Dragon sprite

[thespaceinvader]

Which would easily get confused with the bite animation I think the fore feet are the best bet. If you do it with the back of the hand, it shouldn't raise the question of blade damage, cos the claws wouldn't be involved - in the same way that the (claw-footed) Drake Glider line do impact damage with their kick attacks.

[Skrim]

Something's really odd about this dragon, IMO.

It does not look as if the Drakes descended from this thing.

It also looks very tame and non-ferocious, lacking that toothy 'grin' of the Drakes and big reptiles in general. It also possesses what appears to be a goatee. And the wings look too small compared to the rest of the body, so much so that it looks incapable of flying, IMHO.

[thespaceinvader]

The last point is irrelevant. Something the size of a dragon would not be able to fly without mechanical assistance, period. It flies by magic, more or less. The wings, if even close to a realistic size, woudl be about 3 times the size of the dragon.

The rest is somewhat debatable.

[stimj]

Another idea for an impact attack would be for him to rear up on his rear legs then slam down with his front legs (more of a smash). Something in line with what Jad does (for those of you familiar with runescape, if any).

[thespaceinvader]

That works, too. You could probably reuse a good deal of the flame anim, too.

[JAP]

The last point is irrelevant. Something the size of a dragon would not be able to fly without mechanical assistance, period. It flies by magic, more or less

No no, it flies because the very large hydrogen bladder provides lift, that is also the fuel for the firebreath (i just like complicated explanations more then just magic).

[Turuk]

No no, it flies because the very large hydrogen bladder provides lift, that is also the fuel for the firebreath (i just like complicated explanations more then just magic).

Assuming standard pressure and temperature, a cubic foot of hydrogen can lift something like .07 lb. The hydrogen is also consumed when fire is breathed, so how is it replenished? Good luck with that dragon.

[JAP]

Yes but the bladder fills most of the chest cavity most other organs are relatively small and positioned at the beginning of the neck or at the rear, that in combination with a lightweight structure (hollow bones etc. ) makes it just light enough that the wings can lift it.
How it is replenished? That is a biological process were it brakes down water to hydrogen and oxygen.
For detailed information on how it works consult your local wesnoth veterinary.

[thespaceinvader]

I like magic more than complicated explanations when the complicated explanations don't make sense. And I use the word magic for want of a better one. What I really mean is an amalgam of the rule of cool and 'it just does, kay?' - the dragons fly because that's what dragons do. Same as drakes. Physical rules need not apply.

[JAP]

Yea i know, what i said was in jest.
To go back to topic i am very vary glad that this dragon is getting finished.
Looking forward to see it in game.

[Vendanna]

Yeah, the dragon is reaching its climax and its good to see finished that huge project for once

also I think JAP was referring to the "Flight of dragons" animation movie in which the scientific suggest how the dragons were able to fly.

[pixelmind]

I revisited the head in order to give him a more reptilian look ( Its more like the skull of a T-Rex now . Also removed the goatee added a few extra horns instead )




For the impact animation I agree that a slap with the back of one fore feet will much look better than doing something wild with the tail.
I'll work on this when I've done the frames for the north and south direction.

[Huston]

looking good! keep it up! i like it better with the extra horns

[Blarumyrran]

Nice dragon. It is painfully late for this kind of comment now that animations and whatnot, but just for the record, you are not fully embracing the concept of pixel-art (im not talking about the last posted image being jpg). You should use way stronger outlines, & way smaller palette with colors of much more different hue, dont be afraid of blue or green pixels in the edges of stuff - two pixels of different color next to each other should contrast to each other a lot more; also, exaggerate highlights. In pixel-art in general absurdly exaggerating highlights is quite welcome. Avoid big gradientish surfaces, try to make a lot of "edges" - with a dragon, scales would be a great oppurtunity for that.

But now that youve got some animations done, you might want to go on with what you have already, of course.

[Jetrel]

Everything Blaumyrran says is true.

There's a problem here:
1] your dragon sprite, in terms of just its appearance, is ... pretty mediocre, really. It's way behind the current visual standard for the game, and doesn't match anything. If it were just that, I'd have probably given you a short "thanks but not thanks".

2] however, you then started making some amazing, liquid-smooth animations for it.


I apologize for not bringing this to your attention earlier; it was deliberate. From a cursory glance, I figured you're ... averse to proper 'pixel art'. I'm not sure if you don't know how to do it, or if you're unwilling to do it, but the fact that all of our sprites are pixel art is so screamingly obvious, that there's clearly something not easily surmountable here. It's not something where I can just tell you to do it, and you go ahead and do so; either you're not familiar and need to take a while (read: months-years) to brush up, or you're unwilling. The working methods I suspect you're using to paint this would be radically different for doing pixel art - it'd be really hard to translate over.

Given this, I figured that if I just told you that, you'd abandon the project. I was hoping you'd carry this through to completion, because you're providing us with a very valuable resource - a set of nearly 'traceover' guides to animate a dragon that -was- pixel art (which is actually a fairly big deal; animation is VERY hard, and we've got a few people here who aren't terribly good at animation, but are good at raw sprite art).


I do hope you finish this - if you want to attempt converting it to pixel art, that would be excellent, but the most important asset you can give us is the animations, even in the form they're in now. I don't really know if being pixel art is something I'd consider a requirement for this, but I do consider it a requirement for pretty much all other sprites in the future. I'm trying to cull the few "NPA (non-pixel-art)" sprites we currently have (just a few elves), because the NPA aspect of them makes them much more difficult to cleanly pass around in the community for mutual editing and such.