Any sprite artists out there?

NiO

I have seen there's some really good programers here, but how many spriters are out there?



I was on the Mugen scene time ago, most of my friends were spriters, I never learned to program characters and it seems like I will never learn to make games hehe but the questions for the programers are...



do you make your own sprites? paid people for them? don't care if they are not "pretty"?

Mario's Right Nut

I've had some people help me that have been very talented. However, you'll have better luck using stuff that's not pretty and then upgrade it once you have an engine going. It gives them an idea of what you're trying to accomplish and helps them think they aren't wasting their time.

KHAN Games

That's one of the main issues currently with this "scene," for lack of a better word. There are a lot of people who will volunteer to help, but they either flake out or just take entirely too long. As a programmer it's frustrating to constantly be waiting on someone to give you stuff.



Anyway, I generally haven't seen that many people offering their services, so I Think the majority of us do our own work, or have close friends that help us out.

BouncekDeLemos

I was a sprite artist for the indie game 'Banzai Pecan' and I also helped out members here (Mostly Airwalk Studios). There's other stuff I was involved in, and had it featured, but nothing special.



Now-a-days, I don't have the time like I used to, with life and all. But every now and then, I still draw pixel art.



Example of my old pixel art: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/o/2011/152/b/8/b8ce68b720c285edef750c9dcd005f2b.png

Mario's Right Nut

Originally posted by: KHAN Games



That's one of the main issues currently with this "scene," for lack of a better word. There are a lot of people who will volunteer to help, but they either flake out or just take entirely too long. As a programmer it's frustrating to constantly be waiting on someone to give you stuff.



Anyway, I generally haven't seen that many people offering their services, so I Think the majority of us do our own work, or have close friends that help us out.

Well put.  There are a couple peeps that do a great job, but, for the most part, Kevin hit it.

BouncekDeLemos

Originally posted by: Mario's Right Nut

Originally posted by: KHAN Games



That's one of the main issues currently with this "scene," for lack of a better word. There are a lot of people who will volunteer to help, but they either flake out or just take entirely too long. As a programmer it's frustrating to constantly be waiting on someone to give you stuff.



Anyway, I generally haven't seen that many people offering their services, so I Think the majority of us do our own work, or have close friends that help us out.

Well put.  There are a couple peeps that do a great job, but, for the most part, Kevin hit it.





 

I'll admit, my turn around for art's been slow too. I think in our defence, it's just that an artist has to really be in the mood to draw because it does take forever to make good art, and life really gets in the way-- BUT, the same can be said of you programmer guys... Some of y'all are pretty good at programming, but it's not always a simple 2 second thing.



I like your idea of using placeholders until you get better art. Time is always an issue, and ideas like that do help out in the long run.

Aaendi

I can do the sprite art. I need a break from programming.

m308gunner

I guess I would fall into the "takes entirely too long" camp. And I basically just started .

NiO

I've seen a few programmers that make their own sprites, like Shiru, something simple yet functional



most of them NES style, haven't seen a lot of snes homebrew and it's easy to see why (program and sprite wise)

Beji

Sprite art work can be easier depending on what medium you are working with since the limitations can actually be a blessing in disguise. As with any skill, something like working with pixel based art will become better as you work on it longer. I could most likely do NES artwork that seems fairly decent, but after that, the sprites and colors get so advanced and expanded, people would simply expect more.



I've seen some of the crap that's come out of the MUGEN community, most of it's not impressive.

Aaendi

What system and how many frames of animation do you need?

El Macbee

I like to mess around with NES graphics since the late 1990s.

Now I want to learn how to code my own NES games.

NiO

Originally posted by: Beji



Sprite art work can be easier depending on what medium you are working with since the limitations can actually be a blessing in disguise. As with any skill, something like working with pixel based art will become better as you work on it longer. I could most likely do NES artwork that seems fairly decent, but after that, the sprites and colors get so advanced and expanded, people would simply expect more.



I've seen some of the crap that's come out of the MUGEN community, most of it's not impressive.

