My Creative Dump

[Luchi]

Updated the topic title, because I'm a Jane-of-All-Trades

I'll be dumping some of my sprite-work, written works and images from an FE-inspired J-RPG I'm making ( female lead, brown hair, uses bows, 'nuff said ). That 3rd Tier project is going to take too much of my time, orz.

General FE fanart: All my art is done with the mouse.

AU Mia Vs. Lucia fight.

Immediately after Execution... They're my OTP.

Lucia is pissed at her availability in RD...

Images from my RPG.

I've been developing it since August 2013. It sprang from my love of J-RPGs and lots of FE influences. Basically, Tristian: The Lady of the Lion is what FE might have been like if it had been in an RPG format ( and if it had a Lord over the age of 25, was not male and did not have blue hair ).

Currently, the game is running at over 10 hours long ( with no end in sight ).

Equip menu. Unlike poor Lucia, Tristian is an utter powerhouse. I chose Lucia's portrait for Tristian as well because I'd figure she'd make a fine, strong female lead ( Jill and Titania were out and Tanith looks too much like a guy ). And she's better-looking too. <3

Just one of the 40+ locations in the game.

Battles uses MegaTen's Press-Turn system. The skill that Ira/Tristian uses and its influence is obvious. And yes, Tristian's alter ego is named after that badass from FE4.

This kid is also x100 times more developed as a character than lolMia. And funnier.

Villians galore.

Chibi sprites:

Cuter than the FE GBA sprites. XD

Edited February 5, 2015 by Luchino

[Chastlily]

If I could add some criticism it's that the chest for both is one head too short and their legs aren't long enough too. That make the arms appear too long too but otherwise it's not bad, just some anatomical issues but nothing that can't be fixed :p. Keep going this way and you'll be fine. Good job on making the right shoulder appear shorter for perspective and the volume illusion!

[Luchi]

Yeah, I haven't done some art in a long time and I always struggle with anatomy. >< I thought there was something about both Edward and Zihark that looked off. Was trying to take their height into consideration as well ( I'd imagine Eddie is about 5'6", Zihark at about 6' ). Thanks anyway. =)

[Chastlily]

Well, a general rule is to have the whole body be 8-times long the head's length if standing. The navel should be at the 3rd head (starting from the top) and the middle of the pelvis at the 4th! Then the distance between the pelvis and the knee is of 2head, same for the knee-leg distance o/

[Luchi]

I'll bear it in mind when I do the other characters ( I should have started in reverse class order, with the Whispers first. Then they'd turn out crappy but the TBs would be rockin' by the time I got to them ).

WIP of my OC ( she doesn't appear in any FE universe though, but the MC for my JRPG ).

Lucia meets Titania design-wise, the sword is a cross between the Falcion and Tyrfing ( my fav sword designs ).

[Luchi]

Updated the OP.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Dunno why this thread doesn't have more replies... Nice stuff! As other poster noted some of the earlier Character stuff had some proportional issues... That seems to be mostly fixed with the latest post. Definitely think the latest work on your main character looks very nice. Good design, good detail.

Will be following this thread, look forward to seeing what you come up with next. :)

[Luchi]

Eh, I'm not very active here ( and I'm a Radiant Dawn dissenter, so yeah... This site is a lion's den for people like myself since from what I've seen, 80% of them adore that game, claiming it as the best thing ever. But never mind me...).

I do have a link to the actual game I'm making ( and there is a playable demo, but its probably outdated ). And I don't practice my art as often as I'd like, since 90% of my free time is taken up by working on my JRPG.

Said link:

http://rpgmaker.net/games/5537/

It's a site that is home to over 3000 ( mostly free ) games made by developers like myself.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Gasp! Dissidents! :o

Well, this site has its cadres of hardcore adherents to one game or character or another...guess they're all just very "passionate", ya know? :P

...looks cool. Will have to check it out, been a while since I checked out the rpgmaker/jRPG scene.

Hope to see more art stuff soon, as you have a cool style.

