Character Frames

I Made A character for An Upcoming Game I might possibly probably not going to make.

I also Made A Video on making the Jumping Frames. (Using a lot of megaman)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94a9ZAFCozM&list=UUOdcwytfkFfIp7MB_v9wCAw&index=1&feature=plcp

Also, a deviantart page about this. http://o-amini.deviantart.com/#/d5e1dx8

EDIT: Added Swords, Running frames, Crouching Frames, and Attacking Frames.

You know these have way too many colors for the NES, right? Technically, you can make sprites with more than 3 colors by stacking sprites, but when your frames are 25 pixels wide that means using nearly all of the 8 sprites that are allowed to be displayed per scanline just on your main character, leaving nothing for enemies, items and so on.

I'm not too fond of the Mega Man sprites. They were OK for the first game, but then everything else improved with each game while Mega Man remained the same and started to look very dated. He's too flat (because of the lack of shadows and highlights), not very detailed (blobs of blue and cyan form the body), and some animation frames put him in rather weird/distorted positions (giant hand when throwing things, weird legs when getting hurt, etc.). Personally, I wouldn't use him as inspiration for my own sprites.

If you intend to put these sprites on a real NES game, you have a bit to learn about how NES graphics work.

Sprites are made from 8x8 pixel blocks with a palette of 3 colours. You can have four 3-colour palettes in use at one time. Keep in mind that all sprites on screen need to use these palettes, so it's not usually a good idea to use them all up on your character. If you need to have extra colours on your character, keep the area that uses the second palette group to a minimum. Notice that Mega Man is 3-colours except for his face, which fits neatly inside two 8x8 blocks (his arms are still blue for a reason). His shot uses the same palette as his face. The other two palettes belong to whatever enemies are in the current scene.

Also, don't use your background colour as a hair highlight. The background will show through this, unless your character is always against a white background. You can use a white pixel instead of the background colour, but this is probably a waste of a sprite and palette space.

Another rule that may be important is that taller is preferred to wider on the NES. You can only have 8 sprites on any given horizontal line, or else you have to do something like flickering them on and off to make sure all of them show up at least part of the time.

Also make sure things fit neatly into 8x8 blocks. For instance don't make something 25 pixels wide when it could be 24 (8x3). The 8x8 blocks also don't need to be on a grid. Note how the tank in Blaster Master has a separate body and wheels, letting the wheels roll and stretch out without requiring extra frames of body animation.

A lot of games will use separate sprites with their own palette if the character is using a weapon. For example look at the turtles in TMNT; each of them is only 3 colours, but the weapon is animated separately and has its own palette.

There are probably other nuances, but this is a start.

Thanks For all the Advice. I'll try to change the proportions and colors so they fit in the palette.



Wow, I really did Mess this up...

OK. i Know what you mean by the palette. I'll try to fix that. Also That is not a hair haiglight, it is a seperation in the hair. I probably need to change that. I am Also Going to work on the proportions. thanks for the advice.

Yeah, if it's a separation, it should use background color.

The typical pattern seen in later games is skin color, light clothes color, dark clothes color that doubles as outline. Look at Super Mario Bros. 3: the overalls are actually black, and the gloves are skin color. Another pattern is seen in Contra: head and shirt with one palette, pants with another, both palettes reused elsewhere on the screen.

Ok. Thanks. I'll Work On That.

EDIT: Finished Him. He is 16x28 and has 3 colors. I also Named him. Rez.



EDIT EDIT: Added Running Frames, Jumping Frames.
2nd Line is what he'll look like if he is attacking. The two things in the bottom right are his arms, a separate animation.

First thing that came to mind when I saw your new character:


(for those of you who can't identify this character, it's the main character of Clash at Demonhead)

Nice Catch! I actually used him for reference.

I though it was a separation at first, but got confused when rainwarrior said it was a highlight!


Colors definitely have to double. Light colors should be used for highlighting darker areas and dark colors should be used to shade lighter areas. With moderation, of course, otherwise light areas and dark areas will look too similar to each other


Heh, if it weren't for the artwork I would just say he's not wearing gloves!


Mixing palettes is good, it makes the NES seem less limited. I was also common for the body to use one palette and the head another, like Bucky O'Hare.

HELP!

I decided that 1 jumping frame would be too boring, but I dont have the skill to make this.

Can someone help me turn my sprite into this jump?

It looks like Mario is in a pike position: hips bent, legs mostly straight. Once you draw your character in a pike at one angle, you can spin him 45, 90, and 135 degrees with rotpixels and then use flipping to get the other 4.

Oh, and on the diagonal frames, look at Mario's eyes. He looks ticked off at something.

Thanks for the help. Yeah. He does looked ticked off.

Hey, I used my old sprite to make a new character that should work with the NES.



Tell me what you think.

NES sprites have to be well aligned by 8x8 grid and use not more than 3 colors besides the background (transparent color). You can increase number of colors by using few palettes for different 8x8 parts of the sprite, however, it'll reduce number of colors for other sprite objects on the screen. The picture you posted is not follow these limitations.

Oh yeah, oops.
I was so fixated on making it fit in the NES palette and dimensions, I forgot about the color limit. Heh, I'll change that.

Yes, that's true. However, the first sprite of the picture he posted CAN follow limitations. He just have to use layers, like you said.
True, it will decrease number of colors for other objects, BUT megaman have 6 colors(3 for body and 3 for face), so if you plan it carefully, you can have 4 colors for hero. Especially, if you plan to have a common enemy with legs color or shirt's.

The top sprite is doable if you use different palettes for the upper (black + dark red + skin) and lower (black + dark cyan + whatever is useful for other sprites) halves, like in Contra. What's up with the weird shadows in the bottom sprites anyway?

Actually, those arent shadows. As I put in the topic post I said that this might be a game, and the character here gets turned into a machine. Those are wires and metal.

But Im going to try and make it so it fits.

That will be very hard to do in such small resolution and so few colors. I think that the only way you'll be able to make convincing machine parts is by overlaying new sprites containing such parts, and use more conventional metal colors for them, like gray and cyan, otherwise people will hardly be able to tell what they are.

Ok. That is a bit confusing, but I'll try.

What's confusing? I'll try to explain a bit better:

Draw the top of the character using one palette (black, dark red, skin). Since this palette is a red-ish gradient, it can easily be reused for other objects. Draw the bottom of the character using a second palette (black, dark cyan, light cyan), so his pants are dark cyan. Now, using this same palette, draw the metal pieces that will "roboticize" the character (half a face, and arm, whatever), and place these parts on top of the regular sprite. By keeping things separated like that, you'll even be able to roboticize/deroboticize the character during the game without having to redraw all animation frames, you just overlay the metal sprites on top of the regular sprite.

I'm always reculant with helping because I'm afraid of saying something wrong. Sorry if I mess something, but I want to help.
I think that you should break your sprite into 3 sections.
Like this:

First is upper body and it uses pal0. second is lower body which uses pal1. Finally, we have a layer for our metal part. It also uses pal1.
the sprite at bottom is what you get when you combine all 3 into one.

Yes, that's true. I left some dots in first part of sprite so you can have additional, red color in your metal part. BUT you will not be able to roboticize/deroboticize your character anymore.
By the way: The height of body parts are not dividable by 8. (upper is 19 and lower is 17.)This will result in throwing extra sprites to complete whole hero, unfortunately.

Thanks A bunch! I'm sure this will come to be really useful.