Sprite Sheets - Unit 10

Today, I set out to start concepting the design for my game's main character, Yume. I've had a very rough idea of their design and what inspirations I'd use for it since I first thought of the game's concept.

My first job was to gather those inspirations. At first, I focused primarily on NiGHTS Into Dreams's character design as reference, using the characters NiGHTS, Reala and Jackle.

Using these, I made an initial sketch for the head.

I initially wanted a rounder head shape, but decided to emphasise a chin in the end. I wanted them to have a sort of segmented face, reminiscent of a crescent moon, and a sort of wisp design trailing from the back of their head. Think some kind of nightcap.

As I made a second sketch for the head's design, the inspirations for the design ended up branching off into this webcomic I read a while back, Cucumber Quest, specifically the Dream Oracle character.

It isn't too different from the initial head sketch, simply expanded. I wanted to add a few gem thingies to their forehead to fill in some empty space and cause I thought it'd look good. I also added a little sheep ear on the side of their head to lean into sheeps and their connection to sleep and dreaming.

At this point, I was still deciding on where I wanted to take the body, but I thought a sort of fluffy cloak-like design would fit the character.

I wasn't able to finish the design today, but I made pretty good progress. Here is the full design page so far.

Continuing from the last update, I continued work on the main character's design.

First, I decided to ditch the sheep ear. I figured it wasn't that interesting of a feature to take from a sheep, and it'd likely go unnoticed. In its place, I decided on a sort of spirally ram horn design.

I also considered a crescent shape headpiece/crown accessory to make their silhouette and design a little more interesting, as well as hammer in the night theming more. I wasn't entirely sure whether or not to keep it, though, as I was worried about whether or not it'd make the final sprite cluttered. Either way, I never really ruled it out.

I was pretty satisfied with what I had for the head and general upper body, so I moved on to their lower body/clothing design. I was sure what I wanted was a sort of flowy, fluffy cloak with some sky and star related elements.

I decided to repurpose this older design I made's weird starry night sky cloak idea. I imagined the cloak looking like a sort of gradient, with the segment at the top being a lighter color and representing either clouds or an earlier, brighter night sky, the segment in the middle representing a slightly darker night sky, and the lower segment, the back of the cloak, representing late night.

The colours were pretty simple to decide on. I wanted something light and pastel, mostly comprising of blueish purples, blues, and yellows. The specific colour scheme choice of blues and yellows is meant to invoke a night sky, and the more pastel kind of look is meant to push a softer, dreamier look. But generally, I kinda just work more in softer colours.

When I actually make the sprite, I probably won't use the exact colours I picked out. I think the dark blue will definitely be a little darker. I also briefly experimented with merging the wisp design with the cloak's hood, but that didn't last. This ended up sticking as the final design. Next, I'll try to get a simple idle sprite started. Here's the final design page.

I began work on Yume's base sprite. I settled on a 20x20 tile size, which is what I usually use anyway, and so I sketched the sprite based on that. After arranging my palette, I initially sketched the head a little too big, but I immediately scrapped that before I started on the body.

I was debating between giving them a standing pose or a sort of hovering pose, but I settled on standing. Figured it'd work better. Once I was satisfied with the sketch, I started on the actual sprite. I decided to go for my usual style, something simple with little shading. Though generally, it wouldn't be very easy to fit a lot of shading in a sprite this size anyway, it'd look messy and cluttered.

I struggled a bit with the face because of the sprite's size. The one above doesn't quite look as cool as what I drew in the concept art, so I spent a lot of time constantly changing the face around. Below ended up sticking as final, though.

Spriting the body was relatively simple, but the star pendant was a different story. It took a little bit of iterations for me to be satisfied with it. I didn't expect it to be so difficult to get right. A few prior iterations looked a little too weird or a little too cluttered.

I also did a little silhouette test.

At some point, I realized the sprite was just the right size to comfortably accommodate the moon headpiece crown thing I considered. I was afraid it'd make the sprite cluttered, since I initially assumed I'd go for a lot simpler, smaller style. So, I added it on along with their fairy wings, and the sprite was finished.

