I don't understand how the professionals can make such large, detailed, well-animated bosses in video games. I spent all day just making this guy, with all his large areas of solid color, and just the thought of all the work that'd go into bringing his level of detail up to "average" is just mind-boggling.
Anyway, I'm not quite sure if he's ready to go in-game yet. Any critiques?
Its quite good, but when professionals do it htey do what you just did, this is just the half way point. Then they will detail it frame by frame, and watch it animate and make sure it animates smoothly together. This would look good with a lighting from above.
Awesome. I guess this is for 'nothing' (ahem ) right?
Only thing I can think of is that you can see the definition between feathers from underneath the wing, but not as much when you see the top of the wing.
Also, I'm not sure if it'd look better if the beak opens and closes or not, but the expression seems a little static at the moment.
Professionals can do it because they get paid golds. It's better than whoring out your delicate orifices.
Also that birdy is hueg, keep in mind that most games that use spritwork have a resolution that could fit inside something that big. Animating something within 64px or so is somewhat easier.
Nice...it definitely needs some more detail. The eye looks a little plain. I agree to on the beak. It needs a little more movement to go with the rest of the sprite. It seems that the tongue wouldn't stay that still.
Maybe the tongue could loll around a little bit, but I don't agree that it would look any better if the beak moved. I think it looks pretty great as-is.
Hmm its a nice flying animation but if its a hovering bird over the ground, surely it would be in a more upright position? To me that seems more like a flying position, but maybe it is flying?
Yarr, it is, indeed, for "Nothing".
Thanks for the feedback! With a few little modifications (and a few more animations, of course), this guy's ready for gameplay.
And this bird isn't that big, Radix. It's meant to fill most of the game's 320x240 screen, and I've seen bosses bigger and more detailed on resolutions that can't've been TOO much smaller.
And you're right, Adam, the bird's a bit too horizontal to be hovering. But I need his back to be nice and level for my own purposes.
And this bird isn't that big, Radix. It's meant to fill most of the game's 320x240 screen
If it fills most of the screen, it is big. That's what big means. Large even. In other words, hueg. 320x240 is larger than standard SNES or NDS or just about anything else that uses sprite graphics, and while you're right that bigger and more detailed bosses exist, in almost every case those are going to be static backgrounds with small animated sections, not a fully-animated sprites like this bird.
Any large boss I can think of is either of the static background variety, or else made up of different pieces that just move and rotate and the like. The only exceptions I can think of where a large-scale sprite has full, detailed animation are in a couple high-budget games on the PlayStation.
Come to think of it, a sprite that large with full animation and detail would probably be a bit much for the memory limitations of the old systems, hm?
I think it's fine as it is.
Although maybe the beak could be closed completely.
"320x240 is larger than standard SNES or NDS or just about anything else that uses sprite graphics, and while you're right that bigger and more detailed bosses exist, in almost every case those are going to be static backgrounds with small animated sections, not a fully-animated sprites like this bird."
Not only is it harder to animate all those frames, it's probably beyond the sprite handling capabilities of those machines.
It's not a problem for a click game though if you don't worry about slowdown on some machines.
Well, in the case of those two examples (SNES and NDS), large animated sprites are certainly possible and I can think of a few examples, the limitations were really more to do with cross-platform design for shooters and the like. Most of the time though there just wasn't any reason to do it. Whatever the reason, the point is that it's easier to animate smaller sprites even with more detail.
"Come to think of it, a sprite that large with full animation and detail would probably be a bit much for the memory limitations of the old systems, hm?"
Yes, the NES could display 64 sprites at a time (8x8 tiles) with 8 per line. Therefore, to make a 64x64 sprite, you'd need 8 sprites across, and 8 sprites down. There goes the sprite limit. Any more and you'd see flickering. Play Bubble Bobble on the NES, blow tons of bubbles, and it's really hard to play.
The SNES could display much more; perhaps not that big, but could make up sprites made up of many smaller sprites.
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) right?
