Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hello all, I've been gone awhile, won't promise I'll stick around, but I picked up a sprite that I wanted to do long ago. Ryu and Smash started a blue mage, but I don't think it got past the first frame. I wanted to use it for the game I'll be making. Here it is in all its glory:
(http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/9789/oldbluem.png)

I noted that the unit was based on the Geomancer male, so that will save me all the work on the shoes and a little bit of the arms. Arms tend to be the most time consuming, so that works out wonderfully. Here is my progress so far:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v672/Powerguy500/bluemage.png)

Discounting the arms, I'm about halfway there. Questions, comments, opinions are welcome.  I haven't quite decided what I want the back of the turban to look like, so I have two or three version popping up in there. I'm not looking forward to doing the portrait, so if there are any takers on that, go for it.

I liked the concept a lot back in the day, and I still like it. I don't see any particular thing that is wrong, personally I would try adding some hair on the back frames below turban, since skin there loks kinda flat and doesn't sit well IMO. Good to see you back Kuraudo, even if temporary :D

I think I could help you with this greatly. I was just pondering upon making a Blue Mage sprite for a project of my own too, and what better than this beautiful sprite of old?

Collab!

If so, consider the portrait done. I'll also fix tidbits here and there until it looks flawless.

Beginning with that turban on the back. I'd make it a hat instead, so if you're working on that part of the sprite, just leave it untouched for me. 

Looks good so far Croud!

Blue Mage portraits, coming up.

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2rwu6na.jpg)

 :0 That's the best portrait imaginable for the blue mage. Did you hit a new level of understanding recently?
That really is sharp; what a flawless.. victory!

Quote from: Mobius on May 27, 2013, 12:15:25 pm
Blue Mage portraits, coming up.

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2rwu6na.jpg)

Dear Saint Ajora this is beyond amazing

I start to think that Mobius wakes up in the morning and simply defecates awesome portraits in to his Pc, instead of go to the bathroom and shits like normal people do.
How can somebody be so talented and so prolific at the same time?

     (>_<) GRRRRRR!!!

P.S: Very cute signature, Lijj.

That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard Kaedre :lol:

That's incredible Mobius, one of your best I'd say.

Mobius, that is awesome!  Well done, sir!

I found a rear view for the turban that I like, so I'm good in that department.  I'll have everything but the arms done later today.   I'll post that progrees when it gets there.  After the arms, I'll need to reacquaint myself with converting it into .spr format.

Quote from: Lijj on May 27, 2013, 06:23:21 pm
:0 That's the best portrait imaginable for the blue mage. Did you hit a new level of understanding recently?
That really is sharp; what a flawless.. victory!

What Lijj said.

I've made it this far tonight.  I had some palette problems because some errant duplicate colors got into the sprites.  I have some issues to address, namely the legs for the jumping/level up animation.  I might take another pass at his back since it looks a little flat.  Other than that, it's just the rear attack frames and the arms.  Mobius might be taking a revising pass at the sprite as well.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v672/Powerguy500/bluemage-1.png)

And I will. Checked your PMs?

Arms are not really necessary to even work on, of you go by my artwork.

Where's the cape? like his bit of deserty cloak or mantle

the capey swooshing thing

strago had a cape

it's only sensible!

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v672/Powerguy500/bluemage-3.png)

BOOM! DONE!

I ran through all the frames, and everything looks grand to me, but I need a second set of eyes to double check.  Also, Mobius, if you were going to work any of your artistic magic, I say go for it mang!  Also, I figure you would add the portrait as well.

Amazing work, as expected. It's very nice to see this sprite come to completion after so long. Doubly so since one of my first commissions for a perler was this one:

Now...how about a female variant to go with it? :P

(I still say the FFT:A Blue Mage design was one of the few relatively good things to come out of that game series.)

Excellent work on the sprite, Mr. Sutoraifu. You as well on the portrait, Mobius. (And you as well on the perler, Celdia.)

For the longest time I've wanted a Blue Mage sprite compatible with FFT and while I'm still curious as to how the domino-mask wearing FFV Blue Mages--who people would probably nowadays mistake for Relius from Blazblue--would look in FFT, this is a great step forward. It's always good to see things completed in general sense around here though, no matter the actual scope of it.

Quote from: Celdia on May 30, 2013, 01:21:26 am
Now...how about a female variant to go with it? :P

*waits for someone to "jokingly" suggest the female version should have a niqab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqab) or an abaya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaya) just because the male version has a turban (even though they'd probably call it a "burqa" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burqa))*

...Hmmm...typing that out, even with the controversy about those types of clothing, I must admit that would at least be visually...interesting to see in FFT and might even turn out quite well.

Still, even without a canon FFT:A variant to go with for Blue Mages, it's not like you can't just give the female variant a turban as well I guess. All I know is that either design choice would probably fly better with me than "midriff-baring" Dancers, though I'm not so prudish that those sprites aren't horrible are anything. It just...bothered me the first time I saw them more than a decade ago.

(Actually, now that I think about it, don't FFXI female Blue Mages have turbans? I've never played that game, so I don't know, but I vaguely remember the Blue Mage design there having a "Middle Eastern"/Indian feel to it like FFT:A between the turbans and sabers and what not from what little I've seen during research.)

Should you choose to do a female variant at all, Mr. Sutoraifu, I'm sure whatever you choose to do will come out quite well given how this one ended up working out.

P.S. Since I keep saying the word "turban", I must also admit that the Sikh religion has really bitching turbans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turban) apparently.

