Final Fantasy Hacktics

For those of you who frequent chat you'll be familiar with my latest project and first real attempt at anything other than a palette swap. For those of you who don't visit chat, here is my female Demagogue for my CCP project.



Twin helped me clean up the alignment of some of the sprite panels and Kagebunji cleaned up the portrait for me. If you're interested in the full spritesheet it is in the Site Submission section.

So now I'm onto yet another sprite since I once again find our custom selection lacking for what I want in my patch. I'm trying another swap, this time between the Priest and Summoner with some palette adjustments as well. Here's my preliminary attempt on the first five panels.

(http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/8076/nomadm5pal.png)

The color on the hair needs a little work I think but I know that's also tied to the shading in the face so I haven't tried to clean that up yet.

Eek, first day spriting and you have already committed a cardinal sin. Never post anything in jpg format. Repost in PNG and I will have some comments :).

Ugh. Fucking Photobucket. -_-

There, fixed.

Not bad.

For the portrait you are using as your avatar. The neck of her shirt, or whatever, is cutting into her chin a bit too much. Probably an issue of too dark of pixels at the top.

The summoner needs a bit more texture to his hair, right now it looks like he is missing something on the top of his head. Look at the 10 year old boy for reference.

Nice sprite, Celdia.
I think the head in the first frame (that is facing to the right) needs to be fix beacuse it looks like he had a tumor or something. And this sprite could be more than headswap, maybe changing the boots or cape will be great.

The warrior ovelia looks better than I thought it would, what's she supposed to be?

I've never much liked the male Summoner sprite, so it's hard for me to be a huge fan of this. Nonetheless, effective headswap. I like your Demagogue sprite, just try to give her some more custom work, swap out her arms or something. The face shape on the portrait is awkward. Her right cheek is like bulging out.

por alguna razón no puedo ver las imágenes .-.

@Cheetah: Thank you, I'll take a look at the 10 year old boy sprite. I know the hair looks odd on this swap but its a straight pull from Priest and I'm not sure why it doesn't look so bad on that one. I'll also see what I can do about the Demogogue portrait.

@Wolfran: You mean those couple of vertical pixels right on the edge of the face? I tried just removing them and I swear it looked worse rather than better. Sadly as it sits now I don't have a lot of colors available for skin tones.

@GeneralStrife: In my patch the Demagogue is a kind of war chanter, or as a few people call it a super-Mediator. I really just wanted an armor-wearing unit with an unusual skill set so I paired wide-range talk skills with an armor user.

@Mav: Like it or not, I appreciate you taking the time to look at it. ^_^ As for my Demagogue portrait, I chose that edge of the face to look like that on purpose, as its a feature taken straight from the female lancer. When I tried leaving it out and filling in that side of the face it just looked too much like Ovelia to me.

@Shishi-sensou: I have no idea why you can't see the images. Would you like me to upload them as attachments so you can download them from the forum?

Simple design, if you are aiming only for a headswap, then good job. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more customized though, heh.

After a few false starts on the Nomad I decided to put him on the back burner for a little while. In the meantime I have constructed this freak of a sprite.

(http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7710/genf5pal.png)

As you can see though, that portrait needs some serious help...and as we all know, portraits are not my strong suit. I'm taking suggestions.

(http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/6230/genfport01.png)

Here it is alone.

Is it an archer with Monk legs? Looks decent enough, harder to do than a head swap. Portrait actually isn't that bad. The shading on the face is odd around the edges, and the braid needs a lot of work.

What the hell happened to the shading on the portrait? Really flat stuff. How did it look before you reduced the colors. And this sprite is a little boring; it's not all that different from the standard female Archer. Change the arms and palette up a bit.

Actually I had a much easier time with this than I did the headswap on the Demagogue, but that might be a matter of learning what I'm doing more than anything.

The portrait is actually a bad combination of three portraits that all used totally different angles on the faces so when I reduced the colors it just came out utterly awful looking. That portrait uses 16 colors and it could probably be done with like 12, but there are so many pointless and out of place shading tones in there from the mash-up I did.

As for palettes on the sprite, I really hadn't decided where to go with that yet. I'd thought about maybe giving her a belt to just kind of accent the waist some and maybe doing something with this huge kneepads on the boots but I wasn't sold on anything yet. Originally I wanted to lose the boot color on the chest but now I'm not so sure.

Hmm... I do have to agree, I didn't see much different at first, for a Nomad I would imagine... maybe the Thief's lower half? If that doesn't look that great how does Meliadoul's lower half translate over to an Archer sprite? Though that may be only because of my wish to see Sydney's half-cloak thing he wears in Vagrant Story.

I actually like the current draft, but the Portrait does need work.  The cheek furthest from the viewer juts out a pixel more than it should.  The ponytail could also use work, but making those things is a braided nightmare anyway so props for even trying.  God knows I never would, and even on the alternate Warlock Twin and I did he didn't want to get near braids.  It's a start, though.  I'd give her a belt that uses the same palette set as her gloves to give her a bit more definition, maybe.  You could possibly take that armored bit from the right breast and turn it into a full breastplate too, but I'm unsure as to how that'd look.

