I’m experimenting with pixel art, considering trying to make a video game.
The title image is a sort of tiger, below is a type of elf.
Thoughts?
Cool, cool. Well done, expressive on both scales. Are you thinking about animation for the game or static sprites?
Animated, I did an animation test, all hand drawn. If I do that for what I’m planning it’ll take forever or I’ll need to scale way back. The next step is to see if there are paths to make animation faster.
And thank you!
Cool, yeah I’ve drawn animated sprites for games before, even with just four or five frame animation loops it’s a massive load of work.
If I were to do something today I’d examine if frame interpolation software could make expand with generated images between key frames. Or perhaps AI? The video stuff is amazing and maybe they’d be able to generate complete animation loops based on a single sprite and a good prompt?
Spine2D makes skeletal animations out of graphics. I heard some friends liked it, but it is paid and I’m not sure there are cracks for it. This principle, though, may be used in some other software.
https://esotericsoftware.com/blog/Spine-4.2-The-physics-revolution
Hell yeah! That’s awesome. Thank you! That could be a great asset.
And I’d rather pay, support the developers and all.
Not at all, keep on creating (:
I’ll look into it, thank you for the tip!!
if I can chip in some unsolicited opinion here (I know it’s a little rude) – you’ve made really nice expressive sprites with a lot of personality. In my opinion, even if the AI would make it faster to animate, it seems a shame to not use the artistic skill and style you’ve clearly honed to animate what you’ve drawn here.
I’ve done pixel art for browser games before, and I understand that animating is painstaking and can be a total slog. However, I do feel like the choices we make during animation are personal to us, and really make an important impression on players.
Unless you’ve got a tight deadline or something, I think you could make something really cool by hand!
That being said, to be totally honest, I’m biased against Gen AI, especially in artistic pursuits.
I won’t use AI but the frame interpolation might be interesting. Though it did get me to look up tricks to make animation less labor intensive and I found a handful of articles that will help a ton and keep me from doing everything the hard way.
The NPCs I’ve planned fall into a dozen or so types that I think I can make animation dummies for and then skin them all separately along with a handful of other tips I never would have never considered.
That sounds interesting. Best of luck, I love your work with the paintings btw, watching your journey on the Samuel L Jackson portraits actually inspired me to pick up my drawing tablet again!
Thank you and that’s fantastic to hear! Art (for me) is so therapeutic and rewarding.
I picked art back up after finding this community when I first came to Lemmy. The community seemed so engaged and welcoming. Of all the places I post my art here is where I’m happiest to share and most eager to see what others have shared.
Very nice. What frameworks are you considering binding your game in?
I don’t think I know enough to know exactly what you’re asking.
I’m planning to use Gadot for the game engine. Seems like it’ll accomplish what I’m looking for.
I’m a huge Godot fan myself, and I’m not sure what your background is, but if you’re not a programmer you might consider using Gdevelop to make a prototype. It’s a “no-code” cross platform engine that I’ve been using to teach my kids with. Worth a look if you’re interested.
Will do, thank you!
I no longer say I have a code background since my background is HTML 1.1 and Pearl Script… I’m so old 😂
Hah, I feel you. Btw, great pixel art.
Thank you! It’s interesting how the mind fills in the gaps of pixel art. These were just intended to be sketches but they feel finished to me. Far less effort to “finish” them than my normal art. And a lot of fun! I was tickled pink as I did these.
