I have a question.. is there any easy way to make FF styled 2d sprites?? Doing it pixel by pixel takes forever and is hell to animate. Any suggestions or methods to speed up the process?? Any input would be appreciated, thanks!

Kandolo,

If you observe Final Fantasy 3(US) (FF6 in Japan) very carefully, you''ll see that all of the characters in the game share the same body form. Rather, all of the male characters have their basic form, and all of the female characters have their basic form.

There is no ''easy'' way of making these sprites, but you can make your life easier by making a base model for all of your characters, doing all of the animations for it, then filling in the details of your characters into this model. You can use several cut and paste techniques to make animation easier. I''m sure that''s how the folks at Squaresoft handled it.

You also have to remember that game development is an art, and the creation of artist expression is something that takes time. Sometimes there are just no short cuts no matter how much you''d want there to be.

NitroSR

you gotta be kidding me........
dont you use pre drawn sprites on bitmaps ?


"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
themGames Productions

Thanks for the replies. Right now, I''m trying to find a practical way for me to fill in a position on my project until I can find an artist for it. I have the option to go 3d - those seem to be a dime a dozen. We also have 2d artists - but none to do pixel art which is an effect I want simply for nostalgia.

But yeah, the body format thing is interesting. I''ll have to try that I may not be the best artist, but I''m pretty good at figure out how to do functional stuff.

I''ve gotten past the being able to make a model phase.. I made myself a palette of colors at different gradients etc.. and made some pretty decent stuff. However, animation is difficult, ye know ;p

Thanks again If anyone knows of someone who is good with this sort of thing, please send him/her my way ;p

- Kandolo

Well unfortunatly there is no way to make sprites easier to draw with the notable exception of making them in 3d and then prerendering them. that would make animation a lot easier.Although sprites are damn cute and 3d doesnt really fit in them well. also I might point out that square did draw all the frames for the sprites but simple things like ff3 cant compare to somthing like legend of mana and to a lesser extent, chronotrigger.

Well, here is what I have so far. The bottom is just the colorswappable version (so ignore it). This much was EASY - I just followed the proportions of the FF style, pulled up a color swap palette given to me by my programmer, filled in the colors and made it look pretty cool. I also made a few variations (mage, etc) and found it all to be pretty easy to implement.

However, animating is tough ;p Unlike 3d, proportions aren''t easy to keep! (I''ve done 3d sprites plenty.. I just don''t like ho wthye look)

Yay ;p I''m satisfied with the animation.. Thanks guys! This is easier than I thought...

Woohoo!

Now lets see the finished game!

NitroSR

bleh.. be paitent ;p

nice job on the sprites!