Final Fantasy Hacktics

So Twin came up with a portrait back in April for this little spriting project of mine, and at the time I didn't immediately want to use it since I wanted to try to learn from the example first.

And then, uh, I never actually did that. And then I also forgot to include it here.

Despite using the portrait as my avatar for friggin' ever by now.

So I'm putting it in today, before I forget again! I did slightly edit his portrait, but only by, like, ten pixels.

This MK comes with a second green palette to match my avatar, because why not.

I like the hat, it looks good.  I like how simplified you made beo's body, but at the same time it feels a little too devoid of color.  I guess that it is what you are going for... 

QuoteI'm thinking about trying to remove the ruffle from the neck as well, but that looks like too much of a nuisance for me to jump right into.

That really isn't all that hard depending on what you want that chest to look like. Cutting it off and redrawing like 10 chests isn't bad compared to redrawing some features.  You could just find a suitable chest from someone else and plaster it on there.  I often go into graphics gale and replace all but a few select colors with black just so I have parts to mix and match.  After that just enable transparency and copy paste until I find something that fits.

These probably won't work, but i have a couple of chest just laying around for this kind of thing as an example.  or just slap acape on someone else if you really wanted to.

Quoteit feels a little too devoid of color.  I guess that it is what you are going for... 

Um, kinda. But also there was the issue that I'd spent most of the weekend working on trying to make a Mystic Knight that could replace Beowulf, and I actually made two or three separate nearly-complete sprites before finding out that their size was too large for him or that there were other issues cropping up.
Plus the idea on how to easily change the gloves for cuffs didn't occur to me until I was walking out the door for lunch after I first posted the topic, and he looked weird with teal gloves.
Plus I was having issues properly whittling down palettes as I went through this. ¬_¬ It's sorted out now, but at the time I just shrugged and stopped bothering.

Looking at the sprite now? Yeah, it's only using 13 unique colors, and two of them were nearly identical, so it's really only twelve.

So I think I'll take one of your chest sets (thanks for that!) and see about putting that in on the sprite and adding some more colors back to it. Will post the new result when I'm all wrapped up.

I chose the Squire Chest, and after removing everything but the chestplate, here's the result (just so you have it). I didn't really check to make sure the back sides were correct because I'm only pasting over my caped Mystic Knight >_>

Done. Made a new version with more color in it and the ruffle replaced for a chestplate.

Old/new comparison:
(http://i.imgur.com/ic67hVd.jpg?1)
(http://i.imgur.com/PwVb8dC.png) (http://i.imgur.com/p7zXFvk.jpg)

I'm not a fan of the palette choices on the sprite's cape/turban/boots. They're all too... bland and white. Try looking at caped vanilla sprites and base some palette colors from them. Colors like blue, brown, or black would look nice on it.

As for the portrait, rework the headgear's gem as it looks like that it was just glued onto the turban. Make it look more natural, I would suggest. Same goes with the scarf. Your best bet is to look at finished portraits with scarfs. Make use of them, and rework the scarf from there.

Keep up the good work!

I agree on the whitish colors for the cloak/turban/boots, but the intent was to vaguely match the color scheme of the standard Mystic Knights, which generally go for that kind of light coloring on there, while having two darker/more vivid colors for the rest:
(http://www.ffcompendium.com/jobimages/5-sorcerer-a.jpg)
(http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100716033241/finalfantasy/images/4/43/PartySpellFencer.png)
(http://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-V-Advance-(by-Dr-Pepper)/Update%2014/1-Mystic_Knight.png)
(http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140503194526/finalfantasy/images/thumb/3/3e/FFV_Bartz_Mystic_Knight_iOS.png/40px-FFV_Bartz_Mystic_Knight_iOS.png) (http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140607210803/finalfantasy/images/a/aa/FFV_Galuf_Mystic_Knight_iOS.png)

As for the turban's gem - I always pictured it as just a separate accessory, pinned to the front of the turban, as opposed to something actually sewn into the turban. I would have put some kind of more elaborate setting around it if there was any indication of such a thing on the original sprites, but it's just... there, right as part of the cloth, as far as I can tell.

You're definitely right on the issue of the scarf. I'm not very happy with it either on the sprite or the portrait. Ideally I'd have set it up so that it has another gem in it, too, and I might revisit it again later to work that in.

And now I've got a third version of it. Any feedback is welcome!

I do like the larger cape, I think it works better with the sprite than the Wiegraf cape.

I also think that the teal is a bit bright and doesn't work too well with the other colours, I'd change it to a softer blue.

Looks great otherwise though :o

The portrait could still use a bit of work, but you're definitely getting there :)

I've always liked the Mystic Knight, this is one of the better sprites I've seen for it.

For the palettes though, I'd suggest using colors from other FFT sprites. I've been doing palettes for several years now and the easiest way has always been to pull some sprites out of shishi (or the custom sprite page) and use exact colors from them. I'd also suggest using Palette Editor (http://zodiac.ffhacktics.com/Palette_Editor.7z) if you aren't already doing so. Xifanie made it a long time ago and it's awesome for editing FFT palettes, and is very lightweight.

