Final Fantasy Hacktics

Alucard is finally done =)

Thanks everyone for the comments that helped me finish this and special thanks to Smash for helping me fix the hair in the portrait .
I haven't tested it much in-game so if you find any weird animations let me know and I'll fix it .


Now moving to the next sprites . . .

Looks like Setzer from FF6. Not bad, however you posted this as a jpeg and not a png so the colors look sloppy. The file itself might look perfect in game and on your computer, but here the image looks a bit blurred. Can you please change it to a .png file and post it again? Keep it up btw.

I thought about Setzer too.

Looks like you're making good progress.  You've somehow avoided the messiness that new spriters tend to have.  The one major complaint I have is that the lining of the coat should not look that straight on the diagonal views.  The coat curves, so the lining should match up.

Nice job so far. It would make a great Setzer or (with a little modification) his long lost brother, Alucard.

Whoa, this is surprisingly good. The only problem I see is that pixely mess right above the boots...what is that? All the other things have been mentioned: post PNGs (or compressed BMPs) if you can and curve out the lining on the coat. I suggest replacing the eyes with the meaner looking ones (I believe Rofel and Vormav have them), if you're really bored; they'll get this guy looking a little tougher, which should effectively counter the somewhat girly hair. You could also use the back of Elmdor's hair to fix this up, but that's up to you.

Great work.

Wow, Excellent work. I request to use this in CoP (That's gonna be perfect for chapter 2 !) :O

Seriously, I love black and gold, so you got me there.

By the way, the blacks and dark grays on your sprite are a bit harsh. You could replace the golds too, but they're alright. Definitely consider fixing those dark shades though (take from an existing sprite, if you didn't already). Good luck.

Looking good and what they said.

Hey , thanks for the comments
I'll update the images as soon as possible , I'm really lazy now ;p

@SilvasRuin
-The coat is linear on purpose , at first it was rounded but then I changed it , all sprites have rounded clothes but I prefer a more linear linning ( Eg. female summoner cape is way better and linear than the male summoner , which looks like a bunch of fluffy cotton in his back ).

@mav
-I'll take a look at the shades when I'm done , I'm already used to the colour scheme , the 'blacks' looks a bit alike but it's difciult to modify so many 'black' colours and keep it all dark and not gray ( I'm avoiding gray colours to be honest )
-The 'pixely mess' isn't a mess =p it's part of his boots , the top part . I'll add an image later , since most of my images are in my other pc or you can google an image to see it , since the space to do it is small it can't be seen perfectly but maybe in-game it'll look better .
-I won't change the eyes , I like it that way . I even wanted to make it 2 pixels height insted of 3 but it makes the character looks sleepy -_-
-I didn't use Elmdor hair because . . . well , Elmdor head looks square and small ( frontview ) and the back is short , actually the back hair is the same as the female sprites (Reis / Knight . . . )in the game . I want it to be longer and I don't want it to look like Elmdor at all .

@Kokojo
-Feel free to use it , no need to credit me or anything just don't claim it as your creation If you want to , I can give you the .gal version to use with graphicsgale , the layers are a real mess but it's easier to modify anything with it since several parts of the sheet are separeted ( hairs , gloves , clothes .... ) and you can make use of the parts you like for other sprites without having to cut it .
-I love black and gold too ^^

The character as a whole simply looks MUCH too girly for the character its suposed to be. (hell, with some different coloring and tweaking it could be a female cannoneer)

Er, I don't think you understand.  The front facing diagonal view where the closer foot is taking a step forward is TOO straight.  You cannot justify that.  It goes against the shading you have for the coat.  It is mind-bendingly inconsistent.  You have a straight line up and down that just can't be a straight line, at least with such flat shading.

Actual sprite edits can help in many more ways than words alone. It can even help you practice from time to time.


I dunno why no one does that here.

I have to agree with Silvas. Its bit too straight and due to the flatness of the shading, it looks odd.

And yes, agree with Smash too. Its best to edit the sprite and see how it goes rather than just declining them with words when you haven't even test it yet.

QuoteI dunno why no one does that here.

Because despite being able to notice problems the sprite has, I suck too much to be able to make them myself.  This guy's better than me, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean I can't still notice a problem area.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as Silvas, I guess I should try to toss in an edit or two when I can.

As for your responses to my suggestions, Kyo, the eyes and hair are totally up to you, and I completely understand your desire to leave 'em be. As for the whole gray vs. black situation, all you have to do is fix the darkest black--or just figure out why it's darker than the standard outline/shadow shade. And do post an image of the boots, whenever you can; I think seeing what they're supposed to look like will help me understand 'em much more.