Edited January 24, 2015 by TheErrantShepherd

[Crazy Li]

I'm assuming the RPG is being made in VXAce? Though the graphical interface looks a lot cleaner and more professional than standard RPG Maker. Not sure if you made the menus and textboxes yourself, but they look really nice either way. Looks like some real work went into customizing the menus and the large cut-ins for dialog make the game look a lot more modern than what I usually see. Though I personally never liked the stock RPG Maker battle system... it's too Dragon Quest for my tastes. Either way, your game looks 100 times cleaner/more appealing visually than anything I've ever made :p

I put all my effort into mechanics and then have "bad sprite comic" graphics XD

[Luchi]

I'm using RPGMaker VX actually. XD I've been using the software for about 5-6 years now.

Finally finished my MC. You have no idea how painful it is to art with a mouse... That's why I'm so slow at producing new artwork.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Very shiny! Cool piece... You may want to either shorten the face or shift the eye down a few pixels however. If that's possible.

Everything other than the face seems proportional enough/right to my eyes. That angle of head can be hard to get to look right in sprites, let alone full artwork.

Shading all seems on point as well from what I can tell. Nice work!

Edited January 27, 2015 by TheErrantShepherd

[Luchi]

My hand was in agony after all that shading, tbh. I might tweak the artwork at a later date, but I decided to do some Tellius sprites, GBA-style. Most of the colours were sampled from the FE8 portraits, so all the characters stick to the 16-colour palette.

I used Hector's Great Lord sprite for Ike, normal Swordies for Edward, Zihark and Stefan and Lyn's Blade Lord LolKatti pose for the girls. Suits them more, I guess.

I'll probably start on Nolan and Boyd's Reaver sprites today.

And another pixel-art piece.

10 colours.

And a map I did for a competition. I won 3rd place. All the resources used are my own.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Did you do these sprites all just recently? ...if you did them this week, you could enter one of them into the Biweekly Battle Sprite Showdown contest we have going on right now in the competition section of the Spriting forums. :o (link in Sig)

Of these battle sprites I'd say Lucia, the swordmaster in White, looks the best/most proportional.

Some slight shaping/proportional issues with the male sprites. Much like in your hand drawn art, you want to have the shapes not be boxy or undefined. Distinct arm shapes like elbows/shoulders still appear in even GBA sprites through shading and shaping. Knees and legs as well.

...actually some of your shading does seem to indicate shape well, but its too saturated to make out as much of a difference. Generally Portrait pallets and battle sprite palletes don't mesh. They have different shading which results in different color values/differences looking better in one or the other. FE8 also has distinctly darker colors in its portraits than FE6-7. So while they are 16 bit they will look a bit off without tweaking the hue/saturation/brightness.

BwdYeti, probably the best FE battle spriter around, had a thought in one of his tutorials for making custom battle sprite colors, the values should be generally around 20-40 apart to get the right looking contrast. (Will find the link to that tutorial for you if you like.)

...that background pixel art is beautiful... Seriously god damn beautiful. You did that completely from scratch? :0

Map looks cool. Made the tileset for it yourself? ...very cool.(Also a map making contest on now using GBA tilesets in the compete forums. Would also recommend you enter that one if you so wish. ;p)

Very cool, very interesting well done works. Keep it up Luchino! :D

-----

Edit:

Found some really excellent tutorials I thought I would share for your reading pleasure.

Thinking in Color

-Excellent easy to understand tutorial on how colors effect your pixel art/sprite. Definitely worth the read!

Derek-Make Games: 10 step custom sprite tutorial

-great quick, easy tutorial on custom pixel art/sprites.

So you Wanna be a Pixel Artist? 11 part series.

-A bit wordy, but very well done in-depth look at the world of pixel art in general, from map tiles to sprites to animations.

BwdYeti's tutorials are very recommended reads as well. :)

Edited January 29, 2015 by TheErrantShepherd

[Luchi]

I have come across those tutorials ( being a game developer, I was particularly interested in the 'So you wanna be a pixel artist' one. Pixel art will never die <3 ).