So what about something like this:

(http://i.imgur.com/N4jOoFa.png) ?

And yeah, I definitely agree that the Knight cape looks better than the Beo/Wie one. I just originally wanted my MK to be based off Beo, so that's what I started with.

Speaking of Beowulf, here's a possible replacement for the portrait with the sprite based off him...
(http://i.imgur.com/mP3shmk.png)

The bolder colors are definitely looking better; I like that brown one.
& yes, the cape looks better now too I think.

And what d'you guys think about these versions of the portrait? (http://i.imgur.com/bWfbXZg.png) (http://i.imgur.com/IIelxDh.png) (http://i.imgur.com/FDowynt.png)

I think that wrap line coming out of the right-middle of the gem on the left portrait is a little rough still, but in general. Does the gem look more natural now, does the wrap pattern seem to go well?

I think it's looking better, but portraits are really not my area of expertise :P

Humbly requesting to use the finished project in my patch. (Now I need some sabers, I'll just use Katanas for now.) Request, (probably unfair) can we see a female one? If not I know exactly how I'd want to use the sprite.

Hey, feel free, that's why it's here. I'd like to submit it to the site once I've wrapped it up to a good degree, though I'm still at the point where I'm adjusting it based on the feedback of the more experienced spriters. Edit: Oh, and I'll throw in the current version for you...

There's a Female Mystic Knight on the sprite section of the main website, and though it doesn't quite match the overall theme for this one, it'll be some time before I could possibly provide one of my own.

Well... *Smacks forehead* K. I'll just request that one from it's artist. Unless you *absolutly want* to do a female. They are in a similar theme so, I'm just happy they have gender complements.

QuoteI'll just request that one from it's artist.

It's right on the Main Site (http://ffhacktics.com/)'s Custom Sprites (http://ffhacktics.com/sprites.php) section though. You can just go there and download (http://ffhacktics.com/sprites/s/MysticK_f.bmp) it (http://ffhacktics.com/sprites/s/MysticK_f.spr) easy as pie.

Okay, no new responses in a couple weeks, so I'm just gonna ask: does the current version look good to everyone, and I can call it finished now - or is there any more criticism I could use to improve it further?

What I'm looking at right now is this:
(http://i.imgur.com/N4jOoFa.png) (http://i.imgur.com/IIelxDh.png)

_{Haven't yet updated the first post to reflect the latest changes in the sprite so just be aware of that.}

Hi there. Sorry for not posting earlier but I don't hang around in the forums much anymore.

First off, great job! The sprite itself looks pretty darn good, and you've done a great job with the turban. The suggested palettes you have are okay. The primary colour you are using, for the cloak and turban, (for all the palettes) look perfectly fine. However I'm not liking the other colours.
For example your first palette:
          - Whites are good
          - Darkest colour should be #282820
And then the rest of the colours for that first palette are a bit too saturated. Definitely grab some colours from existing FFT sprites for those others.

For the portrait its looking pretty good, but there are a couple of things I would like to point out. First of all, you have some white right next to his right (on our left) eye which should not be there. If you have a look at all the other FFT portraits you will also see that they don't have that. Secondly stick with FFT colours for the skin colours in particular, although it may not look it, it is fairly necessary to keep the skin colour the same (most skin palettes are pretty similar in FFT) so it matches in game! But what you've done there is pretty good. I'll make a quick edit to the portrait to show what I mean and some other stuff. But I'm very impressed, I wouldn't have been able to do something to this standard when I first joined this site

Edit:
Sorry, when I start editing I get carried away! I fixed some of the things I mentioned like the colours and what not and messed around with the turban a little bit. Hope I helped at least somewhat. Go ahead and change the gem colours back to purple though, the blues I used were purely there because I liked the colours. Also I find it handy to always work in the 32x48 canvas size so I can use all the space effectively! Good luck!

I'll agree with Twiness on the colors being uniform. I do like the third down palette as the one I'd want to use for Ramza(or other main character's) party. As far as other palettes, the brown, red and purple solids are nice. I'd use them for the majority of my enemies. I'd wonder what a deeper blue might look like on your turquoise palette. To match the Hotuken better.

I wonder what a black primary color would look like on the actual map though. Be a nice enemy palette.

All in all, I love this sprite and it has a home in my patches as is, or with improvement. Because I'm going with a lengthier development time, I'll wait til you tell me this guy is where you want him.

You actually helped a lot with that one, Twinees! I'm very definitely not at the point where I can do a realistic looking turban the way you have, as you might have noticed from the rigid lines on all of my attempts :P

The only thing I don't think fits well is the gem - your design makes it look more like a clasp, which the Mystic Knights this sprite is based off of just don't seem to have on the turban. Not that I don't like it - I think I'll use that one on the cloak instead of what I've currently got there. Just that it doesn't do what I was going for on the turban, y'know? But I'll try to get something less plain than what I had before.