Yeah, post reference picture for us to understand more ^^

@Jimmyjw88 / Smash
-I never said I haven't tried , and in fact I have , but I didn't like it .
If anyone wants to use the sprites and change anything I don't mind .

@SilvasRuin
-Now I understood . I'll change it so it won't be a straight line , at first I thought you were talking about the idle position ;P

@mav
-That's how I started spriting , spoting what's wrong and trying to make it better . And now that you mentioned the outline/shadow stuff , I'll see what's wrong there . I actually didn't paid any attention to the colours in the outline -_-

Boots ^^
(http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/3183/alucard.th.png) (http://img177.imageshack.us/i/alucard.png/)

Ah yes, the boots; I figured that was the style. My advice is to keep the golds and the whites/light grays separate: they blend together in quite a few poses, causing some awkwardness. You might be able to recolor Olan's boots, and make them work, but I don't know. You definitely need to separate the boots and the coat trim a little more, which will certainly help.

Great work, good luck.

Ah, alright then. Carry on ^^
As for the boot, I agree with mav. Either white or gold darker or separate them.

Hmm, Vamp smacked me up the head with his words "this can be a female cannoneer". Ha, change the coat red, change the shoes and hair just a tiny bit and throw a hat on "her" head, schazam I'm done. Male and female complete. However, I am making my own female Cannoneer, which is more or less my idea and work. I am no thief. Also, to change this thunder into lightning, down grade all the colors by 1 (change the blackest black which is totally bad to the second darkest one, then that color set up to the third darkest, so on...) and at the end you will have only one "gray" color which you said you was avoiding. If you don't get what I mean, I could post a version of it, because that is 2 minute work with Photoshop (or GG), but I am busy right now...

@Jon
-Switched the palette a little but the colours still messed the outline =p Some poses looked better but other are still bad . I guess I'll need to change it manually...
UP - default palette
DOWN - changed palette . . .
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4611/ooooooooo.png) (http://img191.imageshack.us/i/ooooooooo.png/)

@mav
-Olan boots are way too big , to fit it in the sprite sheet now would be a pain -_- I'll test the sprite in-game now to see how the boots looks like , but I'll probably remove the gold lines and make it white/gray . . .

Also finished all poses . . . finally =) Now I'll see to the changes suggested here .
Old palette
(http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/6905/ramza93abcdefghi.th.png) (http://img85.imageshack.us/i/ramza93abcdefghi.png/)

If anyone see something wrong with the poses let me know , I tried to do all I could to fit the 'pieces' smoothly in shishi but I haven't checked all the animations there.

Hmm, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that the Olan boots didn't fit, but I think removing the gold lines should pretty much make it work. The palette looks fantastic though; great job.

Portrait concept for the sheet =)
At first I wouldn't do it but since the sheet is complete , it'll look weird without a portrait .
I used Aliste for the face frame and head proportions , the rest is custom made. Uhh . . . I seriously need help and advice to finish this .

(http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/2445/portraitconcept.png) (http://img710.imageshack.us/i/portraitconcept.png/)
 

Lol. What's with the tongue? Mind showing us the picture you're basing?

I'm not using any reference at all , just trying to put into the image what I remember of Alucard .
But if I were to use one I'd use this:

(http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/3760/alucard3.th.jpg) (http://img710.imageshack.us/i/alucard3.jpg/)
. . . My portrait doesn't even come close to resemble this image =p But then , it's not supposed to be exactly like it anyway . . . I guess

Hmm....I see. Well, true. It doesn't has to be exactly the same. Just the idea and the rest is FFTs. ^^

I don't know what you're fretting about--the portrait looks fine (except for the mouth, of course). I will admit that the face is one pixel too long; shorten it and extend the collar down. If you're not used to shading, then I'd strongly advise against starting essentially from scratch.

I feel a bit uneasy to show my work because I'm not used to it =S

The portrait so far :
(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/3742/uuuuuui.png) (http://img38.imageshack.us/i/uuuuuui.png/)

Cleared the outlines , started some major cut and paste from other portraits . As you said , I'm not used to shading at all so instead of making from scratch I'm taking what I consider good on other portraits to make the hair , once I'm done filling the hair outlines and gaps I'll work on the weird lights / shades to blender it together and edit the colours to match the sprites better .
Most of the hair comes from the female archer and male geomancer btw =)

I'll keep working on it tomorrow .

Thats actually pretty damn good Keep it up!

