Dragon sprite

[thespaceinvader]

Unlikely, since it's not really mainline style, and doesn't depict the mainline dragon. However, we're more than happy if pix decides to do a portrait for eternal's dragon. he;s already (tentatively) agreed to do some animations for it.

But have patience. Developing something as big as this is SLOW.

[Blarumyrran]

since it's not really mainline style

Hm? I'd say the portrait is eg more close to kitty's style than your style is to kitty's style - while both yours & kitty's are supposedly "mainline style".

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

He's talking about the sprite, not the portrait. The sprite is not mainline style, and since the portrait matches that sprite specifically, it can't be mainline either.

[thespaceinvader]

Well, I was talking about the portrait. It's closer than many, but to my mind, it's not perfect. That being said, I don't have final say on that. Kitty and LB do.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

My bad. In any case, it isn't depicting the mainline dragon anyway, although it does look quite nice.

[zookeeper]

I've added the portrait for Shek'kahan in TRoW, it looks really good there. I added you to the TRoW credits simply as "pixelmind" for now, but I can change it if you want.

[dragonbob]

Is there anyone still working on this? It looks realy nice!

[thespaceinvader]

Have you read the thread at all? Your question is already answered.

[pixelmind]

Hi there
Hadn't posted in a while because I didn't had anything new to show you.
Right now I'm working on my own project so I have little time to work on the dragon.
But it bugs me that I never finished it.

I'm not very happy with the current design so I did a quick reshading:
( now with more spikes and scales )


I want to get the baseframe as close as possible to mainline quality before I go back to the animations

Don't know when I'll finally finish this guy, but it'll take a while for sure.
So what do you think ? Does this sprite look better than the last one ?

Pix

[Telaron]

In my opinion, the back legs are too thin at the thigh.The horn also seems a little off. Other than that, great!

[Vendanna]

I want to wish you good luck with your project and I'm happy to see you are still here (congrats for the cave spider by the way)

Yeah, it is sad that you hadn't finished it but take it as a large work that is being worked slowly but that at least doesn't have "release date" so do it at your leisure.

About the sprite, in general I noticed the spiky dots on the tail's start, what is the actual aim? (to have it reach the end of the tail?) notice that were the spikes end (not the end of the tail) has little "usage value" for the creature (it cannot use them properly to attack someone with it, and isn't in a zone were he will be attacked most of the times anyway)

Also, note that a viewer would expect that those spikes extend more on the back of the creature, not dissapear like a patch placed randomly)

Those are my concerns, with the actual dragon sprite. The scales part on the neck to his right forearm? blends weirdly (they are too highlighted while the others have a darkoutline that centers the viewer attention to it)

I suppose most of this is due to be a work in process showing the direction you want to take with the big lizard, and I like the scale motiff, tought that also makes me feeling uneasy since the changes to the base creature would mean you would need to "Redo" the other animations with the changes to make it useable (part of the work is already done I know but still looks like a ton of work!!)

About the horn in the nose, I think it may seem displaced due to the angle of the head used? I visually expected it to be on his nose orifice (in the sprite) even tought I know that's wrong.

Sorry for the long post, I tried to mention the things that came to my mind upon examination of the critter. And I still feel amazed on how fast you work on a sprite that big and with a ton of details.

Have a nice week and I'll wat/lurk in your tread for more information about that project of yours

[Cloud]

(In the spare time between meetings with different assignment groups)

Wow, I speak only for myself, but that's pretty damm close to mainline. Very nice work on the texture of the scale and the shading, if you could continue the scaley texture all the way to the tail you could have something very nice indeed.

A points I can see (sorry if someone above me pointed it out, I'm in a bit of a rush) - the far wing is a bit aliased and the shading's a bit weaker than the rest.

All in all though, with a bit of love this fella could be awesome , keep up the good work.

[Zarel]

Awesome.

And I mean that in its original definition of "awe-inspiring", not the colloquial definition.

[Kenpachi]

the new scale plates are really good. But it looks odd to me, that they don't continue under the wing.

[Jetrel]

Generally, speaking, this is a massive improvement. This is now detailed in a style that'll fit the game.

But you need to drop your color count. This is a mess to work with right now.

This is a back-and-forth compare between your current version of the image (about 45 colors), and a version I prepared with only 16 colors. If it's indistinguishable, it means those colors aren't doing any good. Get rid of them.


As a rule of thumb, if an individual color differs less than 10 L values in the L*a*b color space between itself and another color in that "ramp" of brightness values, it's probably superfluous. To ascend a ramp of colors from pure black to pure white in pixel art, you shouldn't need more than 10 brightness values.