

But don't compromise on this; having a muddled halfway point gives the worst of 2 worlds.

[wayfarer]

This is a post from someone commenting on us doing that right, in frogatto:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... id=3684412

...

Always nice to see the thoughts you share nicely formulated on paper.

[thespaceinvader]

Improvements, hopefully.

I hadn't done a straight run of different brightnesses in the first place, but this has more variation I'm loathe to introduce too much, because I specifically picked the colours to match the new earth colours.

[Darker_Dreams]

The new mudcrawler does look better...
but the earlier attempts at base frames look usable for defense frames with relatively minor work.

[SFault]

Improvements, hopefully.

At least against white background it looks too green. IMO more red and less saturation would make it look much better.

[thespaceinvader]

*shrug* it's unlikely to ever be seen against a white background. It doesn't actually go past yellow, at all. It could maybe stand to be a little redder in the upper registers, however.