Good stuff--that's pretty freakin' nice. You might wanna consider changing out the hair colors though, as these shades may be tough to work with. Keep working on it--you've done the hard stuff already.

Need some dark shades.

@ jimmy
Where ?  :?

Those areas that are exposed least to the light, i.e the hair behind his neck, hair that tucked behind his ear and etc.

Nice spr, this might work quite good for Setzer.

I think you should change the shades for the sprite's hair--it'll be easier than reworking the portrait palette, but I doubt people will mind if the sprite's hair is a little lighter than the portrait's. It looks great so far, I just hope you have enough space on the palette to flesh out the yellows collar.

EDIT: Oh god I hate this shit

fuck fuck fuck FUCK


Windows 7 and it's tendency to ruin images just made the file a shitty JPG. I made a crisp and shiny attachment now.

Amazing!! Looking much better.

Nother great work from you, Smash. I assume that colors are the problem, yes?

Haha, portrait would work for Setzer now too.

Lookin' good.

I definitely like where Smash took this, but I'm not sure whether Kyousukeee was hoping to make it look so similar to Alucard. Either way, we got some nice feedback here.

@Smash
I really liked what you did with the hair , it looks more like Alucard than what I have done ^^ The only thing I didn't like is the face , tho it's more accurate with the Alucard image ( and looks very sexy overall ) it looks thin compared to FFT style , the faces are more round/square in the chin . Even Cloud , who has a vey triangular and thin face in FFVII has a more rounded face in FFT .
I'll use the hair bangs and the idea of the orange highlights to finish the sprite since it's much better than what I did , see what I can do to change the chin so it won't be too thin or too Aliste and give proper credits when it's done . . . Here we go again shading the hair ugh >_>

The real reason why I don't want it to look exactly like Alucard is in parts of what I commented above , the characters should fit in  FFT style as much as possible and not the other way around and I think it's strange to use characters from other games in FFT , it gives me the feeling that they don't blend with the rest of FFT characters , except Cloud who has a [sarcasm]very detailed story of how and why he is in FFT and play an essential role in the game [/sarcasm].

But I think making sprites from characters from other games are really good and challenging , many other people will use it to play or use as base for their own sprites . Not to mention that finishing a sprite gives a good boost to the creator ego ^^  I'm considering the possibility of making more sprites when I'm done with Alucard and it's probably sopmething related to Lineage 2.

Sorry , no previews this time =(

It's been a while since the last time I posted so here it is :
(http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/8004/tulo.png) (http://img718.imageshack.us/i/tulo.png/)

Finally almost done , just need to fix the shades , mostly in the hair . . . . It's much better than before I guess =)

New portrait for the next sprite I'm planning to make , it's coming out nicely but I still haven't found the right colours .

This portrait's looking pretty good, all it needs are a few color modifications and it'll be ready. Great work.

As for the new portrait you're working on, you could get the skin tone from the Squids or maybe Byblos/Apanda (I'd go with the latter). I like the idea though--very interesting...

Be careful with this sprite Kyo, his armor looks very detailed, don't try to implement all that cause it will look crapy. This will be the first elf sprite if I am not mistaken.

@mav
Ummm nice idea I'll look at their portraits , thanks =)

@Kage~
I know it's vey detailed and it would be impossible to make it that accurate .
I'm still not sure which armor I'll pick , first I want to finish the face and hair in the portrait and see how many colours I'll have left and then work on the armor . The sprite sheet is easy since you don't need that many colours to do the details but in the portrait you need more colours for everything =/
I'm still going to choose the armor I'll do but it'll be one of these:
I like the third armor more but I believe there won't be enough space for details . . . well not sure until I try but my bet is that the first one will be easier to do than the others since there's less detailing and the colours are solid and plain compared to the other two . I'll try to do his wing aswell . . . I know it's possible and it'll be a major pain >.>
Btw this isn't an elf ^^ it's the kamael race from Lineage 2 .
I'm also going to do the human , dark elf and elf . I'll upload the images later .

I would go with the first one, looks quite simple yet very elegant, kinda an aristocrat. But it is just my opinion, do as you like.

I prefer the second and third. Basically, you can do whichever you like, in my opinion. Just, lessen the details. Good luck.

Added shades to the hair and changed a few parts .
(http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/6783/portfin.png) (http://img192.imageshack.us/i/portfin.png/)

Also did a pose from the Dark elf sprite , it's not very detailed and the shoulders aren't very good tho .

This big photo isn't showing for me.

The armor on the Dark elf looks good to me--it's the hair that's throwing me off.