As for the colors - I'll definitely poke around in Shishi's some more. Most of mine were just grabbed from the color wheel in an effort to match the concepts I built the MK from, but colors that fall more in line with what we've already got in FFT certainly can't hurt. And that's only true for the first palette; I'm not super attached to the colors for the others, so I'll try to pick those ones with a little more care.

So here - for the primary palette I pulled colors from Ch2 Ramza and Rapha to replace the purple and the cyan. Darkened or lightened them slightly, and edited the pants a bit so there isn't just a ring below the knee with more purple pants underneath it on some frames.
Edit: Finished the portrait, too.

(http://i.imgur.com/d9i5Gmg.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/0tkZme2.png)

Oh, and - unfortunately...

QuoteDarkest colour should be #282820

Doing that turns the sprite into this:

(http://i.imgur.com/lpJ5hfO.png)

It's also notable that the Knight sprite my MK is based off of doesn't use a darkest color that's quite that dark. I did darken mine a bit, though.

Hey. Glad to see you still working hard at it after my suggestions.

Good choices with using the colours from Ramza and Rafa.

The reason for why the sprite looks so odd when you make the darkest colour the one I suggested, is due to the other colours you are using (also the colour you are using [at least this is what photoshop is telling me] is #1c1c14, which is a little bit darker than #282820 [unless the colours got messed around with during resizing/uploading?]).
Also the original male knight used 4 colours for the cape, it looks like the darkest white/grey from the original has been replaced with the darkest colour from your palette so there's more black area. (You are currently using 14 colours in your palette, so 2 are unused. You could revert back to the original male knight cape and use 4 whites/greys instead of your current 3. However, this would require a lot more editing unfortunately!)

But forewarning for your next sprite, your darkest colour should either be #282828 or #282820.

But what you've got there already looks pretty damn good, great job.

Updated again!

Looks great, and you are definitely welcome! The sprite looks near finished now, I think maybe mess around with the purples a bit more and it'll be great!

Now onto the portrait haha! Back to me bitching about 'FFT colours are necessary routine', because its true.
Rule of thumb for FFT portraits in terms of palette:
      -Darkest colour should be #302828 (RGB: 48/40/40)
      -For human portraits there should be 7 skin tone colours + black/darkest colour.
      -Background colour and white of eye (sometimes not used for elderly aged people)
      -Then the remaining 6 should be the other colours you want for your palette

If you can't get enough colours, you have to use existing colours like browns from the skin to make things work, but its not easy. Get creative I guess! Good luck.

Okay, it's been a few days and I've put together another setup.

For the purple in the sprite, I again went back to the Ramza Ch. 2 sprite, only this time I kept the colors far closer to Ramza's instead of changing their brightness. I also touched up the left arm in the defense pose.

(http://i.imgur.com/bQAp9ub.png)

For the portrait?  :cry: Muh colors!

But I eventually settled on two options for it.

(http://i.imgur.com/8mOEBnI.png)

The the shading on the forehead gem was driving me nuts. I'm also not sure what is happening at is throat. Is it a gem or a scarf? Not sure the bright white should be there at all if it is a scarf. Also make sure that you are only using 15 colors since you need 1 for the transparency.

Otherwise great improvements and this sprite is coming along nicely.

Yeah, it doesn't look like it, but I double checked: the background color is indeed a unique color (if only by a hair).

I appreciate the help with the gems. I'll openly admit that I'm not very good at making decent shading with only two colors to work with - or at making decent portraits in general, I guess! >_>

Nyzer, these are really awesome, the colors coming together and the retouches to the palette, make this knight awesome.

Sorry for the silence here, but I got involved with the Jot5 team, working on some stuff there. I definitely won't be ditching the Mystic Knight, but it's on the back burner for now until I'm all finished up with what I'm working on for the rerelease and Chapter 2 :P

If that's where your flexing your talent, more power to you! (Though we do love other bodies of work for sure.)

(http://i.imgur.com/t14rA8Q.png) (http://i.imgur.com/ozXlz0S.png) (http://i.imgur.com/pRaMSDC.png)  (http://i.imgur.com/JWvTJbo.png)  (http://i.imgur.com/0mvfrBH.png) (http://i.imgur.com/teTvxH9.png) (http://i.imgur.com/smXccd1.png) (http://i.imgur.com/CCMICwz.png) (http://i.imgur.com/1LxFc76.png)

So after a long time of neglecting this topic (I swear I've revisited the design before, I just could never get something I was satisfied with), I managed to come up with a redesign for the turban gem that I think is an improvement, just using preexisting skin tones to give it a setting finally. Here's a few different variations on that.

Thoughts?

Finally got around to adding in Twin's portrait (albeit very slightly edited) instead of my hunched over look. Probably should have done that quite a while ago.

>_>