Fixes I told you about. Again, DON'T USE THIS, use this only as a starting point for your own fixes. I fixed pixels on face, made the neck thicker, made clothes bigger, and erased that thing above her clothes on our left.

Okay, took the fixes Kage made and ran with them some. Also tried to throw in some new palettes though I'm actually not too keen on the gold palette as it is.
(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8999/genfnewport01.png)

Quote from: Celdia on February 27, 2011, 11:28:17 am
Okay, took the fixes Kage made and ran with them some. Also tried to throw in some new palettes though I'm actually not too keen on the gold palette as it is.
(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8999/genfnewport01.png)

Yeah Ok.
The portraits hair colors aren't matching with the sprite's hair colors.
And yeah the gold pallette is odd, maybe too much yellowish going on there.

Like I said on chat, yellow is just too bright. As to hair color, total bs, I see no reason for wich sprite and portrait don't match, both are blonde, and look damn similiar.

Gold palettes are hard to pull off, unless you're willing to darken the skin and hair color. Anyone remember the gold palettes from the Arena topic? Jeez, those were always the hardest. A few of those sprites have more reddish hair, Kage; I assume that's what Strife was getting at. It can be fixed though.

Quote from: Kagebunji on February 27, 2011, 11:50:18 am
Like I said on chat, yellow is just too bright. As to hair color, total bs, I see no reason for wich sprite and portrait don't match, both are blonde, and look damn similiar.

Kage the fifth row is red headed >_>

Without zooming in I can'see it, so I am not seeing it neccesary to fix it. Mav's port is red-headed, not that one, heh. I agree my monitor screw colors, but this is not something to be concerned with.

(http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/3751/genfnewport02.png)

There just aren't enough colors in the spectrum to make me happy. That said, I ditched gold in favor of a lighter gray (there's no good way to do a 'white' palette, is there?) and made my original gray darker. Side by side those two seem different enough. Also corrected the pointlessly red hair on #5; Thank you GS and mav. I likely wouldn't have noticed that if it wasn't pointed out. Too focused on the rest of it.

Okay. Tried adding a belt. I'm amazed at what one little line of pixels can accomplish. Sprite sheet is attached if you want to load it into an ISO and view some animations.

Lol, that's one small belt. I can barely see it. I hoped for something bigger, like Dyce's belt. But this isn't bad either.

But she's petite. She doesn't need a huge belt.

I agree, but this one is hardly visible. Maybe try making it two lines of pixels, instead of one? It would help.

I like the belt as-is honestly.  I think it'd look tacky if it were much bigger, though you could always try a couple frames with 2px and compare.

Hey, Celdia, do you think you might be able to post your Demagogue sprite as .bmp images (eg I can upload them into FFTEVGRP)? I tried to do it myself with multiple other sprites (I even looked off your guide), but I ended up ruining my iso.

I did see your post in the tutorial thread Durbs and I'll admit, I'm stumped as to how a sprite import could nuke the whole ISO. I'll attach the FFTEVGRP images to this post though. You're welcome to them.

Thank you, Celdia, you're a saint. :) I'm also not really sure how it happened. It seems like there's trouble at every turn for me; first the emulator was finiky about its setup, then my iso program took several tries to get it right, and now this. Something's wierd that I don't know about, but I haven't found out what it is yet. Thanks for the sprites, anyway.

Just messing around with some palettes from the generic female sprite.

Portrait coloring on the blue and red portrait robes needs a bit of work.  You should probably tone done the primary on the fourth palette sprite cape some too, either that or make the secondary / tertiary a bit brighter so the contrast isn't so glaring.

Else, that's a nice and simple alternative to the Summoner sprite for people who want to use it but don't want the horn for reasonable reasons.  If you feel a bit brazon, I'd recommend trying to meld the Summoner's cape/neck bit with the Priest's head in the portrait to give it a bit more distinctness since right now it just uses the Priest's portrait, but otherwise.

(Note to self: Learn how to graft capes onto things for portraits.)

Necrobump? Probably. But its my thread here so...nya.

In still wanting for a replacement on the vanilla Mediator sprite I got the idea in my head to use a Calculator franksprite that was done some time ago. I'm told it originated from R999's project, but the palettes seen here are constructed by Raven for FFT:Redesign. I don't intend to keep these colors as a final product in CCP but I felt like posting the sprite mostly for the portrait to get a little feedback. Its about as complicated as the sprite itself is as far as work goes - just a frankenport. If I could get a bit of feedback though I'd like to hear what you all have to say.

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/9079/animalistf08preview.png

I'll attach the spritesheet as well.

you weren't kidding about frankensprite lol. i like the back frames, the calculator cape thing looks good with the hair.