Nevermind, I can see the pic. The hair is flat and too bright, do sumthin with it. Armor is nice, boots too. but what is wrong with his legs (above boots)? Looks flat too, add some sades or something, right now I don't even know what that is.

Yeah, the hair.

Hmm yeah the hair isn't good at all . . . I'll rework the hair , already got an idea of what to do .
@Kage~
I'll change the design and colours in the upper part of the boots . The purple part is his things and the dark blue is the crotch , the armor doesn't have any pants at all lol .
I'll put some pants on him ;P

I'm making some progress with the Kamael portrait , changed the skin tones to those used in Uribo , looks much better now =) But I still think the colours are saturated , is it just me ?
Started to do the clothes and I'll add better shades later when I figure out what I can do to reduce the colours used . Tricky collar . . .

and Alucard is finally done , I'll update the first post later with the spritesheet done ^^

The hair and face is good. The collar is good start. Hmm...

Finished Alucard portrait and updated the first post with unit.bin image , portrait and sheet in .bmp and .spr . I imported the file with Shishi and it seems to be working perfectly .
Now I can focus on my new projects =)

Congratulations on completing the sprite. Make sure to submit it, if you haven't already.

Submit it now!
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=405&start=180 (http://ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=405&start=180)

Wait!

The port still needs some small shading fixes on the back of the hair. I might get an edit coming up to show it, no credit needed and all.


Looking forward to your sprites. Just keep that ego at bay, I can assure you it won't do any good.  

Well it's been a while since the last time I posted and I haven't made much progress but I'm pretty much done with the kamael portrait and now I'm working with the sheet , so far I did one pose but it's still in progress and I'll probably change it - making two different shoulder has been hell =p .
The portrait had too many colours and I couldn't make it the same with 16 colours =/ ( left is xx colours version and right is 16 colours + some changes )

Having the skin tone and the hair color the same is really taking away from this portrait. Since those are the most important things I would recommend taking colors away from other places to prioritize them. For instance the lightest shade you use for the hair could also be used for the white of the eye. Perhaps make is cloths less red so that they could share more tones with the skin or hair.

Yes, what Sir Cheetah said.
Here's what I've set:
2 reds
2 yellows
2 blacks
2 whites/grays  (Use for hair highlights)
3/4 skins
4/3 hairs   =   15 colours

That there's a great portrait! Thanks for the advice on mine.
And what a great character. Thanks for making Alucard!

Hmm, try giving him angry eyes on sprite, it will go well with portrait and it will be the same as in reference

@ Cheetah
I barely have any colours left for the clothes , the skin and hair take away most of 'em =(

@jimmyjw88
I'll give it a try and post the results .

@Lijj
No prob , if I can help you in any way let me know .

@Kagebunji
Nice idea , I'll change it when I start to work on the sprite sheet again this week or next week .
( He has a pissed off expression , indeed ^^ )

u might wana try making the colors a lil darker his colors look a lil too bright. still looks good though. =)

Quote from: "Cheetah"Having the skin tone and the hair color the same is really taking away from this portrait.

This is true. Some spriters may not like what I'm about to say, but I suggest intentionally going over the color limit. If you can get it looking nice at 20 colors or so, it shouldn't be too tough to reduce (I've had to reduce from some 30 or 40 colors and still managed to maintain some decent quality).

The sprite looks gorgeous. Great work.

@ Oberon
It looks normal on my laptop and dark on my desktop so I'm not sure if it's too bright . Making it darker gives me the impression that the colours are saturated .
If you have the time , change the colours and post here how it looks . That would help me a lot =)

@mav
I'd rather use more than 16 colours to start the sprite portrait too since I have a lot of trouble to find the proper colours . . .

@jimmyjw88
Gor rid of 2 reds ( wasn't even using one of them and didn't notice ) added another black and the datails in his clothes are back , now it won't be a plain black shirt . Added another hair colour for the highlights which is a bit lighter than the skin tone .
Overall it wasn't a big modification but I'll keep trying to give the skin and hair tones distinct colours ( white-ish for the hair maybe ? or a darker colour ? ) so they won't blend too much . Also changed the eyes .
Let me know if it looks any better .

my fault :p, i was looking at my screen the wrong way and it made it look a lil brighter.

Have you considered leaving his neck uncovered? If you remove the clothes that are covering his neck, you could drop the two blacks and the gray; then use one of those open slots to add some depth to the reds and the other two to darken the hair. I dunno, it's up to you though. If I get some time, I'll fiddle with it on my own and post the results.

