Shad's Pixel Art

[Shademp]

Discarding my old creativity thread for one with a more specific focus.

In the first half of 2014 I got some limited experience with making pixel art and I wish to revive that pastime. Knowing myself, I will probably do a lot of pixel recreations of FFVII stuff. Even if it's not FFVII, my standard has always been to use a lot of references and not to create "out of thin air", so I typically recreate stuff rather than imagine anything new.

To revive this pastime, feel free to help me by challenging me! If you have requests, send me a PM and I'll see what I can do.

Spoiler: One can dream

My ultimate goal is to get enough experience so that I can create very small games, with original graphics, in RPG Maker VX Ace. A full-on J-RPG is out of the question, so minigames are where it's at. Anyway it is for this reason that I create a lot of sprites in 32x32 and 32x64 pixels, so to fit in with the 32x32 pixel grids in RPG Maker.

If I can further develop the body templates I made a year ago, maybe I could easily creative avatars for TLS members? That'd be something.

Spoiler: Body Template Experiments

Spoiler: Let's get this show started

Buster Sword in stone

OG Save Point (that I got lazy with)

 

[Airling]

 

[Shademp]

FFVII OG Save Point - The Animation

Gifs were made in gif maker.

Spoiler: Most Accurate Representation - 300 ms/frame

With the switch from magenta to cyan in the "open square" at the top, its revolution becomes extra jarring to the eyes due to the choice here of using only six frames. I made the gif slow so to make the animation a bit less unappealing. I actually prefer the animation where I made both sides of the open square magenta, even though that is not accurate to the official save point.

Spoiler: Double Magenta Version - 200 ms/frame

The 6-frame animation, in my eyes, flows the best here in 200 milliseconds per frame. This limited animation is now improved by both sides of the open square being identical, contrary to the official design.

Spoiler: Additional commentary + spritesheet

Although I chose a fast animation this is not accurate to the official save point, as it takes roughly three seconds for that save point to complete a rotation...if you use the top half as the reference. The open square (top), the crystal (middle) and the glowy circle (bottom) do not have a synchronized rotation. With a 3D object this animation is easily achieved but when creating 2D pixel animations some sacrifices have to be made in the adaptation.

The joy of recreating objects and their movement is partially in making fresh observations. The top rotates clockwise, the middle rotates anti-clockwise and the bottom...took some time to figure out. At first I thought it went clockwise, then my perception changed to it being anti-clockwise. After staring at the save point in the original game for a long time though, it appears to me that the glowy circle pillar is in fact made up of two circles occupying roughly the same space, with one pillar rotating clockwise and the other rotating clockwise.


For greater ease in the animation process the sprite sheet was originally made in three layers. Here is what the final, one-layer sprite sheet looks like.

 

[Lex]

SMILIE

SMILIE IT NOW

 

[trash panda]

I agree, smilie it indeed. I'm impressed.

 

[Alex Strife]

Cooooool~~!!

I used to be quite big on RPG Makers back in the day. Used to have very decent maps and stuff. And for me to be satisfied with that... it's quite something. Then my computer died and I lost all process .

 

[Tennyo]

Wow, these are really cool! Are you planning on tackling any of the characters?

 

[Shademp]

Are you planning on tackling any of the characters?

Yes. In fact I hope to do so soon(ish).

Meanwhile, here is some stuff from 2014.

Spoiler: Moogle sheet

The two moogles in the upper right corner show the first version I painted, so to compare it with the "finished" spritesheet.

This sheet (minus the proto moogles) is adapted to fit the default character animations of RPG Maker VX Ace, so that the most basic of walking/running animation is shown when holding a directional button. The fact that each sprite fills a 32x32 pixel space also fits perfectly with the natural grid system of this RPG Maker software.

Spoiler: Cait Sith experiments

The finalized "facing down" sprite is the one to the top left, with the two to the top right representing earlier versions. I do not remember if I ever planned to make walking animations for this one. ...Really happy with Cait Sith's shoes in the top left sprite. Yes I know I'm making the viewer squint a lot. This is both the boon and the bane of adjusting your pixel art to the RPG Maker software: On one hand you generally get to work in smaller spaces so you have smaller areas to fine-tune, on the other hand there isn't a whole lot of detail for the viewer to appreciate. I can understand why most of the FFVII pixel art out there make the characters way bigger than 32x32 pixels or 32x64 pixels. To pick an example from a certain AbyssWolf of DeviantArt... Don't expect me to ever make such large-scale sprites for the main characters. ...Admittedly though, large-scale sprites work well as enemy combatants.