As for the backgrounds and tilesets, yes, I did it all from scratch. Doing 'all-nature' pieces has always been my strong point, and I've never been that good with sprites/characters.

Desatured the palette a bit.

Did Ellie today. Since I want the whole crew of retainers for her, I'll do Geoffrey and Bastian tomorrow. Lucy still seems to be my best sprite so far ( and no bias ).

Boyd's axe still needs a bit of work though. He's already at his 16-colour limit but still looks like he could do with more shading. I should probably make some shades darker or lighter.

But Tarvos looks fine for now. But Zihark looks pretty awful right now. I never liked his design in any case. Too much lavender. Wouldn't make a very good sprite at this resolution.

Did Elincia, Nolan and Boyd today. I hope to have all 50+ beorcs done by April for the latest. I might enter the contests ( I'm pretty much known as a mapping goddess in the RPGMaker circles XD ).

[ErrantDShepherd]

Cool cool. Yeah, hope some of those were helpful! I remember finding Tsugomo's "So you wanna be a Pixel Artist?" very inspiring as well! It actually inspired me to make some full scratch Final Fantasy 2 styles sprites back in the day. :D

Backgrounds definitely do look to be a strong point for you. I'd say the only crit I could have of that Orange sky one is that the ground seems a bit less defined, less cool than the sheer awesomeness in the rest of the pic...(I know, don't want the eye drawn away from the focus of the sky... But some more definition there wouldn't hurt)

For myself, I never really developed the background side of design as I was always more interested in Character Design and animations. You are making me want to brush up on backgrounds now though. :D

On maps... Very Cool stuff! Kudos to you for that ability!(and the title)

I'm sure Smitty and the mapping community would love more entries especially from some practiced Map Artists!

----

Just a tip, some of the shading on the battle sprites is looking a little pillow shaded. Like Boyd's Axe head for example. Ike also could do with his arms being a few pixels longer, as they look too short atm, especially when you compare them to Boyd's which are proper proportions and length.

Pillow shading tutorial I recently found this tutorial helpful on the subject of avoiding pillow shading.

Edited January 29, 2015 by TheErrantShepherd

[Luchi]

Haha, thanks. =) I hope to animate sprites one day though. Then I can start working on that FE game I've been planning for so long. It would be set at the end of RD, but the units would climb a 25 floor Tower of Guidance ala Tower of Valni in FE8 with a boss on every 5th floor. Only downside it, that while I have the battle system planned for 4-on-4 combat JRPG-style ( with the ability to switch out units at a whim, no 16 character limit ), I need to do the battle sprites... fully animated, for every 3rd Tier beorc ><.

But it's really low priority for me right now. Working on my original works is normally more important ( like finishing up my 20-hour long FE-inspired JRPG XD ).

Anyway, I did a sprite of Altina and long-haired Lucia, but I'm not sure which one to enter for that competition.

I like Altie's one a lot, though...

<3

[ErrantDShepherd]

That rpg idea sounds fun.

Of the two, the latest is the best. Altie's is cool, but didn't she have two swords? Dual wielding is always pretty epic. Also try to watch out for 'dem pillow shades. ;)

I think one more lighter color shade in her hair would be good... Slightly darker hues for the color scheme to up the contrast would be good too. Color palletes are hard to get just right sometimes, a lot of trial and error.

I'll try to show what I mean when I get a chance on my laptop. (Might fiddle with the colors too for an example)

[Luchi]

Oh, I concur. Getting palettes right is extremely hard. That's why I'm using Secret of Mana's colour palette for my RPG. XD

Did some overworld tiles yesterday. May redo the water tile.

I was thinking of going two swords for Altie's sprite, but it didn't look quite right. I fixed her up a bit, but something still feels a bit off. When the resolution is as low as this, even a stray pixel can throw off the entire graphic.

And I never did believe Altina could dual-wield both Ragnell and Alondite at the same time, unless she was exceptionally strong ( those swords must weigh at least 3 kilos each, if I'm going by the logic that 20 Wt equals that amount, while an ordinary Steel Sword, at around 10 Mt, would weigh around 1.5 kgs, but I'm rambling here XD. Then again, if Altie was blessed by Ashera herself, she could have been using the Order Swordmaster growths, which would put her Str growth at an impressive 70% ).