So with some collaboration with Raven I finally got a paired set to replace my Enchanters with in CCP. Here's the male sprite to match that female one above. Also posting the full female sheet in BMP format for anyone else that wants it and a high-collared version of the male because Raven requested it. I will be submitting these as Enchanter sprites to the site submissions for the custom page as well, but likely with a different set of palettes on them.

http://i56.tinypic.com/dbo2du.png Low collar

http://i51.tinypic.com/rr10k3.png High collar

So I got this idea in my head to put in a Succubus monster with the next update of CCP. I started poking around the custom sprites for a female unit that might fit the bill with some minor edits and I found Rydia. She seemed like a good starting place and I started tinkering with palette swaps to find something I liked. When I was done with that I moved onto the portrait and couldn't manage to do anything useful with it so I decided to work from a slightly less complex seeming portrait and grabbed the Ch. 3/4 Tietra port for FFT Remix. This is what I came up with for the first draft of three palettes for the monster family.
(http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/5561/succprev2.png)
Going for a Succubus/Vampire/Demoness set for the three tiers. I still think the portrait is a little fugly looking but there are unused colors in the palette that could probably be applied to clean it up some...its just beyond my abilities. If anyone has a little time and would like to give it a go, I'd be appreciative. If not then I suppose this will have to do. My first draft of the spritesheet is attached.

My eyes burn!!

That bad, eh? Oh well.

I like it, the 2nd and 3rd color palette makes her look more monstery, in the first her skin tone looks a bit normal. I haven't touched portraits at all yet, but I would think making her look a little more insane in the portrait would do well. Moreover, I feel like she'd have a pretty good niche as a monster. Any vampiric monster makes blood suck actually make sense.

I should have reworked Rydia some time ago by now. If I ever get the chance I will rework her and give it to you for CCP, heh.

Looking forward, Kage

Just ignore how long this has been dead for. I am a necromancer of incredible power.

So with all of the recent activity in Spriting, I got a moment of wild inspiration and felt like stealing something to make a sprite to go with my avatar. Poked around for a bit, tried a couple of headswaps, nothing really panned out at first. Then I came around to Kage's and Twin's 'Lysay' sprite and decided to try a palette swap on her and I really liked how it came out. There isn't more than a handful of pixels changed here and there to bring up the front of her top to neck level to reflect how it looks in the portrait. I also clipped the elf ears from the port since I just didn't like how it was coming out with them on the sprite. I had to make a bit of a compromise with the dark shadow color I was using but I don't think it came out too bad overall.

(http://i.imgur.com/YHi6oaa.png)

Also a couple other versions with brighter colors for the blues that really stand out more than they should for an FFT sprite, but I thought I'd include them anyways.

:O very nice! Do you mind if I use it in Jot5? Makes good nightime towns
people for background stuff in events :D

Of course I don't mind. Anything I've ever posted in this thread is free for people to use as they like. I'm amused that I might make a background cameo in Jot5. :P

Love the hair colour.  Are you planning to make it look like Teiris?  It would be sweet to get some Dragon Force characters made.  Junon is my fave ^.^

I like the palette :)

@Atma: As much as I would love to see some proper DF heroes up in this, I am in no way skilled or motivated to make them myself.

And yes, the Black Death Mask is an amazing character. First one I actually played through the game to completion as.

(Just wanted to say that I made an extremely minor edit to the portrait of the original Lysay sprite, so Mr. Bunji really deserves all the credit)
(Also great palette choices, love the green, white and teal combo)

Thank you from chiming in, Twin. Always nice to get more feedback. I was actually a little hesitant about the green but nothing else fit even half as well.

Imdeed, it's a nice palette swap. Lysay was easy to swap cause she uses alll the colors separately IIRC, whites, black reds, hair, nothing is shared. Only thing I would change is the green you used for the eyes, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it should be either changed to usual black that eyes use, or at least made darker, cause it's kinda bright, when I looked closer in. Good work on this :)

The darkest green getting used in a few places it really would be better off as something else is the compromise I made to try and keep this at 16 colors. If you poke around Lysay, you'll notice that the only thing to share colors with the hair tones were skin and the belt. Not the dress. Trying to rig things up so that hair and dress shared colors was more than a little frustrating (but arguably easier than the headswaps I had been toying with before I chose this route.) That green is the closest thing I've got to a non-transparent black on the sheet and it's running double duty in a few spots like that. When I tried making it darker it made other spots look worse to me.

She was a nice sprite to work from but you know me and my cries of "I'm not a spriter." This is about the best I can manage. :P

Although some may not want it a bit bright cause in game needs to be desaturated I am liking the midtone palettes and even tested it in game :)

Yeah I feared you may used the greens, but I thought it wasn't shared, guess my memory fails me, haha. It's understandable then. It's looking great anyway.

Quote from: Celdia on February 27, 2011, 11:28:17 am
Okay, took the fixes Kage made and ran with them some. Also tried to throw in some new palettes though I'm actually not too keen on the gold palette as it is.
(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8999/genfnewport01.png)

3 years late -- she looks adorable : D Erm, I mean fierce >.>

Quote from: Luiakyn on March 24, 2014, 09:05:52 pm
3 years late -- she looks adorable : D Erm, I mean fierce >.>

Thank you, Luiakyn. Even late, kind words are always welcome. ^_^