I'm really proud of how it came out, and the silhouette came out really good too. 

After the last update, I briefly squeezed in a barebones little idle animation, starting off by animating the wisp trailing from their head waving in the wind. Today, I polished it up and finished it.

Here's what I ended up with. Next time, I wanna add some movement to the cloak. I'm a little worried it'd be hard to make work, but I'll have to give it a try.

Smaller update like last one, but I decided to sketch up a quick concept for how the animations would look, just to guide the sprite work, but especially because I planned to start on the walk cycle today.

I didn't get to finish the full walk cycle animation, but I did get a first frame.

I continued work on the walk animation. Initially, I started off with a simple 4 frame loop the way it was drawn in the concept I sketched. Working off the first frame, I made a second frame for the walk cycle's passing pose.

I duplicated the first frame and placed that after the initial passing pose frame, then I duplicated the passing pose frame and placed it after the third frame. The result was a simple, choppy, 4 frame walk cycle. 

Obviously, I wouldn't be satisfied with just 4 frames, and in the concept art I initially estimated the walk cycle would probably end up with 6 frames. This was just to block things out.

I kept things simple by adding an extra, sort of recoil frame prior to the passing frames.

It wasn't all too much more complex, but it added a lot to the animation. 

With that, the base, essential movement was pretty much done. I polished what I had and quickly got to work on the smaller details like the cloak flowing in the wind.

Animating the cloak wasn't too easy. I anticipated it wouldn't, and it took a while before I was happy with it, but I got it done in the end. Next, I animated the wing flapping. Simple movements, but it was still a little tricky to make look right. Thankfully, I was able to reuse the head wisp thing's flowing animation from the idle, and it fit well within the 6 frames.

Finally, the animation was done. I'm glad I was able to get it done today, and I'm really happy with how it came out. Here it is. Next time, I'm sort of hoping to get started on the base for the game.

Lately, since breaking off for half term, I've found myself in a bit of a rut. I can't seem to work up any motivation to do much of anything at all, even something simple. This may become problematic for the development of this project, so I'm hoping I can get it sorted soon.

Even recently, I tried getting some code written to make a start on the playable side of things, but I quickly grew unhappy with it and scrapped it.

Regardless, here's some concept art I threw together for what I had in mind for the first, playable area. Inspired by Yume Nikki area design, especially its Block World, and some smaller bits of influence from LSD: Dream Emulator.

Unfortunately, I'm still sort of stuck in that rut, and things got a little busy since it was Christmas and everything, but I'm trying to make more of an effort to climb back out. Today, I wanted to make some progress on the game's tileset, working off the area concept I made last time.

As I worked, I kinda came to the realisation that the pillar design above is... probably too outlandish and creepy to be a main staple of the first area design. So, I decided to give that role to the other, more comprehensible pillar design, and leave the one above as an inexplicable one time thing.

Since I was making some more progress with the area design side of things, I decided to take my friend, who has previously composed some tracks for my previous college projects of mine, under the credit of "Iyani", up on an offer she made. We exchanged some ideas, sort of worked together, and she worked up a really good track as always. She got down the feel of the area really well, I think.

She also offered to make a few sound effects, which turned out just as good.

Since the tileset is only simple, I got it finished very quickly. I didn't take much inbetween progress screenshots past that last point, so I'm left with the raw tileset.

While working away on the game's programming, it came time to implement the main character, Yume's, sprites and animations. I've been kind of just hopping from a red 20x20 square to a low resolution image of Tyler, The Creator as placeholders for the player object, but time is running low, so I'd better get it out of the way.

I realized there were no sprites for Yume jumping and falling yet. I fell into a huge slump during the two weeks of half term, and wasn't able to make anything too substantial. It's kind of a shame they had to be made this late into the project, but...

With these, the spritesheet for Yume was complete. Though, I didn't get to make the other animations I had planned, nor did I get to program what those animations would be used for.

I'm really happy with this spritesheet and this design. I'm honestly considering keeping it around as a character. I had a lot of fun designing and spriting it and it came out really well in the end.