Of Sprites and Kittris

Astrael 3 Comments
Arashi's new sprite graphic
Arashi really hates kittris

Today I finally sat myself down and drew the first of potentially 126 frames of animation for Arashi.  I may still hire the pixel artist to do the smaller artwork, he is really talented, but I don’t think for the Xbox 360 release of Shadowdawn Genesis that 32×32 will transfer well to a large screen.

So here you see the final sprite artwork for Arashi, about the only thing that is finalized so far (one step at a time right?)  I wasn’t going to go with chibi look, but I realized that unless this is a fighting game with the character and rival being the only focus of the entire game, I needed to make the artwork small enough.  And if it gets to this size, realistic proportions just don’t work, you get no face and outfit designs kind of turn into a blurry mess.

But this is about the first real indication of the style of game I’m trying to make, and I hope you like it.  For what it’s worth, seeing the finished graphic blend in with the test level brought a tear to my eye.  Or maybe that was just dust… I really need a working vacuum.

About Astrael

A long-time independent game developer that was lucky(?) enough to have grown up with the gaming industry. I am a programmer, a game designer, a concept and pixel artist, a music composer, and a novelist. This has been my dream for as long as I can remember, and I am determined to take advantage of every talent I hope I have to make it happen!

View all posts by Astrael →

You may like these posts

3 thoughts on “Of Sprites and Kittris”

  1. Yay for old school rpg style art. if you remember unless the charicter came close to the actual screen all you would mainly see were eyes and maybe a like for a mouth. also i think Orange better suites her then the green but its all up to you and one more thing are the shadows in this game going to be round or are you going to try to show figures?

    1. the thing is, there is no good reference for 2D RPG for this generation outside of handhelds, which have less screen resolution than 480i (normal television). Sprites kind of capped out in size during the PS1 era for RPG games (fighting games are exempt of course, but even they are smaller than people realize). My animation style of Arashi is actually quite unique as far as 2d games go.

    2. shadows will stay round, I don’t have time or space to make custom shadows for everyone, as nice of a touch that would be. maybe next game, I already got a natural breathing and blinking animation going, so there’s no robotic pattern to when she does either, so that’s good enough for me ;p

Comments are closed.