I have to contradict your point... there's a lot of MUGEN stuff really really well done, but most of the really nice characters are private (I was kinda an "elite" in my mugen times)



here some examples of excellent characters and convertions

E.Honda (kof style) by Thedge

Lien Neville by (me) and Thedge

Jess by Kalumon

Kyo_MI by ahuron

Another K by Le@n and NightCrawler

Wonder Woman by Loganir

Fei Long by (misamu?)

and etc etc



would be cool to get a post about sprite submissions or request, so programmers can ask for help and get some advices for their games

Beji

I've seen some fairly decent art, I've seen much more horrible art. I actually hate the MUGEN community, it's got to be one of the worst ones I've been in next to BYOND. As far as "private" characters? No, sorry, that's ridiculous, that pretty much defeats the spirit of the game and community behind it. I wouldn't play with anyone who had exclusive content no one else had. That elitism is so stupid it makes my kidneys fail.

NiO

Originally posted by: Beji



I've seen some fairly decent art, I've seen much more horrible art. I actually hate the MUGEN community, it's got to be one of the worst ones I've been in next to BYOND. As far as "private" characters? No, sorry, that's ridiculous, that pretty much defeats the spirit of the game and community behind it. I wouldn't play with anyone who had exclusive content no one else had. That elitism is so stupid it makes my kidneys fail.

the "new" Mugen community is really harsh and bad with new users, their standars now are really high... it uses to be a  really nice community back then (5-8 years ago?), I had a site called "spriters-academy" and we got some  pixel spriters there, like eFex and other awesome spriters...



about the private stuff, that's a different theme, most of the chars that are private are for 2 things

1- user simply doesn't want to share the char

2- it uses "closed source" sprites



but, most of the hidden gems of mugen are private, and most of the horrible chars-sprites are made by newbies... hell I was one and thanks to that community I learned a lot about animating, frankensprite, etc



and I will say it again, would be cool to made a post when we can share pixel art, in my forum we used to have a post called "sprite request" and people asked for help there, converting sprites, criticism, fixing stuff, etc etc

SegF4ult

For a big part, I've mostly always done my own graphics for any project I've started. I don't know a lot of people that do graphics overall. My turn-around time on graphics may be slow, but I don't have any hurries in most of my projects anyway.

Vectrex28

I did my own graphics for all my NES games/hacks. However, I seem to have something with fonts because I usually do a new font for any new game I make on the NES

miau

Originally posted by: Vectrex280996



I did my own graphics for all my NES games/hacks. However, I seem to have something with fonts because I usually do a new font for any new game I make on the NES

Fonts! I, too, have recently discovered the joy of creating them, it's hard to stop once you've been bitten by the font bug.



Apart from that I'm doing all the art myself, too, been spending quite some time learning pixel art in the past and while I'm not super confident in my abilities, I feel I can make graphics that turn out pretty good if I invest some time.



I'd like to make art (or compose music) for other people's games, but as BouncekDeLemos said, it can be a bit hard to keep at it if you're just doing it as a hobby. It might help to keep the game simple and the amount of graphics manageable, that would certainly boost motivation (at least for me) and increase the chances of the project being successful and of an unpaid artist to finish their work in time.

zi

I tried to farm out my art, but with no takers I decided to try it myself. It's tough to work within the NES palette constraints (read nerdy nights), but I've found the challenge of working to create something within those constraints to be quite rewarding. Same goes with music. Sure, you could program a symphony with vrc6/7/namco, but that ain't gonna fit on a cart. Check out NESST (my fav for helping understand the 16x16 palette limitations) and yychr- just to get your graphics feet wet! As far as graphics/composing for other people's games, a good portfolio will show folks you not only have the skills, but will see a project through to completion.

NiO

I do like to sprite, I will never do programming, but I'm contributing with 2 snes games...



the thing I found hard to do is to copy styles and if it's a hack, to work with  tiles, it can be done, but it's less funny than spriting in a sheet

Aaendi

Have you ever animated sprites at a high framerate?

NiO

I have made a few sprites and sprite edits like this ones (not sure if they are highframe)



   



I'm not really good at animating characters or things like the 3rd one, hhe is just a face edit (better than the original IMO)... I have to practice more fluid movement, they look good but cartoony in some way

Aaendi

It's better than the lazy 2-3 frame animation most games had.