4th year is about to begin!

in the small amount of time between the dacii project and this first week i`ve been experimenting in the realm of sprite graphics.

after having various talks about what to actually base my 4th year on, at first I thought to do it on user interfaces since there was a lot of relevance and room for expansion on that subject. and I did do it for the dacii project and was fairly knowledgable regarding.

however, I`ve been told that since it`s the last year of education, it would be wiser to do something i enjoy and want to get better at, rather than something easy.

so after much deliberation i`ve decieded to work on sprite graphics for 4th year. and that`s about all i`ve decieded thus far.

don’t have a question yet, but i`ll cross check my topic with relevant issue in the industry to come up with something. that and of course there`s like a million upcoming classes to help me decide with that.

there can be a lot of stigma surrounding sprite art like “it`s too easy to create.even a programmer could do it.” which is absolutely not the case. in many instances it can even harder to make than conventional art.

and then of course, there`s the whole nostalgic charm to it. which is part of the reason it`s my chosen subject. it`s fairly obvious why we don’t see as much of it in todays industry, but it`s important the style is kept alive and relevant because it`s to integral to videogame culture and it`s something truly unique that we have, and that no other medium does.

I made an animation of concept art from the dare idea to just mess around and test out the style.

click for animation

animation in the retro style is a different beast than I had imagined and it`s something i`ll look into in the near future.

i`ve also been making assets for a makeshift, test game of sorts. i`ve been throwing all this work at a programmer to keep ourselves busy untill uni started. here are some screens from it.

these next three images are from one long scene, just picture them all side by side for the full effect lol

the rubber duck chalk outline was at the programmers request, I hope there`s an elaborate and amusing puzzle behind it. or he`s just an eccentric weirdo, who knows.

the middle part of the street area. that traffic light is actually a foreground object. it wouldn’t normally obscure anything because it would be scrolling at a different rate.

the right side of the street. that pole on the left is part of the traffic light. it`s not important what the sign behind it says. but I bet you wanna know now, don’t you? muhahaha relish in the mystery!

the hole in the green building leads into here. a run down bar. the beer sign has a flickering animation.

moving right you appear at the actual bar. that dark streak on the left is actually a 37 frame animation for water dripping down the wall,just had all the layers on for the snapshot. there’s drips in the middle and right as well. labels are blank thus far but I think certain details will be put on them for puzzles.

and that`s all of the environments! there is more one room to the right for a snooker table but it`s still a work in progress.

and then of course there`s the character

click to see the various run cycles

and also, an example of the `character speaking` style. similar to what`s seen in the phoenix wright titles.

animated. slightly.

I`ve never really had a reason o create characters as I`ve always been focused on other aspects of art so I find myself always reusing y fronts man. no big deal,he works because the game is intended to be a goofy superhero adventure. with elements of side scrolling beat em ups and puzzle solving. but being how 4th years about to start this was just an excuse to get some practise in so i see me and the programmer about to be very flakey regarding it`s development. no big deal, i plan on putting what i`ve learned from this into my honours project, namely what goes behind sprite asset creation.