[Sprites ~ WIP] Alternative Strife Guy - Update

[InsanityBringer]

The legs just look like they are zooming in and out as they move, not really in a walking-ish way.

Honestly, it'd be best to start from scratch drawing over the original guy for reference.

[lukas]

Dont you think his head should move along? i mean seriously his body and legs are moving but the upper body doesnt even move

Yes - already working on it.

1) The cape appears to flicker on each side due to the extreme movement. Make it a little more subtle. See how the Hexen Cleric's cape animates.
2) Add more natural movement. Right now it looks like a set of pixels simply put together and shifted around. Some movement on the head and body would do wonders.
3) The arm that's holding the gun needs to be properly animated instead of simply shifting the same pixels around.
4) I'd start by onion-skinning the original Strife guy under your sprite sheet to interactively compare the two animations.

1) Okay also working on that.
2) I understand about head and am working on that, but what do you mean with body. Body already moves...
3) Uh... How do you think it should be animated? I just recolored Strife guy's arms, I didn't change anything with animation...
4) Onion-skinning?

But it'd still be neat to see female variants and female peasants too.

Female peasants... no - cause they would get killed or converted to acolytes on sight. But female rebels/underground beggars - yes, cause the rebels would get killed anyway and the beggars hide underground.

Honestly, it'd be best to start from scratch drawing over the original guy for reference.

Drawing a sprite from scratch is beyond my skills I'm afraid...

Head and shoulders are too static... one of the tricky things about animation is that the whole body should move when doing anything. You can probably copy-paste the new face over the top of the old head, just making sure to replicate the head position of the original sprites, but you'll have to redo the shoulder edit for every frame. I thought the walking movement seemed weird too, but I doublechecked and that is how the original sprite's legs move, so maybe it's the shoulder thing being enough to throw it off, I don't know. Cape still strobes a little bit too much, too, I think.

Yes most of that is already mentioned, and I'm working on it.

[Nash]

Observe the original Strife guy's frames. Immediately recognizable and solid objects - like his backpack (if you're viewing him from the back), his head, or that... thing on his chest in his front frame - would be best left copy and pasted into every frame and shifted around because they are solid. HOWEVER observe his body. Every frame is different. You achieve this by REDRAWING his body every frame and then reshading them manually. They have to be shaded consistantly so the shades don't jump around every frame, which is where onion skinning comes in.

(Note that some pixel artists are damn good and probably don't need onion skinning, they just draw over the pixels on a sprite sheet and the sprite ends up animating well. :P)

Same goes for the original Strife guy's hands. See how every frame is different; that's because they are redrawn and reshaded every frame, instead of just shifting the pixels around.

Shifting pixels gives the impression of rigidness, which is the main problem with your edit. As I said above, rigidness is fine for solid objects, but for organic things like the human body that constantly moves around a lot, copy and pasting won't work. Besides, it just makes sense; as the body parts are moving around, light being reflected on them is constantly changing... so it's okay for the shading of each frame to vary a little bit (again, very subtly. Too much and it looks like a bunch of randomly flickering pixels).

A small tip for walk cycles... in the frames where the legs are far apart, the body will appear shorter. In the frames where both legs are close by, the body will appear taller. This is natural. See this image: http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/s ... ycle03.jpg - use this fact to create more natural-looking walk cycles.

One more suggestion: for his idle frame (the A frame?), have his cape in the a natural, dropped down position. I see that your A frame has his cape magically floating to one side. :P

If you still don't understand... study the Strife guy sprite and observe repeatedly until you get it. :P

[Cutmanmike]

Yessss I've been hoping for someone to make him. He looked awesome in the cutscenes, and when I finally get zdoom and do chasecam you're this bum of a solider? He deserves a sprite.

[Gez]

Female peasants... no - cause they would get killed or converted to acolytes on sight.

Would still be useful for any "after the defeat of the Order" mod, or just as general resource.

[lukas]

StrifeGuyWalking.gif (48.86 KiB) Viewed 897 times

StrifeGuyWalking.PNG (2.97 KiB) Viewed 897 times

Hope this update fixes some of the problems found. However I'm afraid I'm not much of a spriter...
Edit - Also for some reason, the .gif file doesn't seem to animate for me in browser... Odd...
Enjay if it's not problem, can you animate and post it?

[InsanityBringer]

It's set to only animate once and then stop. Any animator should have a loop option somewhere.

[lukas]

I make the gif with Game Maker's image editor and it don't have a loop option...
Anyway can anyone give link for good freeware gif animator?

[lukas]

Updated first post

Edit - Updated first post with new sprite version.
Edit - Just to let you know that after I finish this, I will make reskins of Strife's weapons to make them have blue gloves.

[Gez]

I make the gif with Game Maker's image editor and it don't have a loop option...
Anyway can anyone give link for good freeware gif animator?

There's that one: http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-GIF- ... 12053.html

Or you can use the GIMP. If you save as a gif, it gives you the option to make it an animation, and you can control the speed of the animation as well as whether it loops or not.

[lukas]

Ah, thanks!
I didn't know you could use GIMP for that, then again I never tried it before.

[printz]

Yessss I've been hoping for someone to make him. He looked awesome in the cutscenes, and when I finally get zdoom and do chasecam you're this bum of a solider? He deserves a sprite.

In vanilla Strife you never see your sprite. Only in deathmatch you see other player avatars. They look different than the cutscene hero in single-player, just like how the Doom 3 multiplayer marines are different to the cutscene single-player hero in that game too.

The only other inconsistency is the glove color in both single player and multiplayer, that's always grey.

[lukas]

Final version of walking frames!

StrifeGuyWalking.gif (7.45 KiB) Viewed 849 times

StrifeGuyWalking.PNG (37.65 KiB) Viewed 849 times

Also this spriting stuff is much tougher than it seemed before I started...

[SamVision]

He gettin' jiggy with it No srsly that looks better.

[Enjay]

Reminds me of this: