New weapon sprites - opinion/advice

[CaptainToenail]

I'm making a new weapon, the Hailstorm cannon, anyone that play Resistance Fall of Man will know what I'm talking about, anyway, I made this sprite myself, what do you think of it? I think it came out quite good since the only program I used is MSPaint! I've got Photoshop but I can't be bothered learning how tio use it lol.



Does it need improved? Please note the top bit will recoil back in the animation of it firing.

[Enjay]

It looks very small to me. The Doom chaingun, for example, is 114x83 pixels - quite a bit bigger than your graphic.

[CaptainToenail]

Oh dear, I was intending this to be BFG9K size

Would simply resizing it work?

[Enjay]

Would simply resizing it work?

Well, you could resize it but you would likely end up with a blocky or fuzzy look to it if you did so (depending on your method). You are better to draw it the size you want. However, you might be able to resize it than do a lot of cleanup work to make it look good at the bigger size.

The BFG btw is 170x84.

[CaptainToenail]

looks a bit rough but I think it's the right size now, anything else need done?

[Project Shadowcat]

looks a bit rough but I think it's the right size now, anything else need done?

You could try to go into Paint (or what have you) and try to smooth out some of the details the original image had.
And why for some reason does that graphic look familiar?

[CaptainToenail]

And why for some reason does that graphic look familiar?

Lol lol lol, I cut and pasted bits from R.O.T.T and Doom alpha/beta togethor to create this sprite.

[Project Shadowcat]

I'm surprised the style doesn't clash. Good work on that one. Still, try to clean up the sprite the best you can.

[CaptainToenail]

What about now? I darkened it, neatened up the edges in Paint and used the spraycan on some of the metal areas.

[Project Shadowcat]

I do see a noticeable improvement, but I still think something can be done to make the "chainlink-like" texture at the bottom more even and regular. Same goes for the venting at the top.
Maybe the bolt-holes could be a bit less square (due to the skewing).
Just little things like that I can catch. I'm a bit of a sprite editor so I know what it's like to have to make sure things look damn near perfect.

[CaptainToenail]

Well, I altered the grill slightly, added some high-tech junk and pasted in the original bolt holes, better?

[Enjay]

Better. However, areas that are supposed to have regular patterns (the vents/lines on the top and the grille at the back) are showing the problems of resizing. Some have resized wider than others because of the way the resizing works. Unless you manage to sort that out, it will always look like a small graphic that was resized bigger.

[CaptainToenail]

Hmm, I see, I'll need to sort the vents at the top, but I'm not too bothered about the grill at the bottom, half of it will be off the screen anyway, it does look pretty bad though I agree.

[Nash]

Just erase the whole grill section and reconstruct it pixel by pixel.

[Gez]

Choose one vent, and copy/paste it over the others. And it's easy enough to salvage the grill by re-using the original graphic's one, at the same scale, just copy/pasted several times. Gives it a finer texture, though:


For the rounded parts, I increased the pic size (the canvas, not the image itself) to create a work area. I copied the whole HUD there, then erased the grill. Then I copied/pasted the grill on the original area more, so that it would cover the gun's hull. And finally, I copied the workshop HUD (with deleted parts) over the original HUD (where the grill was overstepping its limits).