protag OWs

gosh, it's dusty here, isn't it? well... i suppose that's the nature of a finished game. most of my efforts in recent times have gone to things that are not reborn... but most is not at all. in our last post, orsan teased the following about finally updating the protagonist OW (OverWorld) sprites for 19.6:

today, we're going to show and talk about these in a bit more detail.

(a note for our blind players-- this is a purely visual update most and so this is probably not for you. with apologies, i will be sparing myself the task of IDing each image).

OW updates were something that, in an ideal world, i would have done with e19. only, i was soooooo tired by the end of it, and we did a lot of shampoo-ing of VS and battle sprites, i truly did not have the stamina. however... these sprites appear in virtually every screenshot of the game ever, and so the mistakes of my past continued to haunt me until i was cow-prodded into doing something about them. fortunately, there was a lot that i wanted to fix, and my skill in spriting had grown over time, so it was quite rewarding to do.

to see them in action, let's post a dizzying array of gifs:

above includes both walking and running variants. our old sprites were made with very, very minimal effort to make the run sprites; i only moved the head forward and down a little bit, which is what sometimes resulted in the ability to spam the run button and appear to dance in place. i don't know if that's still possible these days, but i think that having a more dynamic running pose will feel nice anyway. truthfully, i want to develop my skills to push such poses to even more exaggerated animations than this. but alas, that is not for this little update project.

when updating our protagonists, i wanted to choose a 'style' of animation and stick with it for consistency between them. this consistency was a flaw in the previous set of sprites. they were made at various times and levels of skill, and so they are not always consistent in their dimensions and animation. this is also why the shape and size of some of them will appear to have slightly changed.

this was also an opportunity to fix some of the issues that had nagged me with our previous style of sprites. compare these frames.

new vero (left) vs old (right):

old decibel (left) vs new (right):

the issue is clearer on decibel's-- the way the feet are positioned ends up making a solid black line across the bottom of the sprite. on vero's, there is a one pixel notch, which i would consider better but still visually awkward. i'm not going to claim that the updated sprites are perfect, but i think we succeeded in refining the walk and run cycles to help silhouette the feet better in all frames of animation.

here is another example, demonstrating a change in the animation style i mentioned before. 

in the above screen, pay attention to the relative placement of the sprites' hands. in each step frame, i wanted to increase the action of the movement by making the hands appear to move more widely. i think this helps 'running' vs 'walking' come across much clearer. for aspiring spriters: I find that starting with the positions of the hands is a great way to tackle these little bodies. it'll help you refine the silhouette early on.

also look how much better alice looks! i haven't liked her very much in the past-- and with her OW sprite previously looking so different from her other graphics, it's no wonder! it looks like she had buns or something. i hope everyone enjoys the new hair-floof. i think i'll be using her more in the future myself.

perhaps the most notable new detail of the animation overall is the hair animation. in the current set of sprites, most character's hair hardly animates at all. much as we love lucia, hers in particular has been very awkward in the past. bouncy hair is a nice way to add a lot of life to sprites, and it's also one of my favorite things to do in sprites now. it's fun to make it go swoowsh-swoosh-swoosh!

here's some frames, and how i think of animating them:

frames 1 and 3 are always identical in these sprites, the work is on 2 and 4. in either case, i choose a direction, either clockwise or counter clockwise to think of each 'tuft' of hair as moving. then it's just a matter of moving the pixels as little as possible while finding a shape for the points that looks nice in pixel form, and doesn't create awkward movement when applied to the height change (frames 2 and 4 bend at the knees, and thus the head sinks 1 pixel lower, which can make some animations look awkward. testing is important!)

on a different note, did you notice from the first gifs that kuro is looking different? in my view, he's kind of been the least popular protagonist. originally, i imagined him having kind of a deliberately shaggy hair style, but i don't really like that as much these days, and more importantly it doesn't really seem to be a hit with players either. so i took the opportunity to kind of shore his hair up to a nicer shape in general. here's his updated VS sprite:

we wouldn't want to change him tooooo much for the players that are used to him as he is, but i felt this would generally be received as an improvement. 

and hey, we finally got his sunglasses into his OW too!

because of how many variations and alterations player OW sprites have, this ended up being a significant undertaking! there are many little pieces-- walking, running, biking, fishing, surfing, tauros-riding, minecart-riding, etcetcetc... i would not have had the stamina to do all of the animations over myself-- in the end, i just made the base walking and running sprites, and then others in the community initiative helped out with the finishing details. big shoutouts to moonpaw, nephilinite, meteors, not_aza, and inserobite102. in addition to the extra animations, they also helped refine some of the cross-sprite details... enu oversaw it and contributed some scripting to avoid having to make redundant graphics (surfing, fishing while surfing, diving were all very similar...) too! thank you all!

speaking of diving... i think, but i'm not sure? that the main games are doing this these days too... but we also took the opportunity to answer the question of "how does the player breathe underwater when diving?"

let's close out with some before-and-after references. for fun, i also included the original versions of Alice and Vero, back in the earliest episodes when they were the only protags.

if you are looking to improve your spriting from others' example, i suggest studying the differences in these images and seeing how they changed over time. softer colors, flatter hair shading, brighter outlines... what else do you notice? this kind of analytic exercise is a good way to improve your own skills.

by the way, for anyone still interested in the eventual postgame continuation of our dev let's play-- it is not forgotten. only life has been getting very in the way for a long time now, and at this point i would at least wait until 19.6 anyway. 

thank you all, as ever, for caring about the game at all stages of its lifecycle, and i hope you can look forward to the update