Celdy, glad I could make it. It was such good design, I always hopped smash would finish it.  Also, does your portrait have a sprite to go with it?  I've always wanted to have the sprites of the Dragon Force monarchs.

The Damned, I would like to make a female blue mage, as well.  I'd like to keep it middle eastern/southwest Asian themed, as well.  I think I'd use something other than a turban, though.  Using and abaya style would be worth a go, but I don't know if I could pull it off without it looking like a male ninja knockoff.  We'll see though.

Turns out I intend to make a female one soon too, and I got the concepts sketched already. These are for my own project:



But really, I don't mind at all if someone here decides to do the female one for me and uses my artwork. :P

Quote from: Kuraudo Sutoraifu on May 30, 2013, 08:22:57 am
Celdy, glad I could make it. It was such good design, I always hopped smash would finish it.  Also, does your portrait have a sprite to go with it?  I've always wanted to have the sprites of the Dragon Force monarchs.

Sadly, no. Hell, I wasn't even aware more than like 2 people around here even knew what Dragon Force was.

Quote from: Mobius on May 30, 2013, 12:27:53 pm

spoiler

(http://i41.tinypic.com/69nvoh.jpg)

But really, I don't mind at all if someone here decides to do the female one for me and uses my artwork. :P

:shock:
:shock:
:shock:

I just sat here for like 5 minutes trying to think of something to say after seeing that and coming up with nothing. I'm pretty sure that's the definition of speechless. I just...wow.

Ok, im doing the rounds, as we agreed.

(http://i41.tinypic.com/e9afzr.jpg)


I find myself sluggishly slow on this compared to portraits, which I make quite fast.
Got to practice more.

I'll do the female, just.. Not now. Very FAR in the future. :P

Love. It.

And I still have that perler Celdie. :D I use it to scoop dog doo. lol Not really it's safe and sound with the Sonic perlers. :)

Anyway.. DAT BLUE MAGE!!! *faints*

Smash, i think you've over simplified somethings to the point of it not representing what you want properly and theres also some things you need to chance because its a job class. You've got a dark gray in the turban in places and also the robe bottom but it is sharing colours with the pants, so it wouldnt work well when doing new palettes. And really, its 12 colours so theres no need to simplify the palette so much :P. And the turban on some frames is a little unrecognisable, like the back and side view. Also the skin palette could probably be separated from the shoes if you want! I'm super nitpicking because honestly someone has to do so, so it looks even better! :P

Fantastic. We got Twinees in this now.


I'll differentiate the shoe/skin colours later. :P
Working low-colour makes everything easier for me somehow.


(http://i41.tinypic.com/4pv1g2.jpg)

I added one colour here now (Dark blue) and fixed the blue/gray, tweaked the hat, and uhh.

Right. What's done here is the first 5 poses, the 5 pose walk-frontside, 5 pose walk-backside, along with the entire first group of arms.

Because Im working as is on Graphics Gale, without Shishi, I can't test the alignments of the arms, so if anyone is nice enough to make gifs of it, I'd be grateful a ton.

Here is Type 1

It's not a Type 1 sprite.

Male Geomancer (which it was made from) is Type 2...

Well, sorry. My bad.

It's cool lol, apparently no one knew Geomancers were Type 2 except for me (I guess I take in to much useless info)

Haha. Well, actually I tested both type 1 and 2 with both result arms misalignment. But now seems to be fine. Guess I must've done something wrong back there.

Here: Type 2

The back makes the turban look like a bowl of soup. When his arms at the back are extended all the way they look fine, but when they are in the middle they look like rectangles. Otherwise it's great!

Hehe, Elric... You know too much.  :twisted:

Quote from: Jumza on June 02, 2013, 08:38:50 am
The back makes the turban look like a bowl of soup. When his arms at the back are extended all the way they look fine, but when they are in the middle they look like rectangles. Otherwise it's great!

Hehe, Elric... You know too much.  :twisted:

Hehe, soup.

Nothing wrong with knowing too much. It's actually a good thing, in this case. And I was aware myself, as I tried to do something with the Geo sprites before and got the same result in using it as a Type 1.

Just going to link this here;
It's the only way to get all the arms perfect on your sheet:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=5084.0 (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=5084.0)
I guess Mobius can't use it yet cause it only runs for Windows :(
Yet, there is one more way..
I'd try using Lirmont's Sprite utility tool, it might run fine on Linux:
http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7409.0 (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7409.0)
Otherwise you can't really see how all the loose arms really fit onto the body.. so no matter how clean they may be,
some will end up out of place or attached oddly... Even if they are just arms from the male geomancer, the tops of the arms will need to be edited to fit the new body a bit.

His left shoulder shirt/sleeve for the rear walk frame when its at its top peak is missing. Also, the left wrist band seems to be inconsistent.

you need to fix that turban, it looks like some sort of a deformed beret with a feather attached

it's doing that thing where it gestalts it's depth of field backwards and the hat looks concave, basically cause you can't see enough of the lines from the wrapping

if you look at the secret of mana series turban guys or the sprites on turbans in DQV you can see how the extra lines of the wrapping are used to indicate the rounded shape more clearly, and it sits a little bigger on their heads too


Final Fantasy Blue Mages are kinda just copies of the DQV protagonist anyway

edit: looking at it the feather is only a pixel wide from some angles, fluffing it up and doing a little unrealistic feather exaggeration isn't gonna hurt in a final fantasy game

otherwise, you could also take the feather out and go for a simpler sort of detail

did u ever finish this ?