Week 7 - The Bad Guys

Unit 8

Using the app Piskel I created the sprites of three characters that will appear within my game. These will take the role as the opposition to the player, who will have to defeat all of them to progress. The characters I created include a Fox, Pig and Ball of Fluff.

To begin designing them I first started by making a basic sketch of what I wanted them to look like, as I would need a reference to draw from when making the pixelated version. 

(Concept Drawings)

I then set about drawing the outline of the character, making sure everything fit.

Next I used layers to build up the features, starting with the skin/fur colour and ending with the face. This kept everything neat and would make the animating steps easier, as I could edit layers when needed and not risk messing up the entire sprite.

The final step was one I did to try out a basic animation loop. This involved adding a few frames and changing the sprite to try to make it look alive. I did this by making eyes blink and body parts move.

The images came out perfectly how I wanted. They are clear and simple and use vibrant colours. I do believe that I need to practice the animation however as they did look a bit jittery and I will need to match the speeds up, or things could become complicated when applying to Game Maker.

Animated Sprite: http://piskel-imgstore-b.appspot.com/img/6375e3cc-232f-11e6-afdf-7be368b9bb4c.gif

While working on the characters I came across some issues that I will need to keep in mind while designing sprites, the biggest of which is how different the FPS can make an animation look. I had a problem where one animation required 26 frames, while another only needed 3. This would not work in a game where all animations need to run on the same FPS as some animations would look really jumpy, while others would look smooth. It could also cause some animations to de-sync which would not be good and could break the game. I will need to make sure that not only all the animations run at the same FPS but also flow the same, whether that be jumpy or smooth.

Hopefully I can use what I learned here to improve my main characters design. I should also begin to look into making some designs for the level the game will take place in...