Sprite Comic
I can explain everything. Adam volunteered to do the guest art for this week. However, Adam is a very busy guy, and when someone who has a four month old baby at home attaches the modifier “very” to the adjective “busy” you know we’re dealing with serious stuff. I sent Adam an email today to find out what’s up, but in the meantime that still left me needing a strip for today.
I considered drawing this page by myself, but then if Adam has already started his version of the page I’d feel guilty about cutting him off. I considered running some filler material but all I have are some half-completed long form stories and a vague idea for a followup to my Webcomic Action Warriors strip. Then, inspiration struck.
“This comic is based on a computer game”, I said to myself. “Why not do a sprite comic using GearHead?”
So, here you go. It took about fifteen minutes to put everything together, and half of that was drawing the tails on the word balloons. If I hear back from Adam and he’s already started his page this version can stay up until he’s finished. if he hasn’t started the page yet, I can do it myself later. In either case this sprite comic is a temporary aberration.
One of the problems with doing a sprite comic using GearHead2 is that it’s a very ugly game. I hate to admit it but it’s true. We’ve got some very good artists working on the sprites and still images, but what we don’t have is a full time graphics programmer. Or, for that matter, a 3D modelmaker. Often I look at screenshots from other open source computer games and cry, just a little… if this were a Christmas movie then Santa would appear now to put me in touch with a skilled graphics programmer who’d be willing to get paid in GunPla.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:36 am
As it stands, the graphics look like cel-shaded 3D. That is a very hard effect to pull off properly even with a full 3D engine (see the recent Appleseed for an example). In general, if you want to maintain the isometric look, there are a couple tricks to improve the graphics without a full graphic designer on call.
1. Animation - Adding transition effects, looping stationary characters through a 5 frame fidget animation, Billboards that flash or walls that drip. Really anything that adds a little life to the screen.
2 SD Mode - It may sound silly, but gamers are conditioned to accept the Final Fantasy style “Big Head Small Body” sprite. If the sprites are aiming for a realistic look, they are graded much more harshly than a stylized look.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
The trouble is, I don’t think I have pulled it off properly. The sprites are awfully pixely. I was talking with Michalis a while back about replacing most of the graphics code that I wrote with his VRML engine; he wrote a patch that linked the VRML engine for mesh rendering, but I haven’t had time to take the next step and replace the world rendering code as well.
SD is a good idea. I’ll add that to the idea box. Hmm… maybe I’ll have time to throw together an experiment next week.
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
SPACE SHIP!
if your going to do a sprite over haul let me know I may be in a position to contribute (though i’m scheduled to drop off the face of the internet in about 6 months)
p.s. totally unrelated but did you know there is a free pascal compiler for the GameBoy Advance?
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I just started fooling around with some replacement sprites, actually. I’m thinking about going back to- gasp!- 2D graphics. Or, at least, throwing together a quick and attractive 2D interface to use until the 3D interface gets improved.
Here’s my idea: Do some tiles similar to the Planet Cute ones (google it if you’ve never seen it; why not use the Planet Cute tiles directly? Because I want stylistic unity, and also because I need more stuff than they have). For the characters, monsters, and mecha do front-facing SD “big head” sprites with short fidget animations. Draw an arrow beneath the model indicating what direction it’s facing and whether or not it’s moving; possibly only do this for the selected model. By using templates and layers I should be able to get most of the terrain done very quickly; by doing only one view for the sprites I should be able to get a fairly large number of them in a short time, too.
Since the sprites are going to be SD, maybe in this mode the mouseover info can show the model’s portrait.
I just did a websearch for some video captures from Sunrise mecha shows (Gundam, Dougram, Dunbine, and Escaflowne mainly) and I’ll be using these to help decide the color palette and general look of the tiles (obviously, since I’m going SD and cute I won’t be using the exact same look).
I have no classes today because the students are doing a test, so I have a bit of time to play around with this. I think I could write the code for a new interface pretty quickly, since it’d be mostly the same as the OpenGL version except for the map renderer. Hopefully I can get a demo running before the men in the white coats come to get me since I am clearly out of my mind.