[SPRITES] Spriting Carnival!!

[Amuscaria]

I I can just make that arm-cannon in 3D with the same lighting, or even close to the same lighting style as my sprited version (and find a way to paste it over the image with the right angles), it would make this sprite quite feasible. This frame look around 1.5 hours to sprite, but a lot of it spent figuring out the design and how to approach the spriting. Conservatively, I think i can make 1 image of this quality via drawing per hour or so. Assuming I don't run outta motivation in the middle (as I usually do), the completed sprite sheet will take around 54-55 hours.

For comparison, the Corpulent took around 12 hours with it's semi-sloppy quality.

[Enjay]

Whole E shit! That thing looks superb!

[oODemonologistOo]

Holy shit Eriance, you keep setting new limits to this business ! It looks incredible ! Thoug makes me think, how long did Overlord take you to finish ? I don't know why but I have a feel it took a long time as well, perhaps near this "Enormous" ?

[Phobus]

A very large and complicated sprite there Eriance. Shame you can't finish the set, but I know exactly what you mean. Even spriting a simple large monster for me is a lot of effort, let alone one with 4 limbs and plenty of detail.

[Ghastly]

Holy shit Eriance, you keep setting new limits to this business ! It looks incredible ! Thoug makes me think, how long did Overlord take you to finish ? I don't know why but I have a feel it took a long time as well, perhaps near this "Enormous" ?

I don't think it took as much time as the Enormous would take. He's said previously that Caco-types were easier because they're symmetrical and you don't have to worry about animating walking animations.

I have been trying some 3d modelling programs in the past, but to me they seem overly complicated and hard to use

A buddy at college showed me the latest version of Blender and it looks like it's a lot easier to use. They added a ton of buttons to the side of the screen, so you don't have to spend years memorizing hundreds of hotkeys.

[Amuscaria]

The over lord was done over random intervals over a year (yup, the pains of losing motivation). It was the first large monster for me to sprite from scratch, so despite the simplicity of the floating-head monsters, it look around 10-12 hours. Most of the time in figuring out new ways to approach the spriting - to make it faster. However, from what I learned, I managed to sprite the new Inferno in around 6 hours.

And Yes, the floating-head monsters are quite easy to sprite. I only need to make a single rotation (which is only 5 frames) and then I can edit all the other rotations from that one. I'm pretty sure it's how id software did it from studying their cacodemon and pain elemental sprites.

@Ghastly: I've actually started to learn to sculpt in Blender. Although nothing solid yet. I can't figure out how to animate the sculptures, though.

@Phobus: It is possible to finish if I put down 1 hour a day for 55 days. However, I don't think I can keep myself that persistent given school. It's also not going to be used in DE (which is pretty much half-abandoned now) so it seems a bit counter-productive. However, if anything, if completed, It would be one of my more ambitious and higher quality sprites. So I dunno. I did learn a lot from spriting the Corpulent as to shortcuts to be used on the Mancubus-edits, but I'm not sure if those can be applied to something this big with that much detail.

[Blox]

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE SOLDIER.

If you want to sculpt something, I'm seriously going to recommend using Sculptris.

As I've had very good experience with it, and finishing a rather solid (organic!) model takes a couple of hours. (A pinky demon took me about 3-5 hours.)

At first it may seem a bit tricky, but just use the "Move" tool to pull those limbs out, smooth them a bit. And then draw.. Er, SCULPT stuff on it!
The crease/inflate tools are for detailing, mostly. And the "Pinch" tool is for pulling stuff together.

Amazing sprite by the way, though that must've taken one hell of a herculean feat to finish that single sprite.
And even then, I can still point out a couple of erroneous parts.

Texturing is going to be a real pain though..

[janiform]

Eriance, I very much encourage you to take the time to learn a modeling program. I can only assume that touched up models, 3D or clay, were used for every Doom engine game (as well as Duke Nukem 3D) because of the efficiency of the operation for large multi frame sprites. Given your obvious skill I think you would be able to achieve comparable quality quickly.

[Amuscaria]

@Blox: Is Sculptris Free? I was going to buy Zbrush, but then i saw the 700 dollar price tag. I started messing around Blender a bit. I messed with Blender before while working with LeileiLol on some Hacktoria stuff some years back, but that program is seriously confusing.

[ShadesMaster]

Enormubus, how about that?

I don't want the concept to die... but how to make other animations from that one?

[Hellstorm Archon]

@Blox: Is Sculptris Free? I was going to buy Zbrush, but then i saw the 700 dollar price tag. I started messing around Blender a bit. I messed with Blender before while working with LeileiLol on some Hacktoria stuff some years back, but that program is seriously confusing.

I checked, and I figure that Sculptris is free.

[Tormentor667]

@Blox: Is Sculptris Free? I was going to buy Zbrush, but then i saw the 700 dollar price tag. I started messing around Blender a bit. I messed with Blender before while working with LeileiLol on some Hacktoria stuff some years back, but that program is seriously confusing.

Well, there are other ways to get this kind of software... I mean, it's not that you are earning money with your creations, so getting a "copy" of it from somewhere isn't such a big deal in my eyes

[Phobus]

You can usualy get trial or student versions for free for most expensive bits of software, I find. Or, as Torm hinted, there are less legitimate methods that this forum does in no way endorse or encourage

[Blox]

ZBrush may be advanced and very powerful alright, but it's way too confusing for my taste.
Not to mention that making anything particularly useful requires utmost patience. (Whilst as I said, in Sculptris such tasks take roughly a couple of hours.)

Not-so-long story short, it's much easier to keep the motivation going using Sculptris. As it provides "morale appealing" results rather quickly, unlike ZBrush. (At least in my ever so short experience.)

There are less legitimate methods that this forum does in no way endorse or encourage.

There's something about a certain ZResc file..

[Ghastly]

I messed with Blender before while working with LeileiLol on some Hacktoria stuff some years back, but that program is seriously confusing.

As I said, the later version's streamlined it a bit. It's worth another look. If you can learn Photoshop's buttons and options, you can learn this.