Sprite help please?

[Enjay]

I've been trying to improve one of my Inca enemies. If you've played my Burghead mod you'll have met the Inca who throws grenades. I've improved the DECORATE so that he fires his gun and never throws a grenade when he is too far away for the grenade to hit you, or too close to you for him to take serious damage from the grenade if it hits you. However, I also want to improve his animation. The existing version doesn't have any grenade specific animations, so he just points his gun at you and a grenade pops out of nowhere. I've had a go myself and the results are... OK I guess, well, a bit crappy really, so I'm sure they can be improved.

Below is what I have done. The one on it's own at the bottom is the original graphic that the others were based on and the 3 above are my edits. The first one in particular is bad. He kind of looks like he's dislocating his arm or something and the animation as a whole doesn't really look like he's throwing a grenade properly.





So, anyone able and prepared to give it a go? If you think it needs an extra frame, that's absolutely fine, I'm not restricted to a particular number of frames. If you really fancy, a full 8 rotations would be cool but, realistically, the front rotation is the important one seeing as how there is no infighting in my mod and its only single player. Anyway, the original sprite source (Blake Stone) didn't have rotations for the firing frames so all my rotations for the Inca firing frames are just ugly hacks of idling frames anyway.

[Project Shadowcat]

Requesting sprite sheet of that enemy, with at least front, and front-side angles. I'm going to have a go with it. I'll need that extra angle for comparison and splicing purposes.
Watch him put his weight into the throw.

[Enjay]

Very cool, thank you. I don't have a sprite sheet handy, but here's all the sprites extracted to individual bmps. Don't let the magenta background throw you, that's just DeePsea's default. You'll also notice that the palette isn't quite the standard Doom one.

http://www.zen64060.zen.co.uk/inca.zip

[Project Shadowcat]

Very cool, thank you. I don't have a sprite sheet handy, but here's all the sprites extracted to individual bmps. Don't let the magenta background throw you, that's just DeePsea's default. You'll also notice that the palette isn't quite the standard Doom one.

http://www.zen64060.zen.co.uk/inca.zip

That's fine, I work in MS-Paint anyway. It's a spriter's best friend.

[Project Shadowcat]

Got a semi-rush job done. I haven't tested its animation yet, but I am confident with it. ... Fucking legs.
I also didn't like how few colors are used on the faces. But I tried to keep with the style as best as I could. Hope this works for you, Enjay.

[Enjay]

Hope this works for you, Enjay.

Works? It's fantastic! Much better than my effort.



I know what you mean about the faces. It's a function of the way I originally converted them from Blake Stone a number of years ago. I'd do a much better job these days. It's been bugging me too. I thought about improving them recently but when I counted up the few hundred frames that I'd have to copy and paste on to for all the enemies, I decided that they they weren't that bad.

Thanks very much. It's appreciated.

[Project Shadowcat]

Ooooh, that does look neat. o.o

Glad I could help, Enjay. I'm just lucky I had 40 minutes to spare.

[Onslaught Six]

If you wanted to make it look even better, I'd suggest making his left leg (the one on our right) lift up slightly on one of the two frames where he actually throws it, to better give an illusion of movement. One of the legs from walking should be able to do that, right?

[Project Shadowcat]

If you wanted to make it look even better, I'd suggest making his left leg (the one on our right) lift up slightly on one of the two frames where he actually throws it, to better give an illusion of movement. One of the legs from walking should be able to do that, right?

I thought I did that. But it was a rush-job as I said, so I didn't test its animation.
I think I'm safe saying both Enjay and I are content with the animation as-is. That took 40min of my time.

[Onslaught Six]

Oh, of course, and if it's left as-is, I'd certainly never find it out of place at all. It's great. I'm just a realism/detail whore when it comes to things that aren't mine. I'd never think of doing that if it were my 'own' sprite, see

[Project Shadowcat]

.... I see how it is.

I do appreciate the critique, by the way. I just spent too much time per-sprite that I don't want to bother with another sprite for the rest of the weekend.