Elements Character Preview 3 (4? 5? idk lol) (Patreon)

Howdy! 

I told you yesterday that I was gonna have this for you today. Sorry for the little delay. Anyways, let's dive into it:

This SHOULD be the final progress post before I get into the actual character sprite pieces. I'm feeling good about where this sheet is right now.

1. Head/hair layers separate and updated

Okay! Based on patron feedback and some of my own additional exploration, I've finalized my decision on how the heads will work.

Previously I had a few different ideas: at one point I was going to separate the eyes onto a layer, and then I wanted to just put the entire head on a single layer. I really wanted to avoid having the hair as a separate piece because I've seen it lead to some janky problems with other generator-style sprites.

But... as I was playing with them, I realized that... if I'm going to be making all of the assets myself, then I can mostly avoid those problems with intentional design. So I put some hair and heads together to see how it would look, and it's not too bad.

Here's the image that I showed you yesterday:

I think that the image explains it mostly without needing too many words:

The heads/faces will now be a single unit layer. These would include different types of eyes, ears, potentially slight changes in the shape of the head You can see the different things that I tries in the image.

The hair will be on another layer that goes above the head. The hair might have an accessory built in, depending on the design of the individual piece -- like the headband and ribbons in the above examples. (Note that there would still be room for an accessory layer above that too).

The other thing that you'll notice in the above image is the colors. I've put some thought into this:

2. Color Palette Stuff

One big thing that the original Time Fantasy style lacks is color flexibility. Since the main goal of the new elements style is for character customization, I want to make it easy to recolor the character pieces.

I'm going to set up my main file so that each layer will use a unique color palette (in addition to a universal black and white which will serve as anchors).

So, looking back at the head/hair example:

The hair uses different colors than the skin, making it easy to recolor either. 

(Note that the head palette here has some unused colors, I've kept these available for some faces that might have different colored eyes, glasses, etc).

NORMALLY, for "good" pixel art, you want a unified palette, with a low color count that maximizes contrast. There are colors in this example image that are close enough where I'd want to merge them. But by fighting against that instinct and using unique colors for each individual element of the sprite, it's much easier to recolor or edit the pieces to create more variety.

When I put the final assets together, I'll likely have 2 or 3 color variations included for each piece. That would be the official release for the base pack, for ease of use. But because of the separate color palettes, users will be able to easily make additional color variations.

The skin tone color palette will be used on multiple layers, but will use its own unique colors consistent across those layers, making it easy for users to recolor all of the skin for the final sprites.

3. Bow and Arrow Animations are in!!!

I've been open about the difficulties that I've had with the bow/arrow animations in the past. The north/south bow animations were particularly hard for me, because of the way that the bow covered the face... Based on patron feedback, I decided to dive back in and revisit these...

This time, I looked back at 2D Zelda games to see how they solved the problem. And their solution seemed obvious in hindsight. They just rotated the bow :P The simplicity of their genius amazes me as always-- I'd been overthinking it again!

This is what I have right now:

It might look a little weird in the preview (because it's just recorded directly from my working file). Let me explain what's going on here:

There are three animations to look at here:

1. BowNock and Bow. There's a single frame of the character nocking the arrow. You can see how vital this frame is in the animated example above. The nock action became necessary for readability because of the way that I decided to do the core bow animation.

2. The character's "bow" animation. This is not actually a full bow firing animation on the character side. It's a single frame of the character's upper body in the bow position, and the other frames allowing for a walking animation while holding the bow. I decided on this after doing a bunch of study on how the bows are implemented in 2D Zelda, and thinking about how I might want a bow to PLAY if I was making an action game.

This animation setup gives the user flexibility for the character to move around while holding the bow. If you don't want that movement (maybe you're using these for turn-based stuff, for example)-- then it's perfectly fine to just use the single standing frame from this animation. The reason this works without arm movement from the character is because:

3. The bow and arrow overlay layers do the heavy lifting for the animation. This is the key to the versatility of this setup. The 'nock' is a single frame that transitions into the other three frames: main, pullback, and release. The pullback frame could potentially be held as long as the user wants, and with this setup, the arrow could be held back while the player walks around.

Note that the arrow sprite itself is yet another individual layer. Some of the arrow's frames in my image are just for my own reference in lining up the animations. I'd include the arrows in an extra 'projectiles and effects' folder-- or something like that. It wouldn't be a part of the main character asset stuff, but still included for use.

The final elements pack will most likely have 3 or 4 different types of bows and arrows that the user can use, all designed to work with this setup.

4. Shields

Lastly, I saw a comment about shields. I'm planning on including shields into the set. They don't need any special character animations though-- they work on their own overlay layer.

Here's an example:

This example uses a frame from the bow animation above -- originally, these would look just fine using the normal stand and walk frames; but since I had the animation anyway, I gave it a try. 

This looks pretty good! These extra animations are even more useful than I realized when I made them. ;)

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So-- I think that's it! Is the base finally finished and ready to go?

Let me know what you think. Excited to move ahead with character parts.

Thanks!