Great Alucard sprite! I'm looking forward to more sprites from you.

In all honesty the portrait is very good, but you took very little of the advice provided and there was very little to no improvement. The extra shading on the shirt is nice, but could likely be achieved using the background color. Try posting some 100% previews as well. I still think you need to differentiate between the hair and skine tone more, having additional light shade for the hair didn't do anything for you either (it isn't even noticable).

@Oberon
Np

@mav
I haven't considered that but might as well try .

@Zodiac
Thanks ^^ Nice update in the custom sprite page .

@Cheetah
I didn't put much effort in the last update mainly because I didn't have enough time to do it and wasn't in the mood , sorry about that .
I'll work soome more now and post something next week .

Quote from: "Cheetah"Try posting some 100% previews as well. I still think you need to differentiate between the hair and skine tone more, having additional light shade for the hair didn't do anything for you either (it isn't even noticable).

It's been a while and I've worked on the hair colours , messing around with it to see the results .
The colours aren't 100% but you can have an idea of how it'll look like .
Top left is the original one . As for the clothes I'll definally change it to the less saturated one ( bottom right )
Personally I liked the second one but I can do the others if anyone likes it .

The second, third, and eighth look the cleanest, in my opinion. It's a tough call, cause the eighth one looks too desaturated and the second and third don't look saturated enough. My main gripe with this sprite is the clothing--not enough golds, blacks, or reds. If you can manage to fix that, it'll pull the whole portrait together. Great job.

Managing the colours has been hard -.- I'll take a short break from the portrait and work in the sheet and something else .
Like this for instance :
I dunno what clothes I'll put on her ^^

I actually agree on all three: 2,3 or 8. All very nice!

2, 4, or 8 are good. Well honestly it has become a very nice portrait, good work. I'm liking the progress on this new one as well. Are you making any headway with your sprites?

This new portrait is shaping up to be quite interesting. I have no suggestions thus far...

New portrait looks good. You are basing her on Dancer, right? I can see that face and clothes are somewhat similiar.

An alucard sprite huh? does this mean there will be a leon too? or maybe a hector?  well it's just wishful thinking i'm gonna try and make one maybe i'll get pointers

Woah a necromancer ! ^^

I was waiting to finish something to revive this thread but since you 'bumped' it I'll use the opportunity to post something . . .

It's far from complete , my RL has been pretty busy . . . I wish I had more time to play around with spriting .

Oh wow. This is nice and WB Kyousukee. I like the chest area design.

Hey, this looks cool. I still feel like the skin shading on port could be changed in some way, same for hair's colors, theese aren't from FFT, are they? Since it is kinda hard to explain, I could tweak one part of his face(on port) if you agree.

Do it Kage, that portrait needs some work. I like the sprite, but the portrait is a bit strange. Its not bad, its just that the skin and hair are too similar on the portrait. Hey good work, keep it up Kyousukeee!

I'm liking the sprite. I only question if the front of his shorts should be longer to match the back flap.

@Kage
Indeed the character base ( and skin colours ) aren't from FFT . . . and he is pink as you can see from a few images I've posted here long ago .
Please , feel free to do as you see fit , any ideas and edits are welcome as always . It has been a long time since I messed around with sprites ( roughly 4 months ) and I feel rusty at the moment and I can't seem to find the way to improve the portrait any further . Not enough colours ^^

@Jon and Lijj
Thanks guys . Tho I don't show up here often I'm always lurking every now and then so , ( belated ) congrats Jon for finishing the Link sprite and congrats Lijj for your effort into making all those awesome sprites =)

@Cheetah
The front part is shorter on purpose , it should be something like a tailcoat ( shorter in the front and long in the back ) and not like Delita's shorts but even these poses I posted here are unfinished , many details are still missing , including his wing . Take a look at the images I posted in the previous page .

The sprite is very good, but something looks...off... on the port. It might be the size you posted at though.. Yeah disregard that, I think it's just the size.

Ok, I will fix the part of port I was talkin about. Now we need to learn if there is some character's port that have pink in it, any ideas? Oh, and please post a normal size for portrait too, Kyousuke.

try the japanese ritz...that port looks badass

Here you go ^^ If you want the .gal file let me know and I'll send it to you .
(http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/6407/portrait30.png) (http://img691.imageshack.us/i/portrait30.png/)

You know, this is great btw- love the collar design, I think colors just need to be more concentrated. Especially the pinks. I'll be out for two months.. leaving in 10-15 min which sucks cause I'd like to play with the palette a bit. But got to go.. good work. I hope I come back to see lots of new things.