Screens for that FE game of mine in screens below:

I did all the stats for all 50+ beorcs beforehand, with a lot of help from someone who knows a lot about RD base character stats ( she discovered Mia has a base SPD stat of SEVENTEEN, which explains why Mia has something like 28 SPD at Level 7 ). And yes, I did 'fake' birthdays and other random stuff just for flavour.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Shading on the sword and Altina look better... Might want to keep a dark outline around the clothing though instead of the darkest color. (Will try to give you an example of some shading fixes when I have time)

Proportions could probably do with some more slight fixes/tweaks. Reffing Lyn, the hips on Altie are a bit too low... I would raise that up like 2 pixels maybe?

Arm holding the sword need to be a pixel or two longer as well, currently seems to lack an elbow and appears short, esp in comparison to her other arm. Perhaps the sword itself could be slimmed a pixel or two as well? It seems a little wide esp in comparison to the body sprite. Whereas ingame and in the art, the Alondite and Ragnell are not too wide/especially large, maybe longer... But proportionate.

Like I said though. The sword shading is better and the colors appear better contrast as well. :)

...as for the dual wielding the heavy swords, I was under the impression as some legendary hero she was extraordinarily strong, and blessed by the Goddes, allowing her to be proficient with two broadswords at the same time?

Art at least indicates she had the other on her.

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/File:Altina.png

Those tiles are cool. You probably want to have at least 1-2 variant tiles for each terrain: water, grass, forest, mountain... Just some variation to mix things up/make it look more real/lifelike.

Colors are nice though. As are the screenshots. Interesting, enjoying seeing what you come up with. Keep it up! :D

Edited February 1, 2015 by TheErrantShepherd

[Luchi]

RL has been keeping me busy as of late, but I'll try to fix Altie's sprite today.

Something completely different:

Shinon is my hero. I've been taking some of Shadow/GoldieX39's old videos and turning them into GIFs.

Fiona beats Mia. The closest FE will ever get to a fighting game, watching Goldie's stuff. You'd think that with Imbue and Sol, Fiona would own, but she still ended up losing more than half of her fights.

[Luchi]

Silly GIFs aside, here's some serious sprite work from me.

Figured I haven't done anything in a while for my OTP. Everything except the portraits are mine (obviously). And Valentine's is around the corner, so-- If I were in charge of making an FE game, it would look like this.

I've really been neglecting the GBA sprite stuff, since my current style is so much more fun to work with.

[ErrantDShepherd]

Cool cool... did you design that screen's tileset yourself as well?

I can understand enjoying a different style, its easier to enjoy a style when you get used to it... and we all have our preferences/styles we enjoy. :)

[Luchi]

Yes, I did all the pixel/sprite work. It's for a very ambitious project of mine,one that I have poured all my free time and energy into. It's basically my hobby, making games with the RPGMaker engines.

Testing out custom graphics. The two MCs are Expies of my FE OTP.

I've been developing this genre for the last six or so years, and have finished a number of projects, one of them being a 10+ JRPG that took me four years to do. It's mainly known as my signature game and was praised for its visuals, soundtrack and rich Celtic-based worldbuilding.

http://rpgmaker.net/games/2985/

This site is home to over 3000 games made across various platforms. There's even a Smash Bros fangame and a completed MegaMan classic game made in GameMaker.

One of numerous fan-arts I received of Laine.

The main character frequently gets compared to Lightning looks-wise. I'd think she'd make an amazing character FE-wise as well, like another female Hero along the likes of Echidna. Her love interest was primary inspired by both Sain and Hector personality-wise ( two of my favourite FE dudes ), but he looks like Zelgius without the cold eyes ( I don't like cold-looking males or perpetual frowners. It is a complete turn-off for me ).

[Lance Masayoshi]

All of this is very nice! its very nice to see another RPG